Schumer was very clear that DISCLOSE was carefully crafted to “embarrass companies [inclined to get involved in the fall elections] out of exercising those rights,” according to Kim Strassel in the Wall Street Journal. “The bill will make companies ‘think twice’, [Schumer] rejoiced. ‘The deterrent effect should not be underestimated.’ ” Even though the bill is considered by many to be unconstitutional, the Democrats’ “goal here isn’t lasting legislation. The goal is to have this [law] in place for this election, when Democrats are at a low point, and when an empowered union base and a silenced corporate presence could make the difference between keeping the House and losing it.”
The bill immediately met resistance from numerous conservative groups, including the National Rifle Association. The bill would require organizations to disclose their top donors if they sponsor political television commercials or pay for mass mailings in the months leading to an election. The NRA initially said the bill “creates a series of byzantine disclosure requirements that have the obvious effect of intimidating speech…[and] attacks nearly all of the NRA’s political speech by creating an arbitrary patchwork of unprecedented reporting and disclosure requirements.”
Such resistance weakened support for the bill by numerous Democrats running for re-election this fall, and so a remedy was applied: exclude the NRA from those troublesome reporting requirements in exchange for which the NRA would drop all resistance to the bill. After NRA lobbyist Chris Cox met with Van Hollen, the NRA was “carved out” of the bill.
The outcry reached ear-shattering levels. “The NRA sells out to Democrats on the First Amendment,” castigated the Wall Street Journal. “Conservatives take on the NRA over [the] deal on [the] disclosure bill,” cried the Washington Post. RedState.org chimed in: “The National Rifle Association’s Excuse Holds No Water.” A member of the NRA’s Board of Directors, Cleta Mitchell, wrote in the Washington Post, that:
Jun 182010
