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External LinksCursor.orgMediaTransparency.org sponsor More stories by Bill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs' Media Transparency writersAndrew J. Weaver FundometerEvaluate any page on the World Wide Web against our databases of people, recipients, and funders of the conservative movement. |
ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill 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 directorAs Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he Although Weyrich wasn't supposed to be at the meeting -- and he doesn't let on how he got there -- Martin quotes him as saying that "there before my eyes was revealed the modus operandi of the left." They had all these different groups, including religious groups, networking with people on the hill, formulating strategy for offering amendments, and then executing that strategy with media, with demonstrations, with lawsuits, with studies, with political action, by targeting people -- all the different elements of the political process. "The left has been brilliant at leveraging technology," said Rod Martin, founder of TheVanguard.org, "and so have we to a point...But no one on our side has even begun to create anything like MoveOn. And after 2006, if we want to survive, much less build a long-term conservative majority, we better start, and fast." Weyrich acknowledged that from that moment on, his life was "changed": He spent the early part of the 1970s working "to get these people who really have the same morals, who have the same ideals, but who came to it from different traditions to work together." Around the same time Weyrich was developing plans to turn his ideas into action, Lewis Powell, then a prominent Richmond, Virginia attorney and community leader, authored "a memorandum ... written at the invitation of Eugene Sydnor, Jr., a Richmond friend and department store owner, as well as chairman of the education committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington," Jerry Landay reported in these pages in 2002. The document, written shortly before Powell was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Richard M. Nixon, was intended as a stark wake-up call to the business community. According to Landay, Powell wrote a letter to a law-school friend, Ross L. Malone, general counsel of the General Motors Corporation, "seeking his assistance in order to tell 'top management' of the company to the 'contentious time in which we live' and the 'plight of the [free] enterprise system.'" Landay pointed out that Powell argued that the left was waging a massive propaganda campaign against business. "[M]anagement has been unwilling to make a massive effort to protect itself and the system it represents," Powell wrote, and he warned that unless action was taken, the capitalist system was "not likely to survive." Powell's call to arms, Weyrich's personal realizations and subsequent actions, and a number of other synchronistic activities amongst conservatives, created the "perfect storm" for the nascent movement. Weyrich enlisted a host of wealthy backers, including Colorado brewer Joseph Coors, and he started what Martin described as a "low-profile policy analysis organization that, in 1973, became the Heritage Foundation." A conservative infrastructure was developed, funded and sustained, and the rest is history. Meet Rod Martin and TheVanguard.orgFlash forward some 30-plus years and an Internet entrepreneur believes that it is time for a new conservative movement. He too has seen an entity on the left he admires enough to want to emulate: MoveOn.org. "The left has been brilliant at leveraging technology," said Rod Martin, founder of TheVanguard.org, "and so have we to a point: our bloggers and news sites are amazing, and the RNC's get-out-the-vote software is unparalleled. But no one on our side has even begun to create anything like MoveOn. And after 2006, if we want to survive, much less build a long-term conservative majority, we better start, and fast." Martin is no newcomer to conservative politics. According to the bio posted on TheVanguard.org's website, Martin's political column "Vanguard of the Revolution" appears in such publications as Human Events, WorldNetDaily, The American Spectator and World magazine. Martin "served as Special Counsel to PayPal.com founder Peter Thiel, most notably during PayPal's IPO and subsequent merger with dot-com giant eBay, and as Director of Policy Planning and Research for Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee." In addition, Martin belongs to the Federalist Society, and holds Life Memberships in Gun Owners of America and the National Rifle Association and "also serves as Executive Vice President of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA), on the Board of Governors of the Council for National Policy, and as a member of The Arlington Group." In a story dated January 18, and headlined "The Next MoveOn.org?" Human Events, the longtime conservative news weekly, profiled Martin and his new operation, TheVanguard.org (website): Martin is bigger than life, physically and every other way. Whether speaking to groups of 10 or 10,000, all across the nation he draws the crowd in, bringing them to tears or lifting them to their feet at will. His overstuffed agenda includes a weekly conference call with the White House. He keeps the talk-radio schedule of a candidate (he denies running for anything), and slips effortlessly between topics as diverse as tax reform, the disposition of military forces across the Middle East, and the implications of his friends' technological endeavors over the next five decades. He's friendly, jovial, self-deprecating. You can't help but like him. "We're still too new for a feature story," Martin told Human Events shortly after the November election. "As far as I'm concerned, we're still a beta site. You really ought to come back in a year." But according to Human Events' Stephanie Dube, Martin may be guilty of a bit of false modesty. "Insiders," according to Dube, insist that Vanguard.org is off to an impressive start especially since they reeled in "a top-drawer cast, including Silicon Valley heavy-hitters like Eric Jackson (a former PayPal colleague of Martin's, where he was head of marketing) and Gil Amelio (former CEO of two Fortune 500 companies, including Apple Computer), among others." In addition, movement gadfly -- some say kingmaker -- Grover Norquist, founder and head of Americans for Tax Reform, Stephen Moore, founder of Club for Growth (and current Wall Street Journal editorial board member), actress Jane Russell, direct-mail pioneer Walt Longyear, "compassionate conservatism" guru Marvin Olasky, even Reagan Doctrine-architect Jack Wheeler are all members of Vanguard's board of advisors. The term "revolution" is featured prominently on the organization's website, including a front page banner reading "Forward the Revolution!" TheVanguard.org's