'MEME-AGE' (MESSAGE)
See also: George Soros Democratic Party
Center for American Progress Democracy Alliance
"Section 527" Committees
No one knows for certain who first coined the term "Shadow Party." In the November 5, 2002 Washington Post, writer Thomas B. Edsall wrote of "shadow organizations" that were springing up to circumvent McCain-Feingold's soft-money ban (which is discussed at length below). Journalist Lorraine Woellert first called the Democrat network a "shadow party" in a September 15, 2003 Business Week article titled "The Evolution of Campaign Finance?" Other journalists soon followed suit.
Here, the term "Shadow Party" is used specifically to refer to the network of non-profit activist groups organized by George Soros and others to mobilize resources – money, get-out-the-vote drives, campaign advertising, and policy initatives – to advance Democratic Party agendas, elect Democratic candidates, and guide the Democratic Party ever-further towards the left. The Shadow Party in this sense was conceived and organized principally by Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Harold Ickes. Its efforts are amplified by, and coordinated with, key government unions and the activist groups associated with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The key organizers of these groups are veterans of the Sixties left. (For a list of some of the Shadow Party's major players, click here.)
How the Goundwork for the Shadow Party Had Been Laid: "Campaign Finance Reform"
George Soros had quietly laid the groundwork for the Shadow Party apparatus from 1994 to 2002. During that period, the billionaire spent millions of dollars promoting the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, better known as the McCain-Feingold Act,[1] which was ultimately signed into law in November 2002 by President Bush. Soros began working on this issue shortly after the 1994 midterm elections, when for the first time in nearly half a century, Republicans had won strong majorities in both houses of Congress. Political analysts at the time attributed the huge Republican gains in large part to the effectiveness of television advertising, most notably the “Harry and Louise” series (which cost $14 million to produce and air) where a fictional suburban couple exposed the many hidden, and distasteful, details of Hillary Clinton's proposals for a more socialized national health-care system. Soros was angry that such advertisements were capable of overriding the influence of the major print and broadcast news media, which, because they were overwhelmingly sympathetic to Democrat agendas, had given Hillary's plan a great deal of free, positive publicity for months. Three weeks after the 1994 elections, Soros announced that he intended to “do something” about “the distortion of our electoral process by the excessive use of TV advertising.”[2] That “something” would be campaign-finance reform.
Starting in 1994, Soros's Open Society Institute and a few other leftist foundations began bankrolling front groups and so-called “experts” whose aim was to persuade Congress to swallow the fiction that millions of Americans were clamoring for “campaign-finance reform.” This deceptive strategy was the brainchild of Sean Treglia, a former program officer with the Pew Charitable Trusts.[3] Between 1994 and 2004, some $140 million of foundation cash was used to promote campaign-finance reform. Nearly 90 percent of this amount derived from just eight foundations, one of which was the Open Society Institute, which contributed $12.6 million to the cause.[4] Among the major recipients of these OSI funds were such pro-reform organizations as the Alliance For Better Campaigns ($650,000); the Brennan Center for Justice (more than $3.3 million); the Center For Public Integrity ($1.7 million); the Center For Responsive Politics ($75,000); Common Cause ($625,000); Democracy 21 ($300,000); Public Campaign ($1.3 million); and Public Citizen ($275,000).[5]
The "research" which these groups produced in order to make a case on behalf of campaign-finance reform was largely bogus and contrived. For instance, Brennan Center political scientist Jonathan Krasno had clearly admitted in his February 19, 1999 grant proposal to the Pew Charitable Trusts that the purpose of the proposed study was political, not scholarly, and that the project would be axed if it failed to yield the desired results:
"The purpose of our acquiring the data set is not simply to advance knowledge for its own sake, but to fuel a continuous multi-faceted campaign to propel campaign reform forward. Whether we proceed to phase two will depend on the judgment of whether the data provide a sufficiently powerful boost to the reform movement."
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