Posted on 08/18/2005 11:10:46 PM PDT by Lando Lincoln
"At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades."
This is the opening sentence of a most interesting article written by reporter Thomas Edsall and published last week (August 7) in The Washington Post. The $80 or more million so raised in this effort will be channelled through something called the Democracy Alliance, the brainchild of Rob Stein, a Democratic party strategist and self described "venture capitalist" who has made a careful study of the conservative network of research institutes and advocacy groups. This network, in his opinion, has been greatly responsible for the success of Republican candidates and conservative initiatives in recent decades. He concludes that Democrats and liberals can be just as successful if they can only build a parallel network. The logic is sound, but the premise may be faulty: because the conservatives did it, it does not follow that the liberals can do it, too. But this objection is perhaps irrelevant right now.
The results of last year's election, and the continuing erosion of Democratic strength in the Congress and in many state governments around the country, has convinced Stein and these wealthy donors that the time has come to try something a little different -- and perhaps a little desperate. George Soros and friends spent as much as $100 million or more last year trying to defeat George Bush, but once the votes were counted, there was not much left to show for the expenditure of all that money. It now appears (according to the article) that two of the key Soros-funded groups -- the Media Fund and America Coming Together -- are in financial distress, and may not even survive much longer. Soros, however, has assumed only a "modest role" in the new Democracy Alliance.
Stein and his associates are fairly hard-headed in their assessment of the reasons behind the failure of Democrats and liberals to develop attractive ideas and proposals. Liberal groups, they say correctly, are organized mainly to protect an agenda that was enacted by Democratic majorities stretching back to the 1930s. They might have added that they are organized also around a few important Supreme Court decisions, primarily dealing with abortion and affirmative action. In any case, such a posture has made them reactive and reactionary rather than forward looking. As a consequence, they have not adjusted to new political and economic circumstances.
This is, as noted, correct as far as it goes, except that it does not go very far in diagnosing what ails the liberals. They should remember, as many Americans do, that liberals had an opportunity to enact their agenda in the 1960s and 1970s, and almost wrecked the nation in the process. It was conservatives and Republicans who rescued the economy, won the Cold War, and saved the cities from crime, stagnation, and welfarism. The liberals, because they controlled the television networks and the news media in general, along with the universities, concluded that they were in a position to dictate terms to their fellow citizens, and did not need to persuade anyone with facts, evidence, and argument. Thus the typical liberal approach to any situation was to issue demands or to file a lawsuit -- approaches that dispensed with the need to persuade anyone that their ideas were best for the nation. The rise of alternative television networks and newspapers has now rendered these tactics hopelessly ineffective. Now no one (except unfortunate college students) is required to pay any attention at all to the liberals. And most do not.
New thinking may be required, but there is precious little evidence in this article that such thinking is in fact underway. Mr. Stein and his colleagues have outlined a thoughtful strategy, but have not said what they seek to accomplish. They have presented a road map but have not identified any destination. Nor have they identified any dead ends that they will now abandon. They will find out soon enough that their main difficulty is not so much the absence of new ideas but the real presence of powerful constituent groups that refuse to adjust their goals or allow new groups to take their place.
Mr. Stein must be a very persuasive fellow to have convinced all these donors to ante up $1 million apiece for this initiative. It would be a most difficult task to emulate this achievement on the conservative side. Still, one has a sense that he has pulled a fast one on these wealthy liberals. He claims that conservative groups outspend progressive groups by some $295 million per year to just $75 million, a disparity that is not even remotely close to the real facts of the situation. For example, in a recent year the following liberal and progressive groups spent the following sums:
· The American Civil Liberties Union, $60 million;And this listing only scratches the surface, as it does not include such groups as the Urban League, the Sierra Club, National Organization for Women, National Abortion Rights Action League, Alliance for Justice, the Environmental Defense Fund, La Raza, and others too numerous to mention or even to count. Nor does it include the various university programs designed to propagandize in favor of the progressive agenda. By any reasonable measure, progressive groups outspend conservative groups on an annual basis by a factor of at least 10 to 1.
· The Urban Institute, $80 million;
· the Natural Resources Defense Council, $55 million;
· World Wildlife Fund, $118 million;
· the NAACP, $40 million.
Such facts will naturally cause liberals to wonder why so little has been achieved over the years by the expenditure of so much money. Conservatives might also feel a sense of alarm over such a disparity and also over the fact that so much new money is available to fund liberal initiatives. While conservatives may have more potent ideas and may spend their money more efficiently, they ought not to feel any sense of complacency. They, too, will have to continue their investment in ideas if they are to stay ahead in this intensely competitive game.
It would not, in fact, be all that difficult to tell the liberals what they need to do to regain the initiative in political debates and to regain a measure of popular support sufficient to win national elections. Such advice could be summarized in a few short paragraphs at a cost far less than $80 million. One might, indeed, be tempted to offer it for the good of the country. But on the other hand, maybe not.
i'm surprised someone mentioned foxnews and cspan together? Is cspan a right thing outlet? I've been watching it and its one of the most neutral sources out there
Where most of the money goes is to pay salaries for leftists who in turn treat their place as a sort of melding of high school, colleges and social clubs.
The left wasting/misspending money....shocking, eh??!!
Although the article doesn't directly say so, it is clear to me that Rob Stein is setting himself so that he and his circle of friends and relatives can assume high paying "management" positions in his newly created think tank, once they have assembled $80 million or so of the suckers, oops - I mean backers money.
A think tank is the perfect vehicle for a gravy train project because you can use the money to sub contract out to consultants the real work of preparing "studies" on various topics while Rob and friends float around to conventions and talk shows passing off the position papers as their own ideas and to maximize their face time on TV.
If this sounds far fetched, just look at what the Gloria Wise charity group was paying to that clutch of managers who defrauded it for Air America's advantage. They were pulling down salaries of between $150,000 and $250,000 of the taxpayers money for doing SFA and had been getting away with it for years and years.
An alternate spelling for think tank is, "gravy train".
If anyone wants a current example of what unopposed liberalism can do for a city, one only needs to look at Detroit. Liberalism does not work, and the examples abound for those not so emotionally attached to the ideas of liberalism that they have blinded themselves.
Besides, why do they want to put up even more think tanks? I thought the liberals already had a near monopoly on information dissemination. The minority of conservative voices out there must be quite effective, or these rich liberals wouldn't be trying to drown them out by increasing the volume of liberal same old, same old.
""At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades." "
Here, I can do it for free.
BRING FORTH POLICY THAT BENEFITS THE ENTIRE COUNTRY AND NOT JUST ABORTIONISTS AND GAY MARRIAGE ADVOCATES!!!!!
Now that should be worth at least a couple of mil. Cash please, unmarked bills in my Cayman Island account.
Yes. Cspan is like a pane of glass allowing the viewer to see Democrat politicians in all their glory on the House and Senate floors. How long could somebody watch that and still vote Democrat?
Hey, I'm going to the Caymans next month! I'll be glad to deposit it for you. ;)
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