With all due respect DQ when the Democrats determine they want to put money into a particular race (be it House or Senate) do you think they are trying to buy it or because they are liberal like you you think they are doing a good thing?
if individuals or the dnc poured massive amounts of money in to any race, i would say yes, they were trying to buy, just like the conservatives are pouring massive amounts of money in to super pacs to defeat democratic candidates, especially obama
if money is raised (by either side) from contributions of many donors, that would be better
however, as we both know, there are big donors on both sides, just bigger donors on the repug side (like the koch brothers) who have poured millions in to the conservative super pacs
if you look at how much is raised by mittens and obama, it is about the same
it is the super pacs that are spending lots of money
and the conservative super pacs are out spending the liberal super pacs by a lot
also, some conservative candidates have a lot of money of their own to pour in to their campaigns
it was tried here in ca, but the effort failed...except for the anti-prop 8 which received a lot of out of state money from the mormons