I’ve written before about how the US is being impelled towards a one-party state through the establishment of a vast right-wing apparat of economically linked, ideologically focussed think tanks, foundations, and media organizations. I thus reacted with amusement when I learned that the Republican Party is suing some relatively tiny, loosely coordinated generally Internet-based advocacy groups (such as MoveOn.org) for threatening to run anti-Bush adverts during the upcoming election. Pot, meet much much much tinier kettle.
[There are] at least 350 tax-exempt, ostensibly non-partisan organizations within the right-wing’s activist front, many operating at regional, state, and local levels. They have penetrated the three branches of the federal government, and dominate the political debate … Two of these organizations housed the planners who invented the Iraq war … since the early 1970s at least $2.5 to $3 billion in funding has been awarded to the 43 major activist organizations … that constitute the core of the radical machine … the big 43 [are] the “cohort” — an “incubator of right-wing, ideological policies that constitute the administration’s agenda, and, to the extent that it has one, runs its policy machinery.” … “a potent, never-ending source of intellectual content, laying down the slogans, myths, and buzz words that have helped shift public opinion rightward” … the cohort’s leading members: the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Hoover Institution, the Federalist Society, the Reason Foundation, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the National Association of Scholars.
Republicans moved to stop pro-Democratic groups from spending millions to defeat President Bush, filing a federal complaint Wednesday that accuses John Kerry’s campaign of illegally coordinating its political ads and get-out-the-vote activities with anti-Bush groups … “They’re making a mockery of what the rules are,” Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot said in unveiling the complaint. The GOP cited fund-raising solicitations, overlapping strategists and the timing of ads as proof that Kerry and the outside Democratic groups were coordinating their efforts.
More here.
Earlier here.
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