The American Spectator

p> END OF THE ROAD br> Who’d have thought campaign finance reform would have created the odd bedfellows of Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell and the American Civil Liberties Union? But then campaign finance reform has made lots of strange bedfellows: former firebrand conservative John McCain and ultraliberal Tom Daschle , for example. Republicans on Capitol Hill are hoping that pair will be less visible when President George W. Bush signs the campaign finance bill that passed yesterday into law, which may come as soon as early next week, according to White House sources. /p>

Senate Republicans on the losing end of Wednesday’s 60-40 vote are also hoping that the Bush administration won’t rub it in their faces with a public signing. “Daschle and his ilk are asking for a Rose Garden signing ceremony,” says a White House congressional liaison staffer. “That’s something we’re trying to avoid.”

Instead, according to the legislative lobbyist, it’s been suggested that Bush quietly sign the bill in a low key Oval Office ceremony. “We know McConnell basically has the lawsuit ready to go to try to kill this thing,” says another White House policy staffer. “Let’s just sign it and get on with the next act.”

McConnell on Thursday is expected to introduce part of the legal team that has been at work for more than six months preparing legal arguments and strategies to block a campaign finance reform act.

The biggest loser in the campaign finance fight may not be Hill Republicans but relations between Senate Republicans and the White House. According to one Republican Senate leadership staffer, Minority Leader Trent Lott and McConnell had lined up a rock-solid 42 senators, enough to ensure that a planned GOP filibuster against the bill could not be blocked by Democrats.

But, says the leadership staffer, the White House had been so clear about its intentions to accept campaign finance reform, there was no point in putting up any further resistance. Throughout the Capitol on Wednesday, the drizzly weather outside mirrored the tempered moods of Senate Republicans indoors. “There was nothing to be done,” says another Senate staffer. “The White House made it clear that they wanted this thing on the President’s desk and that he would most likely sign it. What were we going to do?”