464
REPUBLICAN FEDERAL CAMPAIGN COMM. Opinion of the Court
convincing evidence to the contrary," that the Party's independent expenditures formed a link in a chain of corruption-by-conduit. 518 U. S., at 617. "The absence of prearrangement and coordination of an expenditure with the candidate or his agent not only undermines the value of the expenditure to the candidate, but also alleviates the danger that expenditures will be given as a quid pro quo for improper commitments from the candidate," Buckley, supra, at 47; therefore, "the constitutionally significant fact" in Colorado I was "the lack of coordination between the candidate and the source of the expenditure," 518 U. S., at 617.
Here, however, just the opposite is true. There is no significant functional difference between a party's coordinated expenditure and a direct party contribution to the candidate, and there is good reason to expect that a party's right of unlimited coordinated spending would attract increased contributions to parties to finance exactly that kind of spending.28 Coordinated expenditures of money donated to a party are tailor-made to undermine contribution limits. Therefore the choice here is not, as in Buckley and Colorado I, between a limit on pure contributions and pure expenditures.29 The choice is between limiting contributions and
28 The dissent notes a superficial tension between this analysis and our recent statement in Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U. S. 514 (2001), that "it would be quite remarkable to hold that speech by a law-abiding [entity] can be suppressed in order to deter conduct by a non-law-abiding third party," id., at 529-530. Unlike Bartnicki, there is no clear dichotomy here between law abider and lawbreaker. The problem of circumvention is a systemic one, accomplished only through complicity between donor and party.
29 Also, again, contrast Bartnicki, where the gulf between the First Amendment implications of two enforcement options was clear. We rejected the decision to penalize disclosure of lawfully obtained information of public interest instead of vigorously enforcing prohibitions on intercepting private conversations. Ibid.
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