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Conservatives have come out, unsurprisingly, against lobbying reform. Their argument (other than "nothing to see here") is that lobbying reform is an impermissible burden on speech and therefore against the first amendment.
I've written on the topic before in regards to campaign finance reform and disclosure laws. In my article (see The Transparency Myth: A Conceptual Approach to Corruption and the Impact of Mandatory Disclosure Laws, 4 Conn Pub Int L J 308 - don't bother reading unless you're interested in the topic, as I'll explain the relevant pint here), I argue that corruption indeed exists, seperate from the theory of inequality.
Corruption, I define admittedly circularly, is the sum of behavior that cannot be defended through noncorrupt manners. Typically, nocorrupt manners is if the public official personally believes in the position (Burkean motivator) or if the public official's electorate supports the position (Public Choice motivator). Some believe that doing something "for the party" is also noncorrupt, but I think that's a pretty grey area.
I think after Abramoff, we can all agree that corruption exists. Corruption exists, as my article shows, both simply as a descriptive thing (a multitude of Congressional actions simply cannot be defended through noncorrupt manners), and through circumstantial evidence - we see large donations being used to sway votes, and now we see it also to line personal coffers.
Here's my question for conservatives. I agree that campaign finance reform and lobbying reform does "touch" on first amendment issues. I'm not saying your first amendment arguments are hocus pocus. I do, however, want you to make an assumption for me. Assume corruption exists, in the manner described above. Assume that legislators are doling out money for contributions and golf trips. Assume that this is bad for conservative government - this means larger governments, more anticompetitive regulation, higher taxes, more powerful unions, all that bad stuff.
Is there anything we can do about this? I'm not trying to bring out the "suicide pact" straw man, but the framers couldn't possibly have designed a Constitution giving people a Constitutional right to corrupt their legislators, and giving legislators a constitutional right to be corrupt.
In answering, I want you to assume for me that corruption has been a problem in government for several decades, and that a relatively free press and a (hypothetically) fully franchised electorate have not managed to vote them out, either in the gerrymandered House or the nongerrymandered Senate, except for occasionally the worst abuses, which have a negligent effect on disuading corruption.
I also want you to assume (for those more read up on the subject) that Perselley's theory of the competitive primary is false. It's a theory I adress in a footnote in my article, but for now simply the fact that corruption exists should show that the fact that incumbents are subject to "competitive primaries" protect us from corruption.