website also features a section of comments praising Rod Martin from a host of conservatives including: Steve Forbes, President and CEO, Forbes; Arkansas Governor and GOP 2008 presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee; Norquist; Olasky; Stephen Frank, California Political Consultant, past-president, California Republican Assembly, founding President, National Federation of Republican Assemblies; Joel Belz, founder and publisher World Magazine; Dr. Ted Baehr, publisher, MOVIEGUIDE®, Chairman, Christian Film and Television Commission; Andrew Sandlin, President, Center for Cultural Leadership. Moving on MoveOnMartin and gang don't come from the "kinder gentler" school of conservatism. These are hardball players backed by the requisite hardball rhetoric. And, there's a solid dose of religious right "traditional values" rhetoric folded in as well. In a letter on TheVanguard.org's website, founder and chairman Martin makes his intentions clear: "TheVanguard.org is here to take on MoveOn." "Republicans lost [the November elections] because the Republican leadership sold conservatives out, and the MoveOn gang was ready and waiting," Martin wrote. The GOP needs "new leaders" and "we also need a new conservative movement." But the issue isn't just taking the fight to MoveOn. The issue is also learning a lesson from MoveOn, by taking on -- and taking back -- our own party first. MoveOn has done a great job of making the Democrat Party live up to the ideology of its membership. That may or may not be a good idea from an election point-of-view. But it's certainly been rewarding for the people who give their hearts and souls to electing Democrats year after year... TheVanguard.Org is about a renewed, improved conservative movement, one that leverages all the technological advantages Democrats have mastered to elect a principled President and Congress. Together, we'll use the internet to teach MoveOn, Hillary and the left-wing media some lessons they never imagined. We'll teach a few to certain Beltway Republicans too. Two current Vanguard.org petition campaigns are:"Tell Congress: Nothing Less Than Victory in Iraq" -- "Don't let the aging hippies win. Everything -- including our safety and 50 million liberated people overseas -- depends on our beating the Islamofascists. Say so, now, before it's too late"; and "Uphold the Partial Birth Abortion Ban" -- "The Supreme Court will shortly rule on the Partial-Birth Abortion ban, which Congress passed in 2003 and which nearly all Americans support. Act now, and stop barbarism." Jerome Corsi and Richard Poe sign on with TheVanguardAlthough Dube reported that on January 18, Martin "refuse[d] to confirm or deny rumors" that Jerome Corsi -- co-author with John O'Neill of 2004's "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry,"--"which irreparably damaged John Kerry's presidential hopes -- ha[d] signed on for a similar effort against Hillary," Corsi was welcomed aboard in a news release dated January 23. "My role will be to serve as a senior political strategist with TheVanguard.Org, researching and writing aggressively to advance conservative themes in opposition to liberal Democratic Party politics," Corsi said in an article titled "TheVanguard.org Plans Conservative Challenge to MoveOn.org," that appeared the same day in Human Events. "I'm thrilled to have my friend Jerry Corsi on the team," said Martin. "Jerry's work was absolutely essential in 2004, and I have no doubt it will be again in 2008. I know we'll do a lot of great things together." Corsi is also the author of numerous other books including "Atomic Iran" and (with Minuteman co-founder Jim Gilchrist) "Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders." For a profile on Corsi, see Media Matters For America. In his syndicated column dated January 28, Robert Novak reported that as of February 16, Richard Poe will become TheVanguard's "full-time editorial and creative director." Poe is described by Novak as someone "who has served as editor in chief of [David Horowitz's] FrontPage Magazine... [and] has been described as the conservative movement's leading expert on MoveOn's strategy in bringing together disparate elements with a common viewpoint." Poe is co-author, with his former employer Horowitz, of "The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party," which attacks the left for using deception, lies, and the money of Soros to take over the country, and which, as of January 29, was ranked #12,411 on Amazon.com. Poe's previous book was titled "Hillary's Secret War." Conwebwatch.com's Terry Krepel pointed out that Poe had written a 10-part series on Hillary Clinton for WorldNetDaily -- based on his 2004 WorldNetDaily-published (while still part of Thomas Nelson) book -- that was "an apparent attempt to capitalize on Edward Klein's factually flawed book attacking" Clinton. According to Poe the book describes "how Hillary Clinton and the left's 'shadow government' have labored to put her and her far-left agenda in the White House by controlling the still-uncensored flow of real news to Americans -- via the Internet." According to Krepel, "Poe's WND series ... is filled with uncorroborated statements and long-discredited assertions. Additionally, he bashes liberal billionaire George Soros and lionizes and whitewashes conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife -- while hiding the fact that Scaife plays a role in providing him a steady paycheck" via Horowitz's organization. In an article dated January 26, posted at Poe.com and headlined "What Hillary Needs is a Good Swiftboating," Poe wrote about the hiring of Jerome Corsi by TheVanguard.org: Former PayPal executive and conservative activist Rod Martin is whipping up a firestorm of controversy with his new website TheVanguard.org. In the last few days, he has set the blogosphere aflame over such provocative questions as the definition of "swiftboating"; whether or not Martin and his website intend to engage in "swiftboating; whether or not Martin has targeted Hillary Clinton for a "swiftboating" campaign: and whether or not Martin or anyone else owes an apology to anyone for any of the above. Poe concludes his post by pointing out that "leftists" use the word "swiftboating" "to denote defamation and calumny. But the Swifties were guilty of neither. They told the truth about John Kerry, and exposed him as a dangerous charlatan. What we need in this country is more "swiftboating", not less. As for the junior senator from New York, I can only say, 'Let the swiftboating begin.'" Michael Markman, the author of the blog Mickeleh's Soapbox, summed it up well: TheVanguard.org "is ... staffing [it's organization] with character assassins of proven effectiveness. Nothing like starting in the sewer and moving down from there." 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 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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