What you are missing is that the people pushing regulations also want to prevent 5 guys spending their poker profits on political speech.<p>Some history: Back in 2000, a bunch of guys decided to use their money to run political commercials. These commercials persuaded people vote against McCain in the Republican primary. 2 years later, McCain pushes a law which tries to prevent this.<p>The goal of political speech limitations is to prevent anyone besides certain elites (and not other elites) from affecting an election. Since spending money is necessary to get a message out, they try to restrict spending money on political speech.