The Right Prepares For Battle
A dozen years after Hillary Clinton complained about a vast, right-wing conspiracy, some Republicans are beginning to wonder if she didn’t have some good ideas after all.
Meet American Crossroads, a new 527 political organization promising to spend $50 million this year electing Republicans. The press immediately assumed the new group was a quickie response to the disarray at the Republican National Committee (RNC). But American Crossroads has been in the works since last year. And it is just one—if a central—part of a broader conservative push to finally match the Democrats’ third-party political muscle.
The joke is that if any side wins marks for conspiracy-like levels of organization and fund raising, it’s the left. Savvy candidates and strategy aside, the Democrats’ best weapon in recent contests has been tightly coordinated, terrifically funded, outside organizations.
Big Labor spent $70 million in 2008 alone on the Democratic election effort. As far back as 2004 those unions were teaming up with 527s such as Steve Rosenthal’s Americans Coming Together and its sister organization, Harold Ickes’s Media Fund, which collected some $200 million from the likes of George Soros to fund turnout operations and campaign ads.
Even as ACT and Media Fund wound down, Mr. Ickes was launching Catalist, a for-profit that has become a central warehouse of voter databases, shared with unions, environmental groups and pro-choice outfits. Organizing for America and Moveon.org marshall the grass roots and raise funds. Polling groups and think tanks link with data and messaging. These groups don’t always agree, but they function as a shadow party, and they help win elections.
The right, by contrast, has been more the vast rag-tag conspiracy. The RNC pioneered get-out-the-vote, but it has never had a durable outside army to buttress its efforts. Groups like the National Rifle Association and the Chamber of Commerce play big, but as issue groups don’t solely support Republicans. Many conservative outfits, such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, are brief flashes that fade away.
The 2008 defeat got Republican political pros pondering hard about this disadvantage, and one result is American Crossroads. Its president, Steven Law, is a former Bush deputy labor secretary who had years to study unions’ electoral successes. Karl Rove and former RNC chief Ed Gillespie are informal advisers. RNC veterans Mike Duncan, Jo Ann Davidson, Jim Dyke and Tom Josefiak are all part of the operation.
The group already has commitments for $30 million and will be monolithically focused on electing more Republicans, with direct engagement in campaigns, advertising and turnout. “We’re here to replicate the success the left has had in creating large and enduring third-party political operations,” says Mr. Law.
American Crossroads isn’t alone. February saw the launch of the American Action Network, spurred to life by GOP fund-raiser Fred Malek. Modeled on the liberal Center for American Progress, backed by Haley Barbour and Jeb Bush and headed up by former Sen. Norm Coleman, it’s a self-described “action tank.” Its policy arm, run by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, will shape conservative ideas and serve as a message shop for GOP candidates.
Mr. Gillespie last year teamed up with GOP pollster Whit Ayres to create Resurgent Republic. It’s a mirror of Democracy Corps, created in 1999 by James Carville and pollster Stan Greenberg to produce opinion research and analysis for Democratic candidates. And in January Mr. Gillespie took over the Republican State Leadership Committee, which exists to elect Republicans at the state level. The goal is to double fund raising to $40 million, to win key legislatures and governorships, and to position the party to take maximum advantage of the redistricting that follows this year’s census.
Strategy is driving these conservative creations, but they’ve also arrived in an environment rich with opportunity. Former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed last year launched his Faith and Freedom Coalition, which already has 200,000 members. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling gives his group a bigger donor pool and the right to more express political advocacy.
His coalition is raising $11 million for midterms, and its goal is to register one million new voters in 2010 and 2012. It’s also positioning as an organizational outlet for grass-roots fervor coming out of the tea party movement. “We’re a resource for folks who are looking for a way to not just express their frustration, but to get involved with shoe-leather politics,” says Mr. Reed.
Groups like American Crossroads were set up to supplement, not replace, the party organization, and few are happy with the RNC mess. Also notable is that most were formed out of the conviction that Republicans have a real challenge ahead of them. “People aren’t reckoning with just how much work and investment it is going to take to break the Democratic monopoly in Washington,” says Mr. Law. “There’s a giddiness out there that is misplaced.” Just how serious Republicans are at harnessing these new third-party efforts will become clear in November.
