The Brennan Center for Justice, formed by former law clerks to U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, has issued a policy statement that argues that political parties are valuable and to some extent have been over-regulated, especially in campaign finance law. Here is the link to a description of the paper. This is an important development. In the past the Brennan Center has been aligned with groups which fiercely favor restricting limits on donations to political parties, and also fiercely favor restricting political parties from spending money on their own candidates.

Congress has attached an amendment to the cromnibus spending bill that would ease restrictions on party assistance to their own candidates.