Much of the information about Bopp’s conservative agenda is fairly well-trodden ground. Indeed, the report highlights a number of quotes — e.g., “We had a 10-year plan to take all this down. If we do it right, I think we can pretty well dismantle the entire regulatory regime that is called campaign finance law. … We have been awfully successful and we are not done yet.” — that Bopp freely supplied to The New York Times, so it’s not as if the man is hiding anything about his plans.

They key to its defeat were three Republican senators – Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, and Scott Brown of Massachusetts — who say they support reform and disclosure in principle but objected to particular aspects of the bill.

One of their objections, that the bill would alter the playing field for November’s midterm elections, is now irrelevant since it’s too late for changes in the law to affect this campaign.

The threesome raised other issues, including supposed imbalances in the way corporations and labor unions are treated under the measure. But [Sen. Charles] Schumer [D-N.Y] has signaled he would be happy to negotiate, and the simplest solution may be a clean disclosure bill that would strip out some of the provisions that the three Republicans don’t like.

Dionne’s claims are generally true, if somewhat imprecise. The bill, as I pointed out previously, says that disclosure requirements would go into effect 30 days after its passage, so a swift enactment in the Senate actually could still impact the tail-end of this election cycle. That said, Schumer has made multiple amendments to the bill in order to please moderate senators with an stated interest in disclosure like Snowe and Collins, and he has repeatedly asked them to bring him further concerns so that a compromise can be reached. Extending the amount of days until the regulations are enacted, for instance, doesn’t seem out of the question.

One change that does seem unlikely, however, is getting rid of the carve-out that was inserted in the House for longstanding nonprofits with large memberships across fifty states like the National Rifle Association. Insiders say it was necessary to gain enough support from moderate House Dems, so it seems like removing that language from the Senate bill would just shift the political hot potato back to the other chamber.

Snowe, Collins, and Brown, meanwhile, are caught between something of a rock and hard place:

If Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has a central cause, it is the principle that money should slosh around freely in our political system. If the members of the threesome vote for disclosure, they will infuriate McConnell. But if they side with McConnell, they’ll be tossing away their reformist credentials.

The three senators really do believe (or at least want us to think they really do believe) in transparency and disclosure in election spending. The issue is a political winner among most Americans and it jives with their New England Republican sensibilities. If they get too much counter-pressure from McConnell and the rest of the GOP, however, they seem more interested in hammering on the small aspects of the measure they dislike from afar than negotiating with Schumer to pass it.

– Chamber of Commerce has pledged to spend $75 million
– American Crossroads has pledged to spend $52 million
– Americans for Prosperity has pledged to spend $45 million
– Republican State Leadership Committee has pledged to spend $40 million
– American Action Network has pledged to spend $25 million
– American Future Fund has pledged to spend up to $25 million
– Club for Growth has pledged to spend at least $24 million
– National Republican Trust PAC has pledged to spend at least $20 million
– An unnamed health insurance industry coalition has pledged to spend $20 million
– National Rifle Association has pledged to spend $20 million
– Faith and Freedom Coalition has pledged to spend $11 million
– FreedomWorks has pledged to spend $10 million
– Americans for Job Security has pledged to spend $10 million
– Susan B. Anthony List has pledged to spend $6 million
– Our Country Deserves Better (Tea Party Express) has already spent $5 million
– Tax Relief Coalition has already spent $4 million
– Republican Majority Campaign has pledged to spend $3 million
– Campaign for Working Families has pledged to spend $2 million
– Heritage Action for America has pledged to spend $1 million
– Financial Services Roundtable has already spent $0.5 million
– Family Research Council has raised $0.5 million
– Citizens United Political Victory Fund has pledged to spend $0.2 million

TOTAL: $399.2 million

Again, these numbers, while staggering, represent what these groups say they will spend, rather than what they have or necessarily will end up doing. There’s an interesting irony here in that both the conservative groups in question and left-wing blogs like Think Progress have an interest in touting these numbers. The groups’ spokesmen brag about them as a means of signaling strength and popular momentum being on their side, while liberals view them as further evidence that conservative special interests are buying the election.

