Here’s another reason to think the 2012 campaign is underway with a vengeance: If a company wants a federal government contract, from now on it will first have to disclose if the company or its executives gave more than $5,000 in political donations.

This latest federal rule comes courtesy of a new executive order now being drafted in the White House. The order would implement parts of last year’s Disclose Act, which failed to pass Congress but was a favorite of Democrats because it would deter political contributions by business after last year’s Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision. White House press secretary Jay Carney confirmed last week that the order is in the works after former Federal Election Commission official Hans von Spakovsky obtained a copy of the draft.

The draft of the executive order describes the rule’s purpose as a way to ensure the federal contracting system is free from the influence of “political activity or political favoritism.” Hmmm. Last we checked, government contractors were already required to disclose contributions to candidates. The new twist here is the disclosure of donations to independent groups, a category in which conservatives outspent liberals for the first time in the last election cycle.

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And what do you know? The draft order doesn’t cover federal employee labor unions, the Democratic allies whose free speech rights were recognized alongside corporations in Citizens United. Nor do the disclosure requirements extend to recipients of federal grants, which often run into the millions of dollars. These donees are usually Democrats too.

Federal contracts are supposed to go to the lowest bidder, so it’s hard to see how disclosure of political contributions would help contract decisions. Mandatory disclosure would impose politics on federal procurement choices as never before.

Even GOP strongman Tom DeLay never tried this one during his K Street heyday, though you can imagine the howls if he had. The closest we can come to something comparable is former Nixon henchman John Dean’s memo during the Watergate era that the point of keeping an “enemies list” was to “determine what sorts of dealings these individuals have with the Federal Government and how we can best screw them (e.g., grant availability, federal contracts, litigation prosecution, etc.).”

These days the White House proxies on the political left will do the enemy listing. Disclosure may sound nice, but the real point is to put companies on notice that their political contributions will have, well, consequences. When the Disclose Act was before Congress, New York Democrat and co-sponsor Chuck Schumer made clear the bill was designed to “embarrass companies” out of exercising the rights recognized in Citizens United. “The deterrent effect should not be underestimated,” he said.

Exhibit A was last year’s campaign against Target Corp. When the retailer donated $150,000 to an independent group running ads in the Minnesota governor’s race, MoveOn.org smeared the company as antigay, threatened a boycott, and said Target needed to be made an example of or such donations could be “the tip of the iceberg.” Target stopped donating to that group.

The executive order is only the latest Democratic effort to intimidate business donors. Last month, the liberal Media Access Project asked the Federal Communications Commission to begin requiring groups that run political ads to disclose their major donors on the air, a wacky interpretation of the 1934 Communications Act. Last week, Maryland Democrat Chis van Hollen sued the FEC to demand donor disclosure.

The point of all this is to discourage political speech by certain speakers. Citizens United was a landmark victory for liberty because it blew a huge hole in the architecture of campaign finance limits that had increasingly restricted political speech. Having failed to overrule Citizens United in Congress, Democrats now want to do it via executive diktat. Remember when Barack Obama campaigned as a postpartisan who’d stop all that Washington nastiness?

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