An ardent campaign reformer (who teamed up with former maverick John McCain to pass landmark 2002 campaign finance legislation), [Wisconsin Senator Russ] Feingold defied the national Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) in his white-knuckle 1998 campaign by demanding it take its attack ads off the air in Wisconsin. Feingold’s objection was that these commercials were being paid for with unregulated “soft money” that his campaign reform legislation was then attempting to ban.

But this time around (even though political donations to the DSCC are now regulated by the McCain-Feingold act), Feingold is equally adamant that the party committee should let him fight his own battles against Johnson. (The DSCC, which is running advertising in six states, has not been on the air in Wisconsin).

“It’s because these are almost always inherently attack ads based on cookie-cutter notions of how you should talk to the people of Wisconsin,” Feingold responded after I pressed him for a reason for his stubborn resistance to a DSCC ad campaign. “I don’t want that kind of help,” Feingold said moments later. “I consider it to be outside help of a kind that is uncontrolled and tends to believe in a philosophy of slash-and-burn politics. That’s frankly not who I am. I don’t want to win that way.”

Feingold’s refusal to accept DSCC spending on his behalf is alternatively getting categorized as stubborn and foolish or principled and brave. Loyola Law School’s Rick Hasen, for his part, notes that it’s highly ironic for Feingold to even act like he has some say in the matter, as independent expenditures made by the DSCC must, by law, be made without any sort of coordination with the Feingold campaign.

I think the majority of both the praise and the criticism is missing the point, however. Feingold has built his reputation on being an independent voice, and it’s given him credibility among a good number of Wisconsin voters. Inviting groups like the DSCC to come into the state and spend money isn’t just a matter of principles, but a matter of strategy, and the potential for it to backfire is real. In a year when Feingold’s Republican opponent Ron Johnson is doing everything to tie him to the Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda, Feingold might just be making the right call by telling the committees to keep their money.

Also known as the McCain-Feingold Act, BCRA placed tighter restrictions on the amounts of money the national political parties could raise and how it could be spent. According to an RNC press release, the lawsuits will allege the legislation infringes on the First Amendment rights of the parties to free political speech and association.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) today announced it will file lawsuits in the District of Columbia and Louisiana challenging, respectively, the constitutionality of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act’s ban on national parties raising and spending non-federal dollars, and the constitutionality of political party coordinated expenditure limits. The RNC does so to defend its interests as a national party committee with varied interests, including both state and federal elections, as well as redistricting and grassroots lobbying.

RNC Chairman Mike Duncan issued the following statement:

“The RNC must have the ability to support state candidates, coordinate expenditures with our candidates, and truly engage in political activity on a national level. The RNC has operated under and complied with these provisions of the law since their enactment, and as applied it is unconstitutional.”

Opposition to McCain-Feingold on First Amendment grounds has been a pet issue of conservatives ever since the law was enacted. The law survived a previous challenge in the 2003 Supreme Court case, McConnell v. Federal Election Commission.

The timing of the new lawsuits are instructive. McCain made his work on passing BCRA the centerpiece of his efforts to rebuild his career following his embarrassing implication in the Keating Five corruption scandal in the early 1990s. During the 2008 presidential campaign, McCain frequently referenced BCRA as evidence of his “maverick” qualities and his willingness to buck his own party.

The RNC may have been handcuffed from launching a legal challenge earlier to the act knowing that McCain harbored presidential ambitions. A lawsuit against his signature legislation, particularly if it was successful, could have severely damaged McCain’s prospects. Now that McCain is more or less resigned to finishing his career in the U.S. Senate, the party is freer to challenge the law without hurting its presidential candidate.

The drubbing Republicans took in both the House and Senate no doubt gave an added incentive to reverse the limits placed on the amount of money the party can contribute to individual candidates.

Adding insult to injury, a successful challenge to the legislation’s constitutionality could obviously have a significant impact on McCain’s legacy.