The Shadow Party (Must read: George Soros' Growing Web of SUBVERSION)

The Shadow Party: Part I By David Horowitz and Richard Poe FrontPageMagazine.com | October 6, 2004

"My family is more important to me than my party," declared Senator Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, as he spoke from the podium of the Republican National Convention on September 1. "There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man's name is George Bush." [1]

Many Democrats howled in outrage at Miller's "betrayal" - former President Jimmy Carter in particular. In an angry personal letter to the Georgia senator, Carter accused Miller of "unprecedented disloyalty" and declared, "You have betrayed our trust. [I]t's quite possible that your rabid speech damaged our party..." [2]

But nothing Miller said could possibly have damaged the Democratic Party more than its own leaders had done in making the war in Iraq a partisan issue and embracing the anti-war cause. In his anger, Carter had mistaken the symptom for the disease. Long before Zell Miller's démarche, Ronald Reagan -- a Roosevelt Democrat who re-registered as a Republican in 1962 -- followed a similar course, explaining, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me."[3]

The leftward drift of the Democratic Party accelerated through the Vietnam years, spurred by the anti-war candidacies of Bobby Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. When the congressional Democrats pulled the plug on aid to our allies in southeast Asia in the 1970s, a contingent of anti-Communist "Scoop" Jackson Democrats crossed the aisle in protest and became Republicans - an act for which they were labeled "neo-conservatives." Rank-and-file Democrats staged a silent but even more devastating walk-out after four years of Jimmy Carter's "blame America" Administration, casting their ballots by the millions for the Gipper.

The Democrats' current presidential aspirant John Kerry has ambitiously modeled his political career after John F. Kennedy’s. Yet their politics bear little resemblance. If Kennedy were alive today, Democrats would condemn his sweeping capital gains tax cuts as a sop to the rich. His militant anti-Communism would evoke charges of right-wing "paranoia." And the vow he made in his inaugural address to confront tyranny anywhere in the world would win him the label of "neo-conservative" imperialist among today’s Democrats. Instead of calling on Americans to "support any friend" and "oppose any foe" -- as Kennedy did in his famous address - many Democrats are busy sabotaging our war effort in Iraq, with speeches as strident as any that emanated from the New Left during the Vietnam era.

The devolution of the Democrats from the Cold War party of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy to the progressive party of Edward Kennedy and John F. Kerry has long been in progress, and is not quite complete. But the Democrats' final transformation into a party of the left in the European mode may not be far off. Barely noticed by political observers, an activist juggernaut has seized control of the party’s national electoral apparatus, organized, financed and directed by the left.

This party within the party has no official name, but some journalists and commentators have begun referring to it as the Shadow Party, a term that we will use as well. It denotes a network of non-profit groups presently raising hundreds of millions of dollars for deployment on the campaign battlefield. This money pays for advertising, get-out-the-vote-drives, opposition research, dirty tricks and virtually every aspect of a modern electoral campaign. But it does so through independent groups with no formal connection to the Democratic Party.

The Shadow Party emerged from the dense thicket of campaign finance reforms engineered by Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold. Thanks to the soft-money ban enacted by the McCain-Feingold Act of March 27, 2002, the Democratic Party entered the current election cycle hard pressed to raise enough money legally to undertake a winning campaign. This created an imperative that found its inevitable loophole (as critics of McCain-Feingold always warned it would). Consequently, the driving force in the political war against George Bush is now a group of billionaires and millionaires operating through the veiled structures of the Shadow Party.

Under McCain-Feingold, political parties and candidates can only accept “hard money” contributions – that is, contributions given to a specific political party for a specific political campaign. Such contributions must be reported to the Federal Election Commission, and are limited to a $2,000 maximum per donor for each candidate, or $5,000 per donor if they are paid to a federally registered political action committee (PAC). Historically, Republicans have enjoyed a 3-1 advantage over Democrats in raising hard-money contributions from individual donors. Democrats have relied much more heavily on soft-money contributions from large institutions such as unions.

Soft money refers to political contributions, which for one reason or another have been exempted from the limits imposed by the FEC. Before McCain-Feingold outlawed such contributions, soft money donors could give as much money to political parties as they wished. Their contributions often numbered in the millions of dollars. McCain-Feingold deprived the Democrats of their soft money, but the Shadow Party has provided an alternate channel for collecting unlimited contributions. For example, government unions used to lavish multi-million-dollar contributions on the Democratic Party – money which the unions drew from their members, through mandatory dues. The unions still collect their membership dues, but, under McCain-Feingold, they may no longer pass that money along to the Democratic Party, at least not directly. The solution? They give it to the Shadow Party instead.

The Shadow Party uses various expedients to evade McCain-Feingold’s limits. First, it works through independent non-profit groups that ostensibly have no connection to the Democratic Party, either structurally or through informal coordination. The Shadow Party contains many types of non-profit groups, but most of its big fundraisers are “527 committees” – named after Section 527 of the IRS code – sometimes called “stealth PACS” because, unlike ordinary PACS (political action committees), they are not required to register with the Federal Election Commission nor to divulge their finances to the FEC (except in special circumstances).

Another expedient used by the Shadow Party is to claim that it is not engaged in electioneering at all. Most Shadow Party groups say they are soliciting funds not to defeat a particular candidate, but to promote “issues” and non-partisan get-out-the-vote drives. Of course their issue promotions have, in most cases, turned out to be savage attacks on the opposing candidates and their get-out-the-vote drives have used sophisticated demographic marketing techniques to target exclusively Democratic constituencies. All of this casts doubt on the Shadow Party’s claim to be aloof from the electoral struggle and therefore exempt from FEC regulation. However, a pliant Federal Elections Commission has conveniently declined to rule on the Shadow Party’s legality until after the election, when it will no longer matter.

