President Bush’s campaign is vowing to go to the Federal Election Commission to block a multimillion dollar splurge on anti-Bush election advertisements being aired by a group partly financed by the left-wing billionaire Geo. Soros. The Associated Press is quoting the Bush campaign as saying it would file a complaint with the FEC accusing the Media Fund of violating the broad new ban on the use of “soft money,”which is corporate, union, and unlimited contributions, for federal election activity. “This is the blatant soft-money circumvention of the recently passed campaign finance laws that all the Democrats, from Senator Kerry and Senator Daschle to Nancy Pelosi, were so sanctimonious about,” the AP quoted the general counsel of the Bush-Cheney campaign, Thos. Josefiak, as saying.”It is an attempt to blow up the ban on the newly passed campaign finance reform bill to use soft money to win a federal election.”

We suppose this is the least the president can do, given that he signed the law that bans soft-money contributions. He is certainly being cheered on by the liberal camp, which fears what the New York Times described as “large, unregulated and political destructive donations from unions, corporations and individuals.” The liberal camp has yet to challenge Mr. Kerry personally in respect of this matter, even though the senator’s campaign is effectively cheering on the soft-money crowd to a degree that may yet be found to be coordination. But this newspaper, for one, will stand with the plain language of the First Amendment. The big soft-money operators are totally within their rights under the protections of free speech, association, petition, religion, and press. And even when they exaggerate the case against Mr. Bush, they energize the debate in this country.

The right way to confront the millions of soft-money dollars the Bush-haters are investing in the election is the approach being taken by such conservative groups as Citizens United. The AP reports it is using soft-money to fund an ad running in several states, poking fun at the efforts of Mr. Kerry — who spends $75 a haircut, wears designer shirts that cost $250, boasts a $1 million yacht, and $30 million homes. The ad calls the senator a “rich, liberal elitist from Massachusetts who claims he’s a man of the people.” And it dubs such a claim “priceless.” The better way for Mr. Bush to fight this war would be to use his enormous fund-raising abilities to bring in money for entities to shadow the Republican campaign with this kind of support. Harold Ickes, the left-wing lawyer who formerly worked for President Clinton and now heads a group called the Media Fund that is buying airtime against Mr. Bush, is quoted by the Times as making the essential point about this exercise in political free speech.”It will really be,”he said,”a function of money.”