For Republicans nursing their wounds after decisive losses on Nov. 4, a nagging question complicates the larger debate over what's next: Where will the money come from?

Almost across the board, Democrats dramatically outraised Republicans in this election, which will end up costing a record $5.3 billion for federal contests, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics projects.

President-elect Barack Obama pulled in more than twice what GOP nominee John McCain did, thanks to Obama's knack for raising low-dollar Internet donations and his rejection of public funding. House and Senate Democratic candidates also outraised their GOP counterparts, and outside groups friendly to Democrats spent about 60 percent of the $200 million that came from so-called 527 groups, the center found.

Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that the Republican National Committee has set out to open some big new funding sources with a frontal assault on the 2002 law that banned "soft," unregulated money. The RNC has filed suit in the District of Columbia and in Louisiana, challenging the constitutionality of both the soft-money ban and of limits on how much parties may spend in coordination with their candidates.

RNC officials concede that relaxing the rules will help the party with pending redistricting battles and in gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia in 2009. "The chairman of the RNC should be able to raise campaign funds for our Republican gubernatorial candidates in compliance with the applicable laws of each state," wrote RNC chairman Mike Duncan in a recent Washington Times op-ed.

Republican attorney James Bopp Jr. may find it harder to convince the Supreme Court to relax campaign finance rules for parties than he did for outside groups.

Others put it more bluntly. "They're doing it because they need to," said Bradley A. Smith, a lawyer with Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, and former GOP chairman of the Federal Election Commission. "These laws are never neutral; they always favor some parties and not others. And in this case, the Republicans are seeing themselves in big trouble."

Democratic Party lawyer Bob Bauer, a partner with Perkins Coie who represented Obama on the campaign trail, concurred. "This lawsuit betrays a lack of Republican confidence that it can master the tools of small donor fundraising," Bauer wrote on his blog. "Fresh from the November defeat, it is reorganizing to raise huge 'soft money' sums that the law now disallows."

If successful, the challenges would roll back the soft-money ban enacted with the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, commonly known as the McCain-Feingold law. Before that law took effect, national party committees routinely spent millions in unlimited donations from corporations and labor unions -- money that federal officials helped raise.

"If both these suits are successful... we'll enter a whole new zone of deregulation," said Tara Malloy, associate counsel for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. The law's defenders argue that the Supreme Court has already ruled such restrictions constitutional, both in 2003, when it upheld the McCain-Feingold law in McConnell v. FEC [PDF], and in 2001, when it upheld coordinated spending limits in FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee.

Republican attorney James Bopp Jr., who filed the suits on behalf of the RNC, along with the California and Louisiana state party committees, countered that these are "as-applied" and not facial challenges. The high court upheld the soft-money ban "generally on its face," Bopp said. "And now what we want to raise is whether or not it can be constitutionally applied in instances where either the federal interest is completely absent... or very attenuated," such as the pending gubernatorial races.

Perhaps more to the point, the Supreme Court looks very different now than it did when it narrowly upheld McCain-Feingold six years ago. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who cast many a campaign finance swing vote, is gone, and two Bush appointees, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts, have signaled a willingness to revisit election laws with an eye to deregulation.

Some regard Bopp's latest challenge as the logical sequel to a methodical series of campaign finance tests he's brought before the Roberts court. Last year, in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life [PDF], the high court upheld Bopp's as-applied challenge to the McCain-Feingold law's ban on unregulated "issue" ads that picture or name a candidate on the eve of an election.

But Bopp may find it harder to convince the court to relax the rules for parties than he did for outside groups, election law experts say. Both in its landmark Buckley v. Valeo ruling, which upheld the post-Watergate contribution limits, and in McConnell v. FEC, the high court has acknowledged that the national political parties are, almost by definition, engaged in federal election activities, and that their close ties to federal officials create a special risk of corruption.

Whether or not the high court concurs with Bopp this time, or even takes up these cases, Republican officials are gambling on a dramatic reversal of the political money rules. Noted Michael J. Malbin, executive director of the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute: "This is a frontal challenge to a major provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act." For the GOP, it seems, desperate times call for desperate measures.