As I walked down the corridors of the Ralph Owen Brewster Hospice for Decaying Political Ideals, there were no indications of despair, pain or misery. Perhaps that’s because the management keeps the lights really low and pumps heavy metal music at ear-bleed volume through the sound system.

This facility is aptly named for the former Maine governor and U.S. senator, who began his rise to power with the support of the Ku Klux Klan and ended it as a bag man for Richard Nixon. In memory of Brewster, compassionate admirers such as shady developers, sleazy consultants and party hacks raised funds to construct a place where weary concepts that are running out of time and integrity can spend their last days in semi-gloom while being forced to listen to the complete works of Anthrax, Ozzy Osbourne and Motorhead.

Through partially open doors, I glimpsed some familiar faces.

The Maine Green Independent Party was in the homeopathic ward getting a transfusion. I checked the stuff they were pumping in. The label said “Fertilizer,” but the attendant assured me it was organic. “It won’t be long before Greenie is up and around and once again getting less than 5 percent of the vote,” he said. But he didn’t sound like he believed it.

In another wing, I spotted what was left of Dennis Bailey’s antigambling group Casinos NO! A worried looking doctor stood by its bed staring at a chart that showed a racino being approved in Biddeford, another in Washington County, as well as casinos in Lewiston, Bangor and maybe even Oxford County. “I wouldn’t bet on my patient making it through November,” the sawbones said.

In the ward for charity cases, I saw beds holding all that was left of the Maine Democratic Party, Rosa Scarcelli’s political future, Republican hopes of winning the 1st Congressional District, and the reputations of former LePage cabinet members Philip Congdon and Norman Olsen. I learned I’d just missed the hearse picking up the remains of Scott D’Amboise’s senatorial hopes, and that GOP state chairman Charlie Webster’s credibility had been transferred to the psychiatric floor.

That was all right, because I hadn’t come to visit them. I was there to pay whatever respects I could muster to that last gasp of liberal idealism, the Maine Clean Election Act.

On July 20, that law was involved in a tragic collision with the U.S. Constitution, when a federal judge slammed headfirst into the provision that provides publicly funded candidates with matching money if they’re outspent by a privately financed opponent. Medical experts were called in and concluded they’d have to amputate that section, but were uncertain the patient would survive the procedure. “It’s like cutting off both legs, one arm, a lung, the spleen, the pancreas, six ribs, a kidney, an eye, an ear and a nostril,” said one physician. “What’s left isn’t going to amount to much.

“Although,” she added as a Nazareth track replaced the Uriah Heep blaring from the ceiling speakers, “in this place, losing an ear or two might not be so bad.”

The judge in the Maine case was just following in the skid marks of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in June that Arizona’s campaign finance law violated the First Amendment because it penalized candidates who did not participate, but managed to raise lots of money from other sources. Once the amount the privately funded office seeker collected exceeded what the “clean” candidate received, the law automatically authorized additional public money, thereby leveling the playing field. The courts said that’s not the government’s job.

Supporters of public funding rushed to the scene with sirens screaming. Or that could have been a Judas Priest CD. Hard to tell the difference. In any case, they insisted the law could be saved, possibly by replacing the severed pieces with a new provision that allows Clean Election candidates who are outspent to accept private donations.

That solution raises the dread prospect of infection. If “clean” candidates are allowed to solicit funds from special interests, corporations and political action committees, wouldn’t they catch the same chronic diseases of pandering and beholdenness that public-financing advocates have accused “dirty” politicians of harboring?

The only difference would be that “dirty” pols would be costing taxpayers a lot less money than “clean” ones.

Given this unsettling prospect, it seems reasonable to do the compassionate thing. No more cutting and grafting. No more bandages and stitches. No more respirators and feeding tubes.

Instead, a comfortable bed. A caring nurse. Headphones set to max so the AC/DC tracks will penetrate that haze from the sedatives. And plenty of time to plan the funeral before the 2012 elections.

Rest in peace, Clean Election Act. It’ll probably be quieter in political hell than in this place, because I understand the devil prefers easy listening.

Don’t have a Quiet Riot. Email me at aldiamon@herniahill.net, and tell me what’s twisted your shorts. Or your sister.