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ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz Santorum leads ousted Republicans' move back to conservative philanthropy supported think tanksAt ironically named 'Ethics and Public Policy Center' former senator will track 'America's Enemies'If you thought that his resounding defeat at the polls this past November would send former Senator Rick Santorum scurrying back home to Pennsylvania, think again. Santorum has decided he'll be staying in the nation's capital to head up a new program called "America's Enemies," which will be located at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC - website), a Washington-based think tank formerly headed by Neocon hawk Elliott Abrams. In a statement, the EPPC said "As a United States Senator, Rick Santorum was a champion of efforts to counter the threat of radical Islamic fascism, [and] to protect victims of religious persecution..." According to a statement issued by the Center headlined "Rick Santorum Joins Ethics and Public Policy Center, Establishes Program on America's Enemies," the project will study "threats posed to America and the West from a growing array of anti-Western forces that are increasingly casting a shadow over our future and violating religious liberty around the world." "As a United States Senator, Rick Santorum was a champion of efforts to counter the threat of radical Islamic fascism, to protect victims of religious persecution, and to promote democracy and religious liberty around the world," said EPPC President Ed Whelan. "We are honored that he is joining EPPC to continue his important and courageous work on these matters." Santorum, who served 16 years in Congress (four in the House, 12 in the Senate) and lost his bid for reelection in November to Democratic candidate Bob Casey Jr., will be designated a senior fellow at the think tank, which was set up some 30 years ago "to apply moral principles derived from Christianity and Judaism to public policy issues," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently pointed out. "It is strongly, but not exclusively, associated with conservative Catholic intellectuals." "In these perilous and uncertain times, I believe it is critical that we define the threats that confront America," Santorum said in a prepared statement. "Without a clear definition and precise understanding of our enemies we cannot fight effectively and our own citizens become divided. It is my hope that the America's Enemies program at EPPC will help the American people -- including our leaders -- understand and communicate with clarity, honesty and consistency the enemies we face and the complex and enormous threat that they post to our lives and the freedoms we all enjoy." In a National Review Online article titled "Rick's Return," Santorum told John J. Miller that perhaps he shouldn't have spent so much time emphasizing his pro-Iraq war position during the campaign: "Maybe that wasn't the smartest political strategy, spending the last few months running purely on national security. I was even more hawkish than the president." In talking about his new project Santorum, never one to understate the case, said that he recognizes that "America's Enemies" is a "stark name." He then names his own Axis of Evil: "We wanted to be candid about the fact that America really does have enemies and to point out that the nature of these enemies is much more complex than what people realize. It's not just Islamic fascism, but also Venezuela, North Korea, and, increasingly in my opinion, Russia." But David Neiwert, an expert on fascism who has written for this website, says that fascism is a specific pathology constituted of a constellation of certain traits, only some of which are described by Islamic radicalism, and some of which are specifically repudiated by it. "Perhaps Santorum intends 'Islamic totalitarianism,' which would be accurate; but fascism is a very specific kind of totalitarianism, and what we see in the Islamic world today does not fit the description." According to NRO's John J. Miller, "Santorum plans to organize lectures and conferences, write articles, and work on a book. (His book agent is Kathy Lubbers, who is Newt Gingrich's daughter.) 'We expect to be very, very active,' he says. One of his focal points will be religious liberty and how people of faith might confront radical Islam." Miller, national political reporter for National Review and the author "A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America," also pointed out that "at least two members of Santorum's Senate staff will join him at EPPC: Mark Rodgers, his former chief of staff, will be a fellow and Melissa Anderson (a former National Review employee) will be associate director of the America's Enemies program." Santorum, who also plans to join a law firm in DC, will be responsible for raising "all the funds" for his new program. "Our goal is to raise several hundred thousand dollars in 2007," he told Miller. Ernest Lefever and the Ethics and Public Policy CenterThe Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) has an enviable record when it comes to raising money. From 1985 through 2005 the organization received 191 grants totaling over $13 million. Among the Center's top funders are the Sarah Scaife Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, Earhart Foundation, William E. Simon Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Originally established at Georgetown University in 1976, the EPPC was the brainchild of Ernest W. Lefever. According to "American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia" -- published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute -- during the Lefever era, which coincided with the rise of Ronald Reagan, the think tank "achieved prominent visibility" and was "hailed as one of the eleven 'bastions of neoconservatism' in the United States in the national media." Early on, Lefever expressed his concern that "U.S. domestic and multinational firms" were "increasingly under siege at home and abroad." He claimed that they were "accused of producing shoddy and unsafe products, fouling the environment, robbing future generations, wielding enormous power, repressing peoples in the third world, and generally of being insensitive to human needs." Lefever determined that the Center was strategically placed "to respond more directly to ideological critics who insist the corporation is fundamentally unjust." Lefever was President Reagan's first nominee to direct the State Department's Office for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. According to a Right Web profile, Lefever "was known as a fierce critic of President Carter's human rights policy." His human rights bonafides with conservatives in part may have grown out of a white paper he authored titled "The Trivialization of Human Rights," which was published in 1978 by the Center. Right Web pointed out that "In testimony before a Senate committee in 1979, Lefever set forth the neoconservative position on human rights -- one that would soon characterize the policy of the Reagan administration and would two decades later be adopted by the Bush administration. He recommended that the human rights records of governments receiving U.S. aid should 'not be judged primarily by their internal policies but by their foreign policies.'" In a story that could be pulled from today's headlines, Lefever was forced to withdraw from consideration for the human rights post after it was revealed that the Center had taken $35,000 from the Nestle Corp. According to Right Web, "In an article in Fortune magazine, Lefever attacked Nestle's critics, who charged that the corporation's aggressive marketing of its infant powdered-milk formula in the third world was causing a new surge in infant death, as "Marxists marching under the banner of Christ." Ironically, the post was filled by Elliott Abrams, "who espoused the same instrumentalist position on human rights as Lefever. Although Abrams entered the Reagan administration scandal-free, he left as a convicted criminal" -- due to the Iran-Contra scandal -- only to re-emerge as a key player in the Bush Administration. Abrams also served as the Center's president from 1996 to 2001. In recent years, after George S. Weigel Jr., a Roman Catholic writer, took the helm in 1989 (he currently is a senior fellow at the Center) and during the current presidency of M. Edward Whelan III, a former advisor to the White House Counsel and Attorney General and a former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia, the Center has focused its work on "clarifying and re-enforcing the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the public debate over domestic and foreign policy issues." Weigel, who has been a seminal figure in the conservative movement for quite some time, has been a strong, and unrepentant, supporter of President Bush's War on Iraq. In a recent story titled "Anti-Life Ethics in Iraq," Jacob G. Hornberger, the founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, pointed out that in a recent Weigel authored article titled "Baghdad 2006=Tet 1968?" published in the December 7, 2006, issue of the Arlington Catholic Herald, the official newspaper for the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, Weigel continued to maintain "that the allied action [invasion] satisfied the conditions of a just war" - a position at odds with his own Pope's view of the war. "In arriving at his conclusion that the war on Iraq was warranted," Hornberger notes, "Weigel is implicitly claiming that it is morally justifiable for U.S. soldiers, including Catholics, to kill Iraqi people (none of whom had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks) in order to achieve regime change in Iraq." "It would be difficult to find a more morally and ethically abominable and perverted view of human life than that. What Weigel is saying is that when measured against regime change in Iraq, the life of an Iraqi citizen -- or the lives of thousands of Iraqis -- is of only secondary importance." Santorum should feel right at home. sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism' On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.
Bill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy' In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."
Bill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.
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