Soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a plan for how to try to keep the Senate in Republican hands for perpetuity, or least after 2016: get all the money. It starts with the legislative rider he plans to attach to the upcoming, must-pass spending bill to
roll back campaign finance laws. That bill would make coordination between candidates and political party committees easier, but more to the point would massively increase the amount of money rich people could give directly to campaigns. To really capitalize on that potential rule change, McConnell is already
setting up the mechanism for this.
McConnell and his allies are quietly trying to engineer a bold plan that would enable party leaders to rely more on major contributions to independent groups while also removing restrictions on the ability of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and other party committees to interact with candidates.
The outside cash would be raised by a pair of linked groups—a super PAC and 501(c)4 nonprofit—that could accept unlimited cash to boost key GOP Senate candidates, according to sources familiar with the plan. The inside cash would flow to the NRSC, which could operate more freely under an election law change McConnell began pushing this week.
The two-pronged campaign finance initiative, coming only a month after the GOP’s midterm triumph, reflects McConnell's intense interest in the money side of politics and his desire to strengthen the hand of the Republican establishment against more ideologically rigid conservative outside groups. It also underscores the difficult plight facing Republicans in 2016, when the party must defend a whopping 24 seats to the Democrats’ 10.
Note that the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity somehow doesn't qualify as an "ideologically rigid conservative" outside group. They are the establishment now, which is only fitting since they pretty much own the Republican majority. Apparently the reasoning is that they can blunt the spending power of those outside groups with individual candidates by maximizing the money power of the likes of the Kochs.
All of this is apparently part of McConnell's efforts to erase the memory of the "worst day" in his "political life," the day President George W. Bush signed the McCain/Feingold campaign spending reform bill into law.