Needless to say, McCain-Feingold also bars the Republican Party from raising soft money. However, Republicans never had a problem raising individual contributions for their candidates and never made a habit of raiding union treasuries for “soft money.” Thus Republicans have felt less urgency than Democrats to seek alternative fundraising methods, and they have proved slower in pursuing the 527 escape route from McCain-Feingold. Republicans have built no network of independent, non-profit groups comparable in numbers or scale to the Democrat Shadow Party.

No one knows who first coined the term “shadow party.” The term has become popular among journalists, but likely originated among the freelance fundraisers themselves. In the November 5, 2002 Washington Post, writer Thomas B. Edsall wrote of “shadow organizations” springing up on both sides of the political fence to circumvent McCain-Feingold’s soft money ban.[4] Lorraine Woellert of Business Week appears to have been the first journalist to apply the term “shadow party” specifically to the Democrat network of 527 groups, in a September 15, 2003 article titled, “The Evolution of Campaign Finance?”[5] Other journalists followed her example.

According to conventional wisdom the Shadow Party began taking form shortly after March 27, 2002 – the date President Bush signed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, popularly known as McCain-Feingold. However, the Shadow Party’s earliest origins predate the Reform Act by many years. The principal mover behind the Shadow Party is Wall Street billionaire and leftwinger George Soros. A New York hedge fund manager, global investment banker and currency trader, Soros has a personal net worth in the $7 billion range. Under his aegis, the Shadow Party has created a new power base for the left, independent of the mainstream party apparatus – a leverage point from which to tilt the party in an ever-more-radical direction.

Only Soros knows when he first conceived the idea of forming this network. However, clear hints of his intentions began to appear as early as the 2000 election. By that time, Soros had already baffled friend and foe alike with his increasingly strident attacks on capitalism – the very system which had elevated him from a penniless Hungarian refugee to one of the world’s wealthiest men. In his 1998 book The Crisis of Global Capitalism, Soros predicted an imminent collapse of the global financial system. Financiers like himself were largely to blame, he wrote, for they had allowed greed to overwhelm their humanity. “The (global capitalist) system is deeply flawed,” wrote Soros. “As long as capitalism remains triumphant, the pursuit of money overrides all other social considerations.” [6]

Soros offered no coherent solution to the problem. He simply continued his long-established pattern of pouring money into a hodge-podge of fashionable leftwing causes, such as promoting mass immigration into the United States; financing anti-gun lawsuits and lobbyists; demanding voting rights for felons; seeking the abolition of capital punishment; exacerbating Palestinian unrest; promoting abortion; feminism; population control; gay liberation; euthanasia; radical theories of education; marijuana legalization and global government.

In 2000, Soros stepped up his attack on the status quo – dramatically raising his profile in U.S. electoral politics in the process – by sponsoring the so-called “Shadow Conventions.” Organized by author, columnist, social climber and political gadfly Arianna Huffington, the Shadow Conventions were counter-cultural events that gave a spotlight to critics of the electoral mainstream, most from the far left. In an effort to lure news crews away from the national party conventions, Huffington held her “Shadow Conventions” at the same time and in the same cities as the Republican and Democratic conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles respectively.

The largest single donor to the Shadow Conventions was George Soros, who put up about one third of the cost, according to Time magazine.[7] Media commentators at the time played the Shadow Conventions for laughs. Yet these events conveyed a serious message; a comprehensive radical agenda which Soros evidently endorsed.

The Shadow Conventions promoted the view that neither Democrats nor Republicans served the interests of the American people. Like the New Left of the 1960s and today’s Green Party, both of which dismiss the major parties as instruments of the “corporate ruling class,” Huffington declared that US politics needed a third force to break the deadlock. Among the issues highlighted at the Shadow Conventions were racism, special interest lobbies, marijuana legalization and the allegedly growing concentration of wealth – a radical hobgoblin since Karl Marx first raised its specter 150 years ago. Most speakers and delegates at the Shadow Convention hewed to a hard-left line, their views resonating with the “Free Mumia” chants that erupted periodically from the crowd and with Jesse Jackson’s incendiary charges that Republicans were racists. Huffington herself was a sometime conservative whose cult-like worship of Newt Gingrich had formerly evoked titters of amusement from media gossips. At the Shadow Conventions, she told reporters: “I have become radicalized.”

Not all the speakers were hucksters in the Jackson mold, however. Senator John McCain whose campaign finance crusade had put him at odds with both parties was one of the few mainstream politicians to accept Huffington’s invitation to speak. He made an impassioned plea for campaign finance reform, a crusade which – perhaps not coincidentally – George Soros had been a major force in pushing since 1995.

The Shadow Conventions were symbolic affairs. They represented no party and nominated no candidates for office. However, many of Soros’ activities during the 2000 campaign went beyond symbolism. It was during the 2000 election cycle that Soros first began experimenting with raising money through 527 committees. He assembled a team of wealthy Democrat donors to help him push two of his favorite issues – gun control and marijuana legalization. Soros collected contributions greatly exceeding the $5,000 limit allowed to federal PACs, but he evaded those limits by using 527 committees.

One of Soros’ committees was an anti-gun group called The Campaign for a Progressive Future, which sought to neutralize the influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA) by targeting political candidates whom the NRA endorsed. Mainstream Democrats had backed off the gun control issue when candidate Al Gore learned that 40 percent of union households owned guns. However, Soros was no mainstream Democrat. He personally seeded The Campaign for a Progressive Future with $500,000.[8]

During the 2000 election, Soros’ Campaign for a Progressive Future funded political ads and direct mail campaigns in support of state initiatives favoring background checks at gun shows. Soros and his associates also funneled money into pro-marijuana initiatives, which appeared on the ballot in various states that year.[9] Donors to Soros’ stealth PACs during the 2000 election cycle included insurance mogul Peter B. Lewis and InfoSeek founder Steven Kirsch, both of whom would turn up later as major contributors to Soros’ Shadow Party during the 2004 campaign.

