The Republican party wants the Federal Election Commission to crack down on Democratic "527" groups. Democrats formed the 527s, named for a section of the tax code, to get around the McCain-Feingold ban on soft money donations to party committees, and the GOP does not want them to get away with it. Back in November Republican national chairman Ed Gillespie wrote the campaign finance reform group Public Campaign to alert them to this "Democrat plan to subvert campaign finance laws." The RNC has also written television stations, warning them that the 527 groups' ads are illegal.

Gillespie's pose as a disappointed reformer probably got lots of laughs at party headquarters. But that doesn't mean he's not serious. If the FEC decides not to rule against the Democratic groups -- and it looks like it won't -- the RNC will probably file suit.

What seems to worry the GOP is that the Democrats will be as successful as Republicans were with similar tactics in 1980. In that year -- when Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress -- Republicans introduced two innovations that are central to today's controversy: soft money and independent spending.

Ronald Reagan's campaign figured out how to evade the federal prohibition against raising private money for their publicly-funded candidate. They would raise funds under more lenient state laws and use it in ways that were ostensibly for state purposes but that still benefited the presidential campaign. This back-door private financing came to be called soft money.

Some of the 1980 independent committees, the ones close to the party leadership, were also used to raise private money for Reagan's publicly funded candidacy. This wasn't entirely new. Republicans first created independent spending in the 1940s to get around new limits on how much could be contributed to and spent by a single political committee. For years afterward, such groups were independent in name only, being little more than extensions of candidate and party committees.

The innovation in 1980 was the creation of conservative committees, most notably the National Conservative Political Action Committee, that were not only independent but hostile. The GOP was at war with itself, and the conservative groups refused to cooperate with party leaders, whom they regarded as unacceptably moderate. They focused on a few U.S. Senate campaigns and specialized in running negative ads against the Democratic candidates.

Today's 527 groups are using both innovations to do what the GOP did in 1980. There are differences, of course. Where the Republicans invented soft money to get around the post-Watergate public funding system, the Democrats are using 527s to get around McCain-Feingold's ban on soft money. Soft money allows the party to counter the Republican lock on business support. Business has always been the GOP's core constituency and from national associations in Washington, D.C. to small-town chambers of commerce, it's a ready-made fundraising network. Even at the peak of the labor movement, the Democrats have never had anything to match it, .

Republicans are not flattered by the imitation. The conservative insurgents have been firmly in control of the party for at least a decade, and they no longer need independent spending committees. They don't need soft money, either, despite the years they spent trying to block a ban on it. Their Pioneers and Rangers in the business community ensure them of a comfortable fundraising edge over the Democrats, and they don't want Democratic soft money making that edge less comfortable.

Hence their complaint to the FEC. They say soft money donations to the 527s are illegal, and claim the groups are really coordinating their activities with John Kerry's campaign. They want the 527s to be regulated as political committees, which can accept donations of no more than $5,000.

Are the soft money donations illegal? Maybe. Maybe not. Campaign finance law is now so complicated, and the constitutional interpretations so nuanced, that there's often no clear line between what's legal and what isn't. Are the 527s really independent? Did George Soros pledge up to $5 million in matching funds for small donations to MoveOn.org because he plans to set up shop in a Kerry White House? Probably not. But you don't have to believe that to understand the potential for abuse. On the other hand, are those soft money donations more likely to be abused than the millions raised by President Bush's Rangers and Pioneers?

There’s no way to predict how courts will answer these questions. What is clear is that the old issues of money and influence can't be legislated away. Reformers have been trying to get big money out of elections since the end of the nineteenth century, with limited success. But if we can't get rid of it, we should try to balance it with small money. My own preference is for a public financing voucher system that would put campaign contribution vouchers in the hands of every registered voter. Senator Lee Metcalf (D-Montana) first suggested such a plan in 1967, and it has recently been revived by Rick Hasen at Loyola Law School and Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres at Yale. You'd think this would go over big with the "money is speech" crowd, but don't hold your breath.