Krauthammer's new opinion is that transparency in ballot initiatives is relatively unimportant:

In his conclusion, he seems to favor a future of secret campaign contributions:

If revealing your views opens you to the politics of personal destruction, then transparency, however valuable, must give way to the ultimate core political good, free expression. Our collective loss. Coupling unlimited donations and full disclosure was a reasonable way to reconcile the irreconcilables of campaign finance. Like so much else in our politics, however, it has been ruined by zealots.

Writing at The Washington Post, Paul Waldman argues that Krauthammer's column is a portent of things to come, predicting that the right will soon embrace anti-transparency:

Krauthammer’s column today will stand as a marker, a clarion call to conservatives that the new correct position is to be in favor of campaign finance secrecy (a place where many have already arrived). What we’re going to see in the coming months and years is a steady stream of advocacy against disclosure, in the statements of politicians, on the pages of newspapers and over the airwaves in conservative media, and eventually, in the form of a lawsuit from an aggrieved donor who will say he has been subject to retribution over his political contributions. Once you see a case being handled by James Bopp, the right’s most aggressive and successful campaign finance lawyer, you can bet it’s been carefully chosen to make it all the way up to the Supreme Court.

The Court’s eventual reaction to all this is hard to predict. On one hand, disclosure came up repeatedly in the recent decision in McCutcheon v. F.E.C., which eliminated the aggregate limit on campaign donations to candidates. Many (including me) read Chief Justice Roberts’ decision as a prelude to a future decision eliminating the $5,200 limit on contributions, with disclosure as the rationale. As long as we know who’s giving to whom, the Court might argue one day, we won’t have to worry about the corrupting influence of money because we’ll know which politicians are indebted to which billionaires and we can monitor their activities. And therefore, disclosure eliminates the need for any limit on campaign contributions.

On the other hand, once there’s an active Republican campaign in motion against disclosure, the five conservatives on the Court may begin to consider disclosure the greater evil. Or they could simply forget what they’ve argued up until now, and eliminate both contribution limits and the disclosure that might tell us where the money’s flowing from. Campaign finance would be run on the honor system, where nobody knows where the money’s going, and ordinary Americans are left to rely on the virtue and restraint of the wealthy and the politicians whose gratitude they purchase not to subvert the public good. If and when it happens, folks like Krauthammer will declare it a triumph of liberty.