The liberals are in a lather over the latest ruling of the Supreme Court in respect of campaign financing. It came in a case called Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, in which the court struck down a law that required Arizona to as much as triple the financial support its already hard-put-upon taxpayers would have to provide to a publicly-financed candidate if his opponent used too much of his own money or raised too much from contributors. The idea of the law seemed to be to level the playing field. When the law was struck down, the liberal camp, which is notably hostile to the First Amendment being applied to campaign speech, flared. The New York Times called the ruling a setback for democracy that is “serious.”

Well, just as a thought experiment, imagine if the logic of a law of the type the Supreme Court just ruled unconstitutional had been applied to the campaign for same-gender marriage in New York. It’s not our purpose here to begin a long carp about the marriage law just passed in Albany. We think the entry of the billionaires into that fray was completely protected. But the liberal press is gushing over the effectiveness of the spending. “Money Was The Key Ingredient In New York’s Gay Marriage Bill,” is the way the headline read on the Huffington Post. How would the liberals have felt had there been a law in place requiring the taxpayers of New York to underwrite a campaign against the same-gender marriage law?

We understand that laws on election financing haven’t been extended to cover debates over pending legislation. But it would be the next logical step were the Supreme Court to vouchsafe the regulation of spending on elections the way the liberals want. We understand that government financing of lobbying campaigns has not been proposed the way government financing of elections has entered the law in a number of states and even, such as here in New York, a number of cities. But it would be the next logical step. The result is inevitably all sorts of hard-put-upon taxpayers being required to have their money taken from them and spent on all sorts of causes they oppose. It’s nice to have in place a Supreme Court majority that is alert to this danger.