There’s clearly some merit to both claims, but a lot hinges upon the profile of the average individual donor. With caps on individual and corporate donations to independent political expenditures lifted by the Supreme Court, and no DISCLOSE Act to get a sense of most groups’ major donors, however, suspicions abound that wealthy individuals play an outsize role in funding a majority of these groups.

As always, the usual GOP suspects are being singled out in hopes that they’ll lend the single vote necessary to invoke cloture, but this time advocates say they have an additional card to play:

Senate Dems and their reform-advocate allies are targeting Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA),Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME), all of whom voted against cloture last month. The 3 GOPers said the bill was rushed in an attempt to influence the ’10 midterms on Dems’ behalf.

Now, though, reform advocates believe they have removed that most significant objection all 3 GOPers had. If the measure is passed in late Sept. or early Oct., it would not go into effect until after the midterms.

The negotiation that we hope will be able to break the filibuster is the mere fact that this will no longer apply to the 2010 elections,” said Craig Holman, a top lobbyist at Public Citizen, which backs the bill. “It will only apply to 2012 and beyond, and we hope that will be enough to make Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Scott Brown vote to end the filibuster.”

While it’s true that Sens. Brown, Snowe, and Collins all bemoaned the rushed nature of the process towards a vote in July and accused Democrats of trying to tilt the playing field before the 2010 elections, taking 2010 out of the picture won’t necessarily make them into willing converts.

They still have pressure from GOP leadership to contend with and the bill’s carve outs for large nonprofit groups like the National Rifle Association that they can point to if they want to find additional reasons not to like DISCLOSE. The one thing that might actually convince Brown or one of the Maine senators to vote for the bill, however, is if they determine it’ll simply be too politically costly back in their home states to keep coming out on the other side of the politically popular idea of disclosure.

In a bill that was supposed to be about disclosure, there was no need to prohibit independent expenditures by some government contractors, or recipients of Troubled Asset Relief Program funds, or oil drillers. The House inserted an especially distasteful provision that exempted the National Rifle Association from disclosure requirements.

There may very well be good reasons why some government contractors or recipients of TARP funds should be prohibited from making independent political expenditures — recipients of government money might be encouraged to spend it in political ways to influence the continuation of that gravy train. (When it comes to exempting large organizations like the NRA from disclosure, I can’t think of any good reasons.)

The Times is right, however, in pointing out that these measures gave Republicans additional excuses to vote against cloture. It will be interesting to see whether Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) take the Times’ advice and introduce a paired down version of the bill in September, or whether they introduce the same measure and dare Republicans to keep opposing it.

Today, however, Brown told the groups they shouldn’t count on his support:

No matter how one feels about McCain-Feingold, at least that was an honest attempt to reform campaign finance laws that would not have gone into effect until after the next election cycle. The DISCLOSE Act does the opposite – it changes the rules in the middle of the game to provide a tactical advantage to the majority party.

Brown goes on to argue that the bill provides special treatment to labor unions and some large nonprofits, despite their political nature. He is right to point out that the DISCLOSE Act was subject to some shady carve-outs, most notably at the hands of the National Rifle Association, in order to pass the House.

His claim that because it “changes the rules in the middle of the game,” DISCLOSE is a partisan bill designed to provide a tactical advantage to Democrats seems less persuasive. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling also changed the rules of the game in this election cycle, and the DISCLOSE Act was designed to counteract some of the outsize influence that third-party advocacy groups now plan to wield in the run-up to November.

In the heath care debate, the NRA successfully lobbied to ban insurance companies from charging higher premiums to people who keep guns in their homes, despite the obvious, um, health risks. In the campaign finance debate, the NRA successfully bore a loophole so wide in the DISCLOSE Act (a measure passed by the House intended to force groups active in political spending to disclose their financial donors) that it exempted many large nonprofit organizations, including the NRA. And in the financial reform debate, the NRA successfully tacked on some language to a bill restricting credit card lenders that allowed people to carry loaded guns in national parks.

