It took Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott months of slow, tortuous filibusters and poisonous amendments to kill campaign finance reform. If it is possible to admire a shameful act well done, House Speaker Newt Gingrich deserves grudging praise for burying it in a mere 40 minutes of parliamentary procedure.

Gingrich pulled his fast one late Monday night by bringing up a quartet of reform proposals, ranging from do-nothing to repugnant, under the suspension of rules provision. That meant each plan was subjected to thorough and open debate (provided it was kept under two-thirds of an hour), with no amendments allowed and with a two-thirds majority needed for passage. How clever to use a mechanism designed for the quick dispatch of non-controversial matters, such as a resolution boosting motherhood, for the disposal of a scandal.

And Mr. Speaker got away with it. Despite cries of shame, sham and charade from reformers on both sides of the aisle, Gingrich can claim he brought campaign finance reform to the floor. He can blame Democrats and few fuzzy thinkers in his own party for its defeat. He can count on voters in Georgia’s Sixth District (for him, the only voters that really count) to forget or to not care that the anti-worker, anti-immigrant, pro-big money package he put together never had a chance.

In the end, reformers were relegated to waggling their fingers and tsk-tsking. As the debate entered its closing minutes, those who wanted to do something resembling the right thing bargained for their precious 15 seconds at the podium so they could warn Gingrich and his gravediggers that the wrath of the electorate would be visited upon them. Their cynicism would come back to haunt.

Which will happen about the time Hades turns into a hockey rink. The specter of irate voters rising up to smite self-serving politicians is a will-o’-the wisp. It will remain a mirage, a trick of swamp gas and moonlight, as long as those who oppose good government with one hand can deliver the federal goodies to the home district with other.

More likely, what will happen is this: The electoral process will become corrrupted by money; politicians will become blatant in their pursuit of cash; voters will become apathetic; people of low moral character will be elected to high office. And democracy, now suffering from a nagging cough and persistent fever, will take to its sick bed. Perhaps Mr. Gingrich can preside over that interment as well.