To the extent that the Shadow Party can be said to have an official launch date, July 17, 2003 probably fits the bill.[10] On that day, a team of political strategists, wealthy donors, leftwing labor leaders and other Democrat activists gathered at Soros’ Southampton beach house on Long Island. Aside from Soros, the most noteworthy attendee was Morton H. Halperin. Soros had hired Halperin in February 2002, to head the Washington office of his tax-exempt Open Society Institute – part of Soros’ global network of Open Society institutes and foundations located in more than 50 countries around the world. Given Halperin’s history, the appointment revealed much about Soros’ political goals.

Halperin has a long and controversial track record in the world of Washington intrigue, dating back to the Johnson Administration. Journalists sympathetic to Halperin’s leftwing sentiments give him high marks for blowing the whistle on the Vietnam War, but his activism helped undermine America’s war effort and contributed to the Communist victory.

The Johnson Defense Department placed Halperin in charge of compiling a secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, based on classified documents. This secret history later emerged into public view as the so-called “Pentagon Papers.” Halperin and his deputy Leslie Gelb assigned much of the writing to leftwing opponents of the war, such as Daniel Ellsberg who, despite his background as a former Marine and a military analyst for the Rand Corporation, was already evolving into a New Left radical. In his memoir, Secrets, Ellsberg admits to concluding, as early as 1967, that, “we were not fighting on the wrong side; we were the wrong side” in the Vietnam War. [11] Evidently Ellsberg had come to view Ho Chi Minh’s Communist regime as the wave of the future.

With Halperin’s tacit encouragement – and perhaps active collusion – Ellsberg stole the secret history and released it to The New York Times, which published the documents as “The Pentagon Papers” in June 1971.[12] This was a violation of the Espionage Act, which forbids the removal of classified documents from government buildings. Not surprisingly, “The Pentagon Papers” echoed Halperin’s long-standing position that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, and ridiculed Presidents Kennedy and Johnson for stubbornly refusing to heed those of their advisors who shared this opinion. It marked a turning point in America’s failed effort to keep Indo-China from falling to the Communists. The government dropped its case against Ellsberg as Nixon’s power collapsed during the Watergate intrigues.

Halperin went on to become the director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1984 to 1992 and head of its "National Security Archives." From this position, he waged open war against U.S. intelligence services, through the courts and the press, seeking to strip the government of virtually any power to investigate, monitor or obstruct subversive elements and their activities.[13] It did not take long for Halperin to go the next logical step and argue for abolishing America’s intelligence services altogether. “Using secret intelligence agencies to defend a constitutional republic is akin to the ancient medical practice of employing leeches to take blood from feverish patients. The intent is therapeutic, but in the long run the cure is more deadly than the disease,” Halperin wrote in his 1976 book, The Lawless State: The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies.[14]

In a March 21, 1987 article in The Nation, Halperin expanded on this theme and, like Ellsberg, took the position that America was the real villain in the Cold War. He wrote, “Secrecy does not serve national security. Covert operations are incompatible with constitutional government and should be abolished.”[15] This was a call for unilateral disarming of our intelligence services to match the universal disarmament of our military which has long been a staple of the radical agenda.

Evidently, Soros wishes Halperin to continue his war on America’s intelligence services. According to an Open Society Institute press release, one of Halperin’s principal assignments on the Soros team is to battle “post-September 11 policies that threaten the civil liberties of Americans.” [16]

No one has published a full list of the attendees at Soros’ July 17 meeting in Southampton, at which Soros laid out his plan to defeat President Bush.[17] However, a partial list is available in accounts that appeared in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. These include an impressive array of former Clinton administration officials, among them Halperin. Prior to working for Soros, Halperin had served eight years under Clinton, first as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and finally as Director of Policy Planning for the Clinton State Department.

The guests at Soros’ beach house also included Clinton’s former chief of staff John Podesta; Jeremy Rosner, former special advisor to Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright; Robert Boorstin, a former advisor to Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; and Steven Rosenthal, a leftwing union leader who served the Clinton White House as an advisor on union affairs to Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, and Ellen Malcolm, founder and president of the pro-abortion lobby Emily’s List, also attended the meeting, as did such prominent Democrat donors as auto insurance mogul Peter B. Lewis; founder and CEO of RealNetworks Rob Glaser; Taco Bell heir Rob McKay; and Benson & Hedges tobacco heirs Lewis and Dorothy Cullman.

Months earlier, Soros had hired two political analysts to probe Bush’s defenses. They were Tom Novick, a lobbyist for the Western States Center – a group of radical environmentalists in Oregon – and Democrat media strategist Mark Steitz, president of TSD Communications in Washington DC, whose clients have included the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton presidential campaigns of 1992 and 1996. Jeanne Cummings of The Wall Street Journal reports that both Novick and Steitz were present at the Southampton meeting, to brief the team in person.

Working independently, the two analysts had reached similar conclusions. Both agreed that Bush could be beaten. Voter turnout was the key. The analysts proposed massive get-out-the-vote drives among likely Democrat voters in seventeen “swing” or “battleground” states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington.

“By morning,” reports Cummings, “the outlines of a new organization began to emerge, and Mr. Soros pledged $10 million to get it started.” The name of that organization was America Coming Together (ACT) – a grassroots activist group designed to coordinate the Shadow Party’s get-out-the-vote drive. ACT would dispatch thousands of activists – some paid, some volunteers – to knock on doors and work phone banks, combining the manpower of leftwing unions, environmentalists, abortion-rights activists and minority race warriors from civil rights organizations.

