This morning, Politico ran a breathless story -- "Karl Rove, Republican Party plot vast network to reclaim power" -- on newly invigorated conservative institution building. Behind that story, though, there's another tale of deeply intertwined Washington networks:
Two organizers of the Republican groups even made pilgrimages earlier this year to pick the brain of John Podesta, the former Clinton White House chief of staff who, in 2003, founded the Center for American Progress and was a major proponent of Democrats developing the kind of infrastructure pioneered by Republicans.
The item has already raised eyebrows in the progressive community. During the 2003/4 kick start of similarly minded progressive movement-building efforts -- which saw the start of the Center for American Progress, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and a burst of new funding to a variety of liberal political groups -- conservative ideas were mimicked but few conservatives (that I know of) offered advice to Podesta and his allies.
CAP spokesperson Anna Soellner told me the two Republicans who met Podesta were conservative economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin and former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman. The two founded the American Action Forum and the American Action Network, a split-institution modeled on CAP's dual identity as a policy-focused think tank and an aggressive, communications-focused "action fund." The new organization has a similar mission to CAP: becoming a center of policy and politics for conservatives, a kind of administration-in-exile.
Soellner characterized the meeting as an effort to create a discussion between the two sides, not a primer on creating an effective institution, and called Politico's headline "fairly bold."
"John's view is that engaging conservatives in a public dialogue on policy is a very important and productive thing for progressives to do ... the bottom line is that they came away from it wanting to pursue an issues dialogue," Soellner wrote in an e-mail.
I caught up with Holtz-Eakin, a member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, during a break in today's hearings by the body. Holtz-Eakin says that when he was planning to start his new think tank, "The first thing I did was ask John what I need to know."
"[We talked about] specifics about areas where we could work together," Holtz-Eakin says. "They are center-left; we are center-right. One of the things that is missing [in Washington] is principled agreement and principled disagreement. It would be nice to fix that."
While elevating the discourse in Washington is both a much-needed and perennially elusive achievement, some have been skeptical of the conservatives' efforts, given the broad range of right-leaning institutions in Washington. Folks of goodwill should be pleased that people on the left and right are trying to engage each other on the issues -- it's done wonders for Sen. Bob Corker and financial reform, after all. It's doubtful that Podesta gave away any secrets during his meeting with the two Republicans.
But there is concern about the potential impact of the Citizens United decision on the American Action Network and other groups like it, whether liberal or conservative. The Supreme Court's opinion in the case has opened up the possibility of unlimited corporate spending in politics, a development cited by Coleman as a reason for unveiling the new organization.
This skeptical contingent includes writers at CAP's own Thinkprogress blog, who marked the organization's founding announcement with a post titled "Wall Street Republicans Form ‘Action Tank’ To Push Corporate Agenda."
Nonetheless, the two organizations are planning a series of debates on a variety of issues, which will be moderated by, you guessed it, Politico, the same publication that published today's overhyped story.
For those keeping score at home, we've got a progressive think tank offering friendly advice to its conservative counterpart under the rubric of improving the public discourse, even as the organizations engage in an ideological battle that is promoted by a newspaper that stands to benefit from exacerbating said battle. Welcome, dear readers, to Washington, D.C.
-- Tim Fernholz
