Transcript: Face to Face with Ed Gillespie

Bob Schieffer: This is FACE to FACE, our midweek web edition from the folks at "Face the Nation" and we're with Ed Gillespie now a long time operative in Republican politics, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. How's your sense of how things are going now?

Ed Gillespie: Oh I think this is a very vigorous fight obviously for our party's domination I think that's a good thing for the Republican party I think, you know, anyone who's been watching these debates know that whomever emerges as the nominee will be a tested candidate. We saw that in, in 2008, on the Democratic side, you know either, you know now President Obama now Secretary Clinton when they went through that tough process they came out stronger on the back end that's going to be the case here. But it's pretty wide open and that's exciting.

Bob Schieffer: I want to talk to you about something we haven't seen in previous campaigns and that is these Super PACs these organizations that anonymous donors can put literally millions of dollars into these things, nobody knows where the money came from, are they having an impact?

Ed Gillespie: Oh they are having an impact, and this is a byproduct of the bipartisan campaign finance reform act, the McCain-Feingold bill. When I was chairman of the Republican National Committee I warned of this, I said you know, if this bill is enacted you're going to see these outside groups are going to have greater influence in the process, the national parties are going to have less influence in the process. And that's what we're seeing now, this is a predictable and natural outgrowth of the bill.

Bob Schieffer: But this all, the floodgates really opened when the Supreme Court ruled that you could do this.

Ed Gillespie: Right, but the Supreme Court ruled on what was going on, they validated what was going on, which was, you know, people interpreted the law to say that this allows for outside groups, third parties to engage in direction electioneering--that was challenged and the Court upheld it. You know, that has resulted in a proliferation of these third party 527s or Super PACs, and you know, look I think the parties should be stronger. I actually think we benefit from a stronger national republican party, a stronger national democratic party than the outside groups. But, that's the law of the land and for too long conservatives were out of that game and the labor unions and the liberal groups, moveon.org, and moving America forward, George Soros were pretty influential in the process and things have evened up a little bit more over the past cycle.

Bob Scieffer: So what would, if you could do whatever you wanted to about these things what would you do?

Ed Gillespie: I would actually prefer to see us have a system where you know, you have greater transparency at the national parties, the national parties should be allowed to take as they once did, non-federal dollars. I was the first party chairman who wasn't allowed to take non-federal dollars and it federalized the committee so that the RNC and the DNC can really only be involved in federal campaigns. We can't really get involved in governors races or attorneys general or state house and senate candidates. I think that's bad for the party and I think that if you had a system where the parties were able to take non-federal dollars, have transparency and disclosure that would be a good thing. But, the truth is Bob that's what we had and that's what got changed and now we have this. So it's hard to envision it getting change back.

Bob Schieffer: Do you think there's a way to write a law to do what you would like to do?

Ed Gillespie: Uh, I don't know if there's a way to pass a law to do what I would like to do, and you know, the fact is that, you know, every campaign finance reform bill was an excuse for the next campaign finance reform bill because they generally don't work how people theorize they would. And that's because, you know, thank God we live in a free country and people are able to participate in the political process and a lot of times these campaign finance reform bills are really just ways to try to clamp down and deny people opportunity to participate; masquerading as reform and they're incumbent protection bills is what they really are. So you know, given that we just went through a campaign finance reform bill not too long ago, hard pressed to see it happening any time soon again.

Bob Schieffer: You think this campaign now is going to go for a while?

Ed Gillespie: I've always felt it was, you know I think I said on the show that, you know, because of the change in the process, the proportional delegate allocation which we've never had before, on the Republican side. It's more like a democratic primary than Republican primaries of the past. The calendar itself, we're going to go into a lull here in February in terms of primaries and caucuses. So I always felt that it was going to be late spring before we would actually know who our nominee is. And, again I think that's good for us. I think the more that our candidates are out there, more states getting people involved, registering voters, having these debates, highlighting their concerns about Obama's policies is a good thing for us.

Bob Schieffer: Alright, Ed Gillespie thank you very much. This is FACE TO FACE and don't forget to watch FACE THE NATION on television, Sunday.