ACT was not exactly new. A group of Democrat activists had been trying for months to get it off the ground. But, until George Soros stepped in, ACT had languished for lack of donors. Laura Blumenfeld of The Washington Post describes the scene at the July 17 meeting at Soros’ beach house: “Standing on the back deck, the evening sun angling into their eyes, Soros took aside Steve Rosenthal, CEO of the liberal activist group America Coming Together (ACT), and Ellen Malcolm, its president. … Soros told them he would give ACT $10 million. …Before coffee the next morning, his friend Peter Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corp., had pledged $10 million to ACT. Rob Glaser, founder and CEO of RealNetworks, promised $2 million. Rob McKay, president of the McKay Family Foundation, gave $1 million and benefactors Lewis and Dorothy Cullman committed $500,000. Soros also promised up to $3 million to Podesta's new think tank, the Center for American Progress,” which would function as the policy brains of the new network.[18]

The Shadow Party had been born. Three weeks later, on August 8, The New York Times announced the official roll-out of America Coming Together (ACT), describing it as a political action committee led by Ellen Malcolm and Steven Rosenthal.

Soros next summoned California software developer Wes Boyd to meet him in New York on September 17. Boyd was best known among computer users for his “Flying Toasters” screen saver. The political world knew him as founder of the radical Web site MoveOn.org, the Internet force behind Howard Dean’s anti-war presidential campaign. Boyd had launched the Web site during the Clinton impeachment trial in 1998, offering a petition to censure the President and “move on” to more important matters. Hundreds of thousands of readers responded, and Boyd quickly began milking his growing membership for political contributions. His Web site raised millions for Democrat candidates in three national elections – two mid-terms and one presidential race. When they met in New York, Soros offered Boyd a deal. He and his associate Peter Lewis would donate $1 to MoveOn.org for every $2 Boyd could raise from his members, up to $5 million total from Soros and Lewis combined. Boyd accepted.[19]

By November 2003, the Shadow Party was ready to go public. As Cummings notes in the Wall Street Journal, Soros calculated that the best way to launch his network would be to issue a public statement, calling attention to the record-breaking contributions he had pledged to the Shadow Party. Such an announcement would “stimulate other giving” from Democrat donors still sitting on the fence, Soros thought.[20]

He chose The Washington Post to carry his message. Soros sat down with reporter Laura Blumenfeld and issued his now-famous call for regime change in the USA. “America under Bush is a danger to the world,” Soros declared in that November 11, 2003 interview. Toppling Bush, he said, “is the central focus of my life… a matter of life and death. And I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.” Would Soros spend his entire $7-billion fortune to defeat Bush, Blumenfeld asked? “If someone guaranteed it,” Soros replied.

The Shadow Party: Part II By David Horowitz and Richard Poe FrontPageMagazine.com | October 7, 2004

George Soros is an exacting taskmaster. In return for his money, he demands productivity. What he requires of employees and business associates in the investment world, Soros also demands from the political operatives he funds. “Mr. Soros isn't just writing checks and watching,” notes Wall Street Journal reporter Jeanne Cummings. “He is also imposing a business model on the notoriously unruly world of politics. He demands objective evidence of progress, and assigned an aide to monitor the groups he supports. He studies private polls to track the impact of an anti-Bush advertising campaign, and he is delivering his money in installments, giving him leverage if performance falters.”[1]

By early 2004, the Shadow Party’s infrastructure had assumed a coherent shape, under Soros’ guidance. At its heart lay seven ostensibly “independent” non-profit groups which constitute the network’s administrative core. Let us call them the Seven Sisters. In chronological order, based upon their launch dates, they are:

With the exception of MoveOn.org – based in Berkeley, California – all Seven Sisters maintain headquarters in Washington DC. Testifying to the close links between these groups are their interlocking finances, Boards of Directors and corporate officers. In some cases, they even share office space.

For example, two of the Seven Sisters – The Media Fund and Joint Victory Campaign 2004 – share an office in Suite #1100 at 1120 Connecticut Avenue, NW. Three other groups – America Coming Together (ACT), America Votes and The Thunder Road Group – lease offices in the Motion Picture Association Building at 888 16th Street, NW. It is tempting to consider that the clustering of these three groups in a building owned by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) may not be coincidental. The MPAA has long enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Democratic Party; many high-ranking Democrats have slipped comfortably from government jobs into glamorous posts in the MPAA’s upper management.

In March 2004, for instance, Dan Glickman succeeded Jack Valenti as MPAA president. Valenti was a Democrat lobbyist and former aide to President Lyndon Johnson. Glickman was formerly a Democratic Congressman from Kansas, who later served as Secretary of Agriculture in the Clinton White House. Now, as MPAA president, Glickman holds what is arguably the most powerful position in Hollywood.

The Shadow Party draws much of its funding from the entertainment world. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Jane Fonda is the third largest donor to Democrat 527 groups and Hollywood producer Stephen L. Bing takes fourth place. The top four Shadow Party donors are as follows:

Below is a brief overview of the Seven Sisters and their function in the Shadow Party network. The profiles appear in chronological order, according to their launch dates.

“It feels so bourgeois!” exclaimed a man who had just made the first campaign contribution of his life. Recorded by LA Weekly writer Brendan Bernhard, this man’s outburst bespeaks a mass phenomenon for which MoveOn.org can largely take credit. [2]

More than a Web site, MoveOn.org is a movement cleverly tailored to lure the young, the Net-savvy and the self-consciously fashionable into supporting mainstream Democrats such as John Kerry – the sort of candidate whom today’s digital hipsters would normally dismiss as a square. MoveOn’s peculiar contribution to the Shadow Party is its ability to draw into the political process America’s ever-growing hordes of self-absorbed cyber-existentialists – “tech-savvy progressives,” in the words of Salon.com writer Michelle Goldberg – and convince them that a vote for the Democrats is a blow against middle-class conformity. MoveOn is the Joe Camel of the Shadow Party, playing to the deepseated antipathy that bohemians of every age group harbor toward all things normal, wholesome, traditional and adult.

