Replies

Sorry Dio, I think you have missed my point.

I'm not discussing the the legal status of such groups- which sometimes clearly go over the line. I am addressing the funding issue.

My point is that they are making headway because they have funding to do so much work. (As well as free media complicity.)

You and Bob are making headway, but with volunteer hours. No pay. These liberal organizations are well funded and have staff members to keep working. That is not to say we can't move ahead, I am trying to make that point that wealthy conseratives need to begin directing their dollars at something other than the Opera or we move ahead at a much slower rate.

Will it be fast enough?

The next question is, how do we get the conservative rich to get as involved as the conservative poor. I would think Forbes is the man to be talking to about all this. He could not only start it, he could direct it.

A friend of mine reminded me just this morning that the GOP already has tons of money, much more than MoveOn.org. That's true. But much of that money goes to the campaign and its workers, not expensive ads that keep reminding people of the truth. TV, radio, billboards, etc.

Wealthy conservatives give plenty of money. They just don't give it in ways that you can see. Let me explain.

The conservative, non-profit/issue oriented/DC industry is made up of many well known organizations, we all know who they are here on FR. These organizations follow a fairly similar business model. They put out papers, they lobby congress, they publish studies, they speak on issues on the news (fox, of course). They don't really have grassroots. Grassroots is fairly new trend in the conservative movement. (The exception here is the "religious right" like Focus on the Family. They have a fairly large group of people who lobby on their religious/conservative issues.) But back to the conservative trend......

Since the Clinton fiasco, the grassroots is gaining some power in conservative DC circles. However, there are certain restrictions that most grassroots operations will face. And this pertains to my previous post on MoveOn.org's illegal activities.

An organization that is a non-profit C-3 or C-4, has very strict regulations. The C-3 organizations, tax-deductable, are more restricted than C-4, but still these organizations can not engage in (or be shown to have financially supported) forbidden activities. MoveOn.org does it, but they are breaking the law. And their 527 is about to get castrated as well. So any organization that is a C3 or C4 cannot be responsible for certain kinds of grassroots activities. Period. Not to mention, that while C4's have a wider scope of action than a C3, C4 contributions are not tax deductible. Almost no wealthy conservative donor is going to give a chunk of seed money if they can't write it off. This is one of the biggest obstacles.

So, there are wealthy conservatives who support Heritage, MRC, ACU, ATR and so on. But those organizations are legally prohibited from having active grassroots lobby for candidates, and if they are a C3 they shouldn't be getting involved in legislation either. If they do have active grassroots lobby for candidates, they are restricted by hard money rules (the FEC rather than the IRS) that make wealthy donors irrelevant. Again, I say MoveOn is successful and visible because they are breaking the law.

There are certain areas where grassroots can be effective that do not fall under the electioneering category. The biggest obstacle here, is that mentality inside the Beltway is...inside the beltway. The prevailing view is that DC is the most important place in the world. In reality, who cares about DC? The rest of the country is where the action needs to take place. This idea is somewhat foreign to those inside the beltway.