Too bored to listen? You won't hear.

Allison Hayward, former Federal Elections Commission attorney, expresses her frustration at how little attention most conservatives are giving to the battle to defend free speech on the Internet among bloggers:

“Among the pundits who might respond there seems to be a fog of ennui on campaign-finance questions. It never fails to astound me how the same individuals who can master church-state law, Medicare, foreign affairs, and the death tax — sometimes in the same conversation — complain that campaign-finance issues are obscure, difficult, and . . . boring. Campaign-finance laws shape campaigns, and campaigns shape elections and our government. Government, perhaps unfortunately, shapes everything else. It makes a difference. We shouldn’t cede an important area of policy to those committed to greater restrictions and regulation. Especially where, as here, they can’t be trusted to make a straight argument.”

I’ve received many emails from highly educated and involved conservatives about my pieces on this battle. Aside from a very few, most don’t have a clue what’s going on. It’s too “complex”, “boring”, “off subject" from the trumpeted liberal outrage of the day.

If conservatives want to spend most of their time echoing each other’s current reflections on the “great issues”, and ignore the basic mechanics of democracy, then the time may come when they don’t even hear varying voices about the “great issues.”