Party Funding - the US Angle

Jack Straw has been looking across the Atlantic to see what inspiration he can draw from there about the funding of political parties. His impressions are negative: as he remarks, the American approach is skewed / formed (choose your verb according to taste) by the Supreme Court's tendency to see campaign spending rules as limits on Free Speech. An alternative view would be that this is unrealistic: such rules will only 'bite' on a few (very rich) people, and so their true effect is to level the playing field and allow more to join in. Discuss ....