Fundamental to conservatism.
Is the tenet, "When laws can be used to plunder, then plunderers will make the laws."
To conservatives, money equals free speech. Anything which inhibits the influence of money is a threat. And it's always cloaked as "a threat to democracy", as if democracy is money, not people.
(There's nothing mysterious about this, and I'll bet those pretzels will find a way to deny it.)
And it works for them. Bush is calling in chits like mad, more for sale than Clinton. That puts him a bit lower on the political sleaze scale, and who would have thought that possible?
Arf