Regarding MoveOn’s success at harnessing popular entertainment to the Democrat cause, whether in the form of rock-concert fundraisers or Bush-bashing ads with an MTV edge, the LA Weekly’s Bernhard concludes, “[I]t's all part of a giant, perhaps unprecedented effort by the country's intellectual and artistic communities to unseat the conspicuously unintellectual, inartistic man in the Oval Office.”

High-tech entrepreneur Wesley Boyd and his wife Joan Blades created MoveOn. Their software company Berkeley Systems Inc. of Berkeley, California made a fortune in the early ‘90s with its “After Dark” screensaver, featuring the famous animated “flying toasters.” When the screensaver market peaked in 1994, Berkeley Systems rolled out a successful line of CD-ROM computer games.[3] Company sales had reached $30 million annually by the time Boyd sold Berkeley Systems in 1997 for $13.8 million.[4]

Idle, wealthy and still full of fight, Boyd and Blades sought new challenges. Angered by the Clinton impeachment, the couple wrote a one-sentence petition and e-mailed it to friends, who then e-mailed it to others in chain-letter fashion. It said, “Censure the president and move on to pressing issues facing the nation.” At the same time, Boyd and Blades launched a Web site enabling people to sign their petition electronically. To their astonishment, 100,000 supporters registered in the first week.

Boyd and Blades realized they were onto something. They launched MoveOn.org on September 22, 1998. One month later, on October 23, they rolled out MoveOn PAC, a federal political action committee designed to siphon political contributions from MoveOn’s fast-growing membership. MoveOn PAC raised millions of dollars for Democrat candidates in the elections of 1998, 2000 and 2002. Today, MoveOn boasts an e-mail list of more than 2.2 million members in the USA and over 800,000 abroad.[5] The lean-and-mean operation rents no office space. Its ten full-time staffers work from home, staying in touch via e-mail, instant messaging and weekly conference calls.[6]

MoveOn’s fundraising feats have impressed Beltway strategists. On April 17, 2004, MoveOn held a national “Bake Sale for Democracy,” in which members conducted more than 1,000 bake sales around the country, raising $750,000 in a single day for MoveOn’s anti-Bush campaign.[7] When a Republican redistricting plan threatened Democrat incumbents in the Texas state senate in May 2003, an appeal from MoveOn brought in $1 million in contributions in two days, to support the beleaguered Democrats.[8]

In 2002, Boyd and Blades hired 32-year-old Zack Exley as MoveOn’s organizing director. A computer programmer and Web designer by trade, Exley had gained national attention during the 2000 campaign when he launched GWBush.com, a Web site featuring doctored photographs portraying candidate Bush as a dope fiend. Exley was a hardened activist of the extreme Left. Trained by the AFL-CIO, he had worked as an undercover union organizer for five years, and also done a stint training activists for the Ruckus Society, an anarchist group whose violent tactics first caught the public eye during the 1999 riots against the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.[9] Exley brought a ruthless edge to MoveOn’s fundraising and propaganda drives which soon aroused the admiration of mainstream Democrats.

In May 2003, the Howard Dean presidential campaign hired Exley away from MoveOn for two weeks in order to turbocharge Dean’s Web operations. Exley finally left MoveOn for good in April 2004 to become Director of Online Communications and Online Organizing for the Kerry-Edwards campaign.

In the meantime, George Soros had incorporated MoveOn into his Shadow Party. Following the September 17, 2003 meeting between Soros and Boyd mentioned in Part 1, Soros and his associates poured nearly $6.2 million into MoveOn over a period of six months, according to the Center for Public Integrity. The contributions include $2.5 million from George Soros personally; $2.5 million from Peter B. Lewis of Progressive Insurance; $971,427 from Peter Bing of Shangri-La Entertainment; $100,000 from Benson & Hedges tobacco heir Lewis Cullman; and $101,000 from Soros’ 34-year-old son Jonathan T. Soros, an attorney and financier recently promoted to deputy manager of Soros Fund Management LLC.

Jonathan Soros has become personally involved with MoveOn.org’s activities. In December 2003, he collaborated with techno-rocker Moby to organize “Bush in 30 Seconds,” an online contest for the best 30-second anti-Bush TV ad. MoveOn agreed to air the winning commercial on national television. Among the 1,500-odd submissions to the contest were two ads juxtaposing footage of George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler. MoveOn posted these ads on its site. Under pressure from Jewish groups and Republicans, MoveOn pulled the Hitler ads and apologized for them. [10]

Despite such gaffes, MoveOn need not worry about its media image. Major networks and newspapers pour forth an endless flood of free publicity for the group. Calculated in terms of equivalent advertising fees, the millions MoveOn raises in political contributions doubtless pales in value beside the worshipful profiles and saccharine coverage which major media never tire of bestowing upon Boyd and Blades’ Web site and political campaigns.

The Shadow Party: Part III By David Horowitz and Richard Poe FrontPageMagazine.com | October 11, 2004

At the Shadow Party’s "Take Back America" conference in Washington on June 3, 2004, following a glowing introduction from Hillary Clinton, George Soros stepped to the podium to explain to the audience that when it came to electoral politics in the USA, he was a newcomer. Only his outrage over Bush’s invasion of Iraq had stirred him to get involved in the partisan struggle. "[I]t is the first time that I feel that I need to stand up and do something, and become really engaged in the electoral process in this country," Soros said.[1]

This was far from the truth, however. Whatever reasons Soros had for entering party politics, they clearly pre-dated the war in Iraq or George W. Bush. Soros has been neck-deep in Democrat intrigue since at least 1994. Three weeks after Republicans swept Congress in the mid-term elections that year, Soros dtated in a November 30, 1994 speech that he wished to "do something about… the distortion of our electoral process by the excessive use of TV advertising." [2] Evidently, Soros realized that the most efficient way to control political advertising would be to control the flow of "soft money" earmarked for the political parties. Within eight months of Soros’ speech, Democrat Senator Russ Feingold obligingly rose on the Senate floor to denounce soft money abuses, thus setting in motion the political steamroller that would ultimately flatten all opposition and give us the McCain-Feingold Act of March 27, 2002.

