“Democratic donors have built a formidable dark money network to obscure the source of more than $600 million funneled to liberal groups and initiatives last year, tax forms show,” The Washington Free Beacon reports. “The establishment of the complex network of nonprofits marks the Democrats’ adoption of a once-derided Republican strategy: building a massive funding network that provides donors anonymity.”

It’s not just that Democrats are adopting a Republican strategy; it’s that they have mastered it. Democrats created the current campaign-finance system that limits contributions directly to political candidates, thus favoring their special-interest groups who raise millions for their political objectives. They may claim to hate the influence of political action committees and the like, but they created the “monster.” After all, money is like water — it will find all the cracks.

Democrats pontificate about “getting money out of politics,” as if that will make their cause pure as the wind-driven snow. But money also is effectively political speech itself. The First Amendment was crafted to protect political speech from congressional interference. Thus, we believe some campaign-finance restrictions run afoul of the First Amendment — particularly those that flood the political landscape with an endless flow of “anonymous” cash.

However, we believe that political donations should not allow a small group of wealthy leftists, such as George Soros, Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, and Jeff Bezos, to dictate politics and policy for the whole nation. That is why there are and should be limits on contributions to individual candidates — that evens the playing field so that more voices can be heard, much as the Electoral College does not allow a few large states to dictate policy for the nation. But Democrats don’t want a level playing field, not in electoral donations or the Electoral College.

Of course, Democrats head to the fainting couch whenever the name of a wealthy Republican donor is mentioned, but they have no problem accepting hundreds of millions of dollars each year from leftist billionaires. Of such hypocrisy I have observed, “If not for double standards, Democrat politicians would have no standards.”

On a final note, in an age when leftists sic the wrath of the mob on conservatives who fund what is good and right, it’s understandable why some would desire anonymity. (See Chic-fil-A.) And the word “dark” implies something sinister — when the purpose of this leftist graft is to foist socialism on the American people, it doesn’t get any more sinister.

(Updated.)