New Politics Worse Than the Old Politics
As the great debates about government spending, health-care reform, financial regulation and tax relief have raged over the last two years, American liberals assumed the opposition would subside as voters were inculcated in the embrace of the nanny state. With this end not yet in sight and their congressional majorities imperiled, their traditional object of rage, George W. Bush, has yielded to a new target: nonprofit advocacy groups that are reshaping the political landscape across the country.
These liberals have focused on a coterie of groups that are active in campaigns this year such as Americans for Job Security, Crossroads GPS and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The first transgression of each organization is its outsized role in advertising efforts, usually in opposition to Democratic incumbents such as Sen. Harry Reid in Nevada, Patty Murray in Washington, and Colorado’s Michael Bennet. By organizing themselves as nonprofit or trade groups under the IRS code, the groups commit a second horror: the ability to spend their resources without disclosing the identity of their donors to the Federal Election Commission.
If there is an irony in liberal anguish, it is that liberals were the first to develop the organizational framework these conservative groups now use to their full advantage. Revealed first by the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes in July 2008 and then fully detailed in the book “The Blueprint,” the Colorado Model described an intertwined web of organizations, bankrolled by a handful of largely unknown but very wealthy donors, that employed aggressive tactics to discredit their opponents and put Democrats in control of the Colorado legislature.
Sound familiar?
Nonetheless, the counterattack has picked up steam in recent weeks. Americans for Job Security (AJS), organized as a trade group under section 501(c) 6 of the IRS code, was the subject of a much-noted expose in The New York Times on Sept. 23. The article described the organization as little more than a front for Republican operatives. AJS, along with another group that has been very active in the 2010 election cycle, Crossroads GPS, seemed to be the primary targets of a letter sent by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., to the Internal Revenue Service asking for an investigation into the political activities of such groups.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has found itself under fire in recent days, pushing back against the allegation that it spends foreign money on U.S. elections. Since the Website Think Progress, a media outlet of the liberal Center for American Progress, first posted its report Oct. 5 making the accusations, the attack has been picked up and repeated by, among others, President Obama. The New York Times reviewed the charge and disputed its accuracy.
These episodes reveal the liberal model for political activism has found its way into conservative circles, much to liberals’ chagrin.
The campaign-finance-reform measures of recent years sought to purify American politics by restricting the flow of money into the process. Instead, these reforms changed the way large, anonymous contributions made an impact on elections. Instead of going directly to candidates or political parties, they now go to generically named, obscure groups with no reputation to protect and zero accountability. How this new reality represents a significant improvement is a mystery.
Liberals adapted to this new financial playing field first and used it effectively to subdue their opposition in recent elections. With conservatives catching up and liberals now on the receiving end of their own tactics, the comeuppance seems hard to bear.
This article was originally published in the Waterbury Republican-American on Sunday, October 24, 2010
