Cite as: 533 U. S. 431 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
form, 100 Colum. L. Rev. 620, 652 (2000) (describing "web of relations linking major donors, party committees, and elected officials").26
The Party's second preferred prescription for the threat of an end run calls for replacing limits on coordinated expenditures by parties with limits on contributions to parties, the latter supposedly imposing a lesser First Amendment burden. Brief for Respondent 46-48. The Party thus invokes the general rule that contribution limits take a lesser First Amendment toll, expenditure limits a greater one. That was one strand of the reasoning in Buckley itself, which rejected the argument that limitations on independent expenditures by individuals, groups, and candidates were justifiable in order to avoid circumvention of contribution limitations. 424 U. S., at 44. It was also one strand of the logic of the Colorado I principal opinion in rejecting the Party Expenditure Provision's application to independent party expenditures. 518 U. S., at 617.27
In each of those cases, however, the Court's reasoning contained another strand. The analysis ultimately turned on the understanding that the expenditures at issue were not potential alter egos for contributions, but were independent and therefore functionally true expenditures, qualifying for the most demanding First Amendment scrutiny employed in Buckley. Colorado I, supra, at 617; Buckley, supra, at 44-47. Thus, in Colorado I we could not assume, "absent
26 The Party's argument for relying on better earmarking enforcement, accepted by the dissent, post, at 481, would invite a corresponding attack on all contribution limits. As we said in Buckley, 424 U. S., at 27-28, and Shrink Missouri, 528 U. S., at 390, the policy supporting contribution limits is the same as for laws against bribery. But we do not throw out the contribution limits for unskillful tailoring; prohibitions on bribery, like the earmarking provision here, address only the "most blatant and specific" attempts at corruption, 424 U. S., at 28.
27 The dissent therefore suggests, post, at 482, and the District Court mistakenly concluded, see discussion n. 21, supra, that Colorado I disposed of the tailoring question for purposes of this case.
463
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