The list goes on. The reason for the group’s bullishness, according to the Times, has to do with the courts:

The N.R.A.’s expanding portfolio is an outgrowth of its success in the courts, Congressional officials and political analysts said. With the Supreme Court ruling last month for the second time since 2008 that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to have a gun, the N.R.A. now finds that its defining battle is a matter of settled law, and it has the resources to expand into other areas.

When the N.R.A. had a narrower range of targets, it relied on a core group of political figures and met with stiffer resistance from vocal gun control advocates in Congress and outside groups. It now has freer rein to leave its mark politically on issues that once seemed out of its reach.

Politico also had a story yesterday that argues that right-wing groups are almost as angry at the NRA as left-wing gun control advocates. It claims conservatives are fuming over the NRA’s consideration of an endorsement of the gun-friendly Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, and for agreeing “to play ball” with Democrats on campaign finance legislation. On the whole, however, I’d say gun control advocates are still winning in the “reasons to be angry” competition.

Last week, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal signed a bill allowing gun owners in his state to carry firearms into houses of worship. Just days earlier, the Supreme Court extended federal gun rights provisions to city and state governments. And last summer, Arizona legislators voted to allow handguns in bars and President Obama signed a bill permitting firearms in national parks.

[Congress1] Despite fears on the right that Obama would trample the Second Amendment and take people’s guns, his presidency has so far been marked by a string of pro-gun victories and a reinvigorated gun advocacy movement — the result of a Democratic leadership that has proven unwilling to take on powerful firearm interests.

“It’s been very clear that there’s a solid pro-gun, pro-NRA majority on the floor of Congress, and you can’t do anything against it,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a gun control advocate who has received an “F” grade from the National Rifle Association, told TWI. “And that’s the entire Republican Party and a fraction of the Democratic Party, which is a majority.”

The proliferation of pro-gun measures under President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress reflects the party’s learned reticence on the issue. Democrats remain haunted by memories of 1994, when gun control advocacy by President Bill Clinton led the pro-gun lobby to wage fierce campaigns that ousted several lawmakers aligned with the cause.

“Democrats learned a substantial lesson in 1994, and no anti-gun measures are ever going to come forth in this Congress,” said Don Kates, a lawyer and criminal law expert at the Pacific Research Institute.

The NRA, the leading gun rights group and one of Washington’s most formidable lobbies, has forcefully staked out its territory in Congress. Last month, Democrats, fearing an NRA backlash on a campaign finance measure, carved out what was widely considered a special exemption for the group. Subsequently, the NRA dropped its opposition, and the measure passed the House.

“Some people are so terrified of the NRA vote score that they’ll vote for anything the NRA says to vote for and against anything they say to vote against,” Nadler said. “It’s unfortunate in the extreme.”

In the last 20 years, the NRA and other pro-gun groups have outspent gun-control advocates by over 20-to-1 on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Some gun control advocates expected more from this president. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama threw his weight behind various regulatory measures. He backed a ban on semiautomatic assault weapons and voted to limit handgun purchases to one a month per person.

But Obama notably distanced himself from the cause during the 2008 election, proclaiming his commitment to the gun rights. “I believe in the Second Amendment,” he said. “I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away.”

One year into his presidency, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence gave Obama an “F” across the board on gun control issues. The Chicago Tribune joked the following month that “[o]n the list of issues for which Obama is willing to put himself on the line, gun control ranks somewhere below free trade with Uzbekistan.”

As a result, gun rights advocates remain about as unimpeded in their cause today as during the Bush administration.

“The political climate hasn’t changed a lot,” said Ladd Everitt, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “If you look back at when Republicans had control of government before 2006, you pretty much saw the same picture.”

“We were hoping for Obama to take a more forceful position in terms of gun violence prevention,” Everitt added, positing that Democrats have backed away due to pressure from the NRA, conservatives in the party, the disproportionate number of single-issue gun voters and the force of industry behind the gun rights cause.

“Gun rights organizations like the NRA saw President Obama’s history as being one of anti-gun owners’ rights,” said Bob Cottrol, a constitutional lawyer and gun law expert at George Washington University, “though that hasn’t been the case so far in his presidency.” But that perception, he said, led to an early and ongoing backlash among passionate gun owners that has furthered the pro-gun cause under Obama.