Few Americans realize that it was George Soros who bankrolled the seven-year lobbying effort without which McCain-Feingold never would have seen the light of day. As a Wall Street Journal editorial noted, "Combine… the $1.7 million that Mr. Soros gave the Center for Public Integrity, the $1.3 million he gave Public Campaign, the $300,000 to Democracy 21, the $625,000 to Common Cause, and the $275,000 to Public Citizen – and you can be forgiven for believing Mr. Soros got campaign finance passed all by himself." [3]

But to what end did he do it? Why did Soros spend seven years and millions of dollars pushing a soft-money ban through Congress, only to turn around in 2004 and mount an equally ambitious effort – through the Shadow Party – to circumvent that ban and bankroll the John Kerry campaign? Many critics have accused Soros of "hypocrisy" for playing both sides of the McCain-Feingold fence. However, his actions may not be as contradictory as they appear.

By pushing McCain-Feingold through Congress, Soros cut off the Democrats’ soft-money supply. By forming the Shadow Party, Soros offered the Democrats an alternate money spigot – one which he personally controlled. As a result the Democrats are heavily – perhaps even irretrievably – dependent on Soros. It seems reasonable to consider the possibility that McCain-Feingold, from its very inception, was a Soros power play to gain control of the Democratic Party.

With Ted Kennedy well into his 72nd year, and the Kennedy clan in overall decline, no dynasty of comparable wealth or ambition has stepped forward to lead the Democrats. George Soros may well aspire to fill the vacuum that the Kennedys have left. At age 74, his thoughts have turned more and more to dynasty building. Soros has five children; three by his first wife Annaliese and two by his second wife Susan. Since September, Soros has effectively placed his two eldest sons in charge of his financial empire. Robert Daniel Soros, 41, and Jonathan T. Soros, 34, now handle the day-to-day investment decisions of Soros Fund Management, as chief investment officer and deputy chairman respectively.[4]

Robert and Jonathan have also followed their father into politics. As mentioned in Part 2, Jonathan Soros is a MoveOn.org activist, a financial sponsor of MoveOn, and a contributor to other Shadow Party groups as well. His brother Robert is focusing, for the time being, on state-level politics. Robert and his wife Melissa gave $100,000 to the New York State Democratic Campaign Committee in 2004. "I live in New York and understand the importance of state government," Robert explained to the New York Post.[5]

If indeed the Soros family means to rule the Democrats – perhaps even more comprehensively than the Kennedys once did – they have found a power base for their ambitions among the party’s left wing. A cover story for The New York Times Magazine of July 25, 2004 – on the very eve of the Democratic Convention’s opening ceremonies in Boston – provided a glimpse of the tidal force now sweeping the destinies of Democrats and their Party in its wake. Written by Matt Bai, the story bore the title, "Wiring the Vast Leftwing Conspiracy," but it might just as well have been called, "The Democratic Party is Dead – Long Live the Shadow Party!" For that was the clear message its contents conveyed.[6] "As Democrats converge on Boston this week to hold their party convention and formally anoint Kerry as their nominee, all the talk will be of resurgence, unity and a new sense of purpose. Don't be fooled," Bai warned. According to Bai, the unspoken question haunting the convention would be, "in the era after big government," what "is the party’s reason for being?"

With the Democratic Convention’s opening ceremonies only 24 hours away, Bai urged readers to, "be sure to take a long, last look. The Democratic Party of the machine age, so long dominant in American politics, could be holding its own Irish wake near Boston's North End. The power is already shifting -- not just within the party, but away from it altogether."

The independence of Soros’ Shadow Party has proved a double-edged sword for Democrats. On the one hand, it allows Democrats to circumvent the law, by delegating what amounts to a new form of "soft-money" fundraising to an outside agency. On the other hand, Democrats today have become so dependent on that outside agency that some Shadow Party operatives have begun to question whether they even need the Democrats any longer. Why not break off and form their own party, they ask? In his article, Bai regaled his readers with a dismal recitation of figures documenting the collapse of Democrat power. He wrote:

"Since the 1950's, when nearly half of all voters called themselves Democrats, nearly one in six Democrats has left the party, according to a University of Michigan study, while Republican membership has held close to steady.… [T]he Democratic Party has seen an exodus of the white working-class men who were once their most reliable voters. In the suburbs… the percentage of white men supporting the party has plummeted 16 points just since Bill Clinton left office. …[Democrats] have spent most of the last decade in the minority, and during that time they have never enjoyed a majority of more than a single vote.”

Bai summed up the damage thus: "… Thirty years ago, Democrats could claim outright control of 37 state legislatures, compared with only 4 for Republicans; Democrats now control just 17." Democratic strategist Pat Caddell, a participant in the Soros-Huffington Shadow Convention, agreed: "The deterioration is steady, and it's spreading like a cancer. So much for thinking that if we could just go back to the glorious 90's, the party would be fine. The 90's were our worst decade since the 1920's."

