Members use them as slush funds. You just don't have to do this to raise money.

seriously undermine the effort to close the soft-money loophole for 527 groups which resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in unlimited soft money being spent to influence the 2004 federal elections.

To effectively address the scandals in Washington, which revolve around the multiple ways lobbyists use money to buy influence, Congress must reform the lobbying, campaign finance and ethics rules, and create new means for enforcing these rules.

[Fred Wertheimer, a longtime advocate for campaign finance reform, called DeLay] the king of a Washington-lobbyist, influence-money approach for governing America. ... pay-to-play philosophy.

The battle goes on. There's a very powerful case to establish that these ads were about defeating Sen. Feingold, not lobbying him.

They took an already unacceptable bill and turned it into a charade.