Kates put it more succinctly: “Historically, Democrats being in power has been a godsend for the finances of pro-gun groups.”

But according to David Kopel, a Second Amendment expert at New York University and gun rights advocate, Obama is subtly doing more to stem the gun movement than Bush. Kopel points out that Bush’s Supreme Court appointees, Samuel Alito and John Roberts, have been more pro-gun than Obama’s appointee Sonia Sotomayor, who voted on the losing side of the recent 5-4 McDonnell v. Chicago case, which limited the types of gun control regulations cities and states can adopt.

“Sotomayor said she considered [the 2008] Heller [ruling] to be settled law, that she knew how important the individual right to arms was, and then less than a year later she turned around and joined an opinion that said Heller should be overturned,” Kopel said.

But the replacements of two left-leaning justices with two other left-leaning justices — Sotomayor and, if confirmed, Elena Kagan — represents more of a status-quo perpetuation than a victory for gun control advocates.

Obama’s reluctance to take up gun control as president, after aligning himself with it for most of his career, signals an increasingly toxic national political climate for the cause and reflects the Democratic Party’s shift.

“I’d say President Obama has been politically astute in not following the Bill Clinton policy of trying to make gun control a top-three national issue,” Kopel said.

Added Kates of the Pacific Research Institute: “Generally speaking, gun control advocates have other ambitions, other objectives, and for now they’re willing to drop their anti-gun concerns in exchange for not being defeated in other matters.”

It seems the NRA is satisfied — here’s a statement it just sent out:

STATEMENT FROM THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION ON H.R. 5175, THE DISCLOSE ACT

The National Rifle Association believes that any restrictions on the political speech of Americans are unconstitutional.

In the past, through the courts and in Congress, the NRA has opposed any effort to restrict the rights of its four million members to speak and have their voices heard on behalf of gun owners nationwide.

The NRA’s opposition to restrictions on political speech includes its May 26, 2010 letter to Members of Congress expressing strong concerns about H.R. 5175, the DISCLOSE Act. As it stood at the time of that letter, the measure would have undermined or obliterated virtually all of the NRA’s right to free political speech and, therefore, jeopardized the Second Amendment rights of every law-abiding American.

The most potent defense of the Second Amendment requires the most adamant exercise of the First Amendment. The NRA stands absolutely obligated to its members to ensure maximum access to the First Amendment, in order to protect and preserve the freedom of the Second Amendment.

The NRA must preserve its ability to speak. It cannot risk a strategy that would deny its rights, for the Second Amendment cannot be defended without them.

Thus, the NRA’s first obligation must be to its members and to its most ardent defense of firearms freedom for America’s lawful gun owners.

On June 14, 2010, Democratic leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives pledged that H.R. 5175 would be amended to exempt groups like the NRA, that meet certain criteria, from its onerous restrictions on political speech. As a result, and as long as that remains the case, the NRA will not be involved in final consideration of the House bill.

The NRA cannot defend the Second Amendment from the attacks we face in the local, state, federal, international and judicial arenas without the ability to speak.  We will not allow ourselves to be silenced while the national news media, politicians and others are allowed to attack us freely.

The NRA will continue to fight for its right to speak out in defense of the Second Amendment. Any efforts to silence the political speech of NRA members will, as has been the case in the past, be met with strong opposition.

“The NRA will not be involved in final consideration of the House bill,” it can be inferred, is the organization’s way of saying that it won’t unleash its war chest and lobbying force against the bill as long as it remains exempt from the disclosure provision.

Well, it seems the NRA has gotten its way:

House Democrats have reached an agreement with the National Rifle Association on campaign-finance legislation that would roll back the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, removing a major obstacle to the bill, according to House sources.

The deal would exempt the NRA and some other large organizations from strict campaign finance disclosures in the bill, which is being pushed by Democratic leaders in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case. The NRA had objected to some of the disclosure requirements for the new campaign finance proposals, and that had kept moderate, pro-gun Democrats from backing the legislation.