According to Bai, the last best hope for "progressive" politics in America lies in what he calls the "vast leftwing conspiracy," by which he means the network of independent, non-profit issue groups controlled by Soros, Ickes and their allies: the Shadow Party. "This is like post-Yugoslavia. We used to have a strongman called the party. After McCain-Feingold, we dissolved the power of Tito," exulted Soros supporter Andrew Stern, a former SDS and anti-Vietnam war activist, now president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) which has put $64 million into the Kerry campaign. Shadow Party co-founder Harold Ickes extolled the hip, youthful spirit that MoveOn.org’s online activists have brought to political organizing on the left. He told Bai:

" ‘When you go out and talk to them, people are much more interested in something like MoveOn.org than in the Democratic Party. It has cachet. There is no cachet in the Democratic Party. MoveOn raised a million dollars for a bunch of Texas state senators, man. Plus their bake sale. If they continue with their cachet and really interest people and focus their people on candidates -- boy, that's a lot of leverage. No party can do that. And what the political ramifications of that are –‘Ickes's voice trailed off. He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ "

Bai’s article shined a spotlight on what he called "next-generation liberals" – rising Young Turks of the Shadow Party like Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Rappaport and Jonathan Soros. According to Bai, these young leftists "have come to view progressive politics as a market in need of entrepreneurship, served poorly by a giant monopoly – the Democratic Party." The solution? "People like Andy Rappaport and Jonathan Soros might succeed in revitalizing progressive politics -- while at the same time destroying what we now call the Democratic Party."

SEIU leader Andrew Stern agrees with Bai. Despite the $64 million he has poured into the Kerry campaign, Stern seems oddly apathetic toward the party Kerry represents. "There is an incredible opportunity to have the infrastructure for a third party," he told Bai. "Anyone who could mobilize these groups would have the Democratic Party infrastructure, and they wouldn't need the Democratic Party." It would be a radical dream come true.

What exactly would a third party – guided by George Soros and his radicals – envision and seek to accomplish that today’s Democrats cannot or will not do? The possibilities are endless. In the past, Bai explains, contributions to the Democratic Party simply vanished down a black hole, to be spent as Party leaders saw fit. The 527s allow "ideological donors" such as George and Jonathan Soros to apply their money to specific projects which enable them to shape Party goals and strategy – or even to by-pass the Party altogether.

New Democrat Network president Simon Rosenberg told Bai that independent 527s would be free to attack ideological foes with a forcefulness mainstream Democrats would never dare display. Insurgents such as Rosenberg are looking for a "more defiant kind of politics," which confronts head-on the "sharp ideological divide between them and the Rush Limbaugh right," notes Bai.

In the final analysis, the movers and shakers of the Shadow Party may or may not decide to break off and go it alone, forming a Progressive Party to the left of the Democrats as Henry Wallace and the Communist Party did in 1948 (Wallace lost and the Progressive Party disintegrated after a pitiful showing in the 1952 elections). The defiant statements to Matt Bai, on the other hand, might be merely shots across the bow – warnings to Democrat moderates to take the Shadow Party and its leftwing agenda seriously, or risk a devastating party split. Either way, the Shadow Party emerges a winner and is here to stay. Barring a change in the campaign funding laws, its power will continue to grow, whether as part of a coalition that includes the Democratic Party or not. Already, Shadow Party control of Democrat fundraising has given Soros and his minions influence over the party’s platform , strategy and candidate. Should John Kerry take the White House in this election, the Shadow Party will have a throne in the West Wing.

David Horowitz is the author of Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left.

[1] “Text of Zell Miller’s Speech at RNC,” The Associated Press, 1 September 2004

[2] “Carter to Miller: `You Have Betrayed Our Trust,’” Cox News Service, 7 September 2004

[3] “The Life of Ronald Wilson Reagan: 1911-2004,” The Washington Times, 7 June 2004, A12

[4] Thomas B. Edsall, “Campaign Money Finds New Conduits As Law Takes Effect: Shadow Organizations to Raise `Soft Money,’” The Washington Post, 5 November 2002, A02

[5] Lorraine Woellert, “The Evolution of Campaign Finance?” Business Week, 15 September 2003, 62

[6] George Soros, The Crisis of Global Capitalism (New York: PublicAffairs, 1998), 102

[7] Andrew Ferguson, “The Arianna Sideshow,” Time Magazine, 31 July 2000, 22

[8] Barry Massey, “Ads in New Mexico Paid For By `Stealth PACS,’” Associated Press, 4 November 2000

[9] Aimee Welch, “When Voters Are the Legislators,” Insight on the News, 11 December 2000, 22

[10] Jeanne Cummings, “Soros Has a Hunch Bush Can Be Beat,” The Wall Street Journal, 5 February 2004

[11] Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (New York: Viking, 2002)

[12] Ellsberg, Secrets, 2002; Seymour M. Hersh, “Kissinger and Nixon in the White House,” The Atlantic, May 1982

[13] Morton H. Halperin and Jeanne M. Woods, “Ending the Cold War at Home,” Foreign Policy, Winter 1990–1991, 136.

[14] Morton H. Halperin, Jerry Berman, Robert Borosage and Christine Marwick, The Lawless State: The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies (Washington, DC: Center for National Security Studies, 1976), 5

[15] Morton Halperin, “The Case Against Covert Action,” The Nation, 21 March 1987, 345

[16] Andrea Pringle, “George Soros Opens Washington Office: Wants Open Society Institute to Have Added Impact on Policy” (press release), Open Society Institute, Washington DC, 10 June 2002

[17] Jeanne Cummings, “Soros Has a Hunch Bush Can Be Beat,” The Wall Street Journal, 5 February 2004

[18] Laura Blumenfeld, “Soros’s Deep Pockets vs. Bush,” Washington Post, 11 November 2003, A03

[19] Blumenfeld, “Soros’s Deep Pockets vs. Bush”; Michelle Goldberg, “MoveOn Moves Up,” Salon.com, December 1, 2003

[1] Jeanne Cummings, “Soros Has a Hunch Bush Can Be Beat,” The Wall Street Journal, 5 February 2004

[3] Steve Ginsberg, “Expanding the House that `Jack’ Built,” San Francisco Business Times, January 26, 1996, 7

[4] Bernhard, “Tempest in a Teapot” ; Chris Taylor and Karen Tumulty, “MoveOn’s Big Moment,” Time Magazine, November 24, 2003, 32

[6] Bernhard, “Tempest in a Teapot” ; Chris Taylor and Karen Tumulty, “MoveOn’s Big Moment”

[9] Lowell Ponte, “Zack Exley: Kerry’s Toxic Web Spider,” FrontPageMagazine.com, August 31, 2004

[10] Renuka Rayasam, “Piqued? Make an Anti-Bush TV Spot,” The Austin American Statesman, October 30, 2003, A11; “RNC Attacks Bush-Hitler Ad,” WorldNetDaily.com, January 4, 2004; “2nd Bush-Hitler Ad Posted,” WorldNetDaily.com, January 5, 2004

[1] Comments by George Soros, Take Back America Conference, Federal News Service, Washington DC, 3 June 2004

[2] Speech by George Soros, Alexander Ming Fisher Lecture Series, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, 30 November 1994

[3] “The Soros Agenda: Free Speech for Billionaires Only,” Wall Street Journal, 30 December 2003; In a letter to the Wall Street Journal, Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook indicated that the $275,000 Soros gave to Public Citizen was earmarked for projects other than campaign finance reform (Joan Claybrook, “Clarifying Soros Funding,” Wall Street Journal, 6 January 2004)

[4] Riva D. Atlas, “2 Soros Sons Get More Control of the Business,” The New York Times, 6 October 2004, C1

[5] Fredric U. Dicker, “Soros Jr.’s Splurge – Tycoon’s Son Spends Liberally on N.Y. Dems,” New York Post, 10 August 2004, 6

[6] Matt Bai, “Wiring the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy,” The New York Times Magazine, 25 July 2004, 30

I have often wondered what motivates George Soros' intense hatred of the United States, and by extension, the rest of the civilised world. After reading the series above, I came away with a much better understanding of the dangerous game Soros is playing. Most people are at least dimly aware that George Soros is the string-puller behind a number of subversive front groups. Here's a question to ponder...Are there any strings that control George Soros?

"George Soros is the string-puller behind a number of subversive front groups. Here's a question to ponder...Are there any strings that control George Soros?"

Probably. Most men like a Soros are front men for many men.

"Soros offered no coherent solution to the problem. He simply continued his long-established pattern of pouring money into a hodge-podge of fashionable leftwing causes, such as promoting mass immigration into the United States; financing anti-gun lawsuits and lobbyists; demanding voting rights for felons; seeking the abolition of capital punishment; exacerbating Palestinian unrest; promoting abortion; feminism; population control; gay liberation; euthanasia; radical theories of education; marijuana legalization and global government."

It's as if George Soros is the embodiment of just about every evil special interest out there.

"Here's a question to ponder...Are there any strings that control George Soros?"

People at Soros level aren't controlled. However, I believe there are a number of 'marriages of convenience'. For that, you'd have to look globally at not only individuals, but governments, and who would gain or lose should the US fall.

The question is whether Sors et al intend to establish socialism, as we term it, or rather, a "third way" global government which would be, in my opining, a modern day version of a feudal society.

Look at the modern day third way feudal societies....two immediately come to mind... Saudi Arabia, and China.

China, IMHO, is neither strictly capitalistic, (or striving to be) or communistic, but rather feudalistic / fascistic.

So, if I was looking long term at Soros' 'partners', perhaps I would look to the Middle East, and China.

This is a tremendous series of articles from David Horowitz and Richard Poe. A great thanks to both for their hard work and excellent reportage. (I think Richard Poe actually posts items here once in a while.)

If you want to find out about Soros - and how he is poisoning our nation, this series of 3 articles gives an excellent overview. The one area where we need more info is on Soros' connection and influence over the stick market, the futures markets (especially crude oil), etc. Soros owns several members of Congress - Feingold, McCain, and others. He a very dangerous individual. The more his activities are exposed to the light of day, the less potential for harm.

Only his outrage over Bush’s invasion of Iraq had stirred him to get involved in the partisan struggle.

Oh ? Maybe he's a beneficiary of Saddam's kickbacks. Not that he needs the money but the power and ego is everything.

"So, if I was looking long term at Soros' 'partners', perhaps I would look to the Middle East, and China."

Are you saying Soros is deliberately trying to weaken our Republic to facilitate our slide into a governmental system such as China's? In other words, are you saying George Soros preaches the "Open Society" in order to bring about a closed one?

Top Four Shadow Party Contributions to Democrat 527s Contributors (August 2000 – August 2004)
--------------------------------------------------------
Peter B. Lewis $14,375,000.00
George and Susan W. Soros $13,120,000.00
Jane Fonda $13,085,750.00
Stephen L. Bing $9,869,014.00

Courtesy The Center for Public Integrity

Okay, 3 points...

1. How many people know how much Hanoi Jane has given to the Democrat front groups? How many people know that she's given as much as Soros to support Kerry's election? How many vets know this?

2. Peter Lewis of Progressive Insurance has just ensured that I will NEVER spend a dime with his company. I understand why it's behind the scenes because it's bad business. I don't want to buy his products knowing that some of it goes to fund his causes, which I disagree with.

3. Who the heck is Stephen Bing?

"1. How many people know how much Hanoi Jane has given to the Democrat front groups?"

Poe and Horowitz is as good a place to start as any. Apparently her appology for her anti-Vietnam activities didn't mean all that much. It would also appear that her "conversion" to Christianity didn't take hold. It will be difficult, but I am going to pray for her tonight.

No need to apologize!--it's an important article and if more people read it because of your post that's good. As a general rule, though, before you post an article it's advisable to do a search to see if there's already a thread on it.

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