Democracy Alliance buying liberal core values
Most people believe that a "core value" is an immutable and essential definition of who you are and what you stand for, a philosophical bedrock of beliefs that should naturally bubble to the surface, even in politics. If you must hunt and peck for them, you don't really have them ...
For the last several months, Democratic Party leaders have argued amongst themselves while piecing together a Rube Goldberg-like party platform of "core beliefs" in a desperate attempt to illustrate relevance and viability to a skeptical nation. Since beginning late last year and after seven failed attempts, they are still trying to figure out what they stand for -- and what the American people will believe -- prior to this November's midterm election.
This is a classic example of placing the cart before the horse. People do not normally join a political movement and then decide in what they believe. No, they tend to gravitate toward a party because it already embodies the principles and values they share.
Democrats criticize Republicans at the drop of a sound bite over issues such as tax cuts and the administration's conduct of the Iraq war, but they don't spell out what they would do differently. They are forced to be deceitful, because they already found out that telling the public what they really believe, like retreat from Iraq, is not popular with whom liberal elites consider to be hayseeds and dullards living in flyover country.
Hicks we may be, but we listen and we vote.
Specious issues, no substance
Merely responding with a list of specious issues they support or oppose without providing substantive ideas to deal with those issues is a losing proposition at election time. So what are Democrats doing to dig themselves out of this quagmire?
Buying values. Paying to obtain instant core beliefs.
As reported today in the al-Washington Post, an alliance of nearly one hundred of the nation's wealthiest donors is directing more than $80 million to liberal think tanks and advocacy groups in what organizers say is the first installment of a long-term campaign to compete more aggressively against conservatives.
A year after its founding, Democracy Alliance has become a major left-wing player, lavishing millions on groups willing to submit to its extensive screening process and its demands for secrecy, such as the liberal Center for American Progress, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and Media Matters for America.
Democracy Alliance is also investing heavily to keep afloat the failed liberal talk radio network, Air America. It remains to be seen whether this infusion of cash can resuscitate a network that was trounced by conservative radio in the arena of ideas and saw its finances collapse in direct correlation to its nonexistent market share.
But it is not quite time to sing Kum Ba Yah just yet. Democracy Alliance also has some Washington political leaders and activists concerned about what they perceive as a distinctly far-Left tilt to the group's operational control of funding. They worry that the alliance's influence may disenfranchise the Democratic Party's remaining members with a more centrist ideology.
Rabid radicalism
This is a valid concern, considering that Democracy Alliance was formed last year with major funding from billionaires such as radical left-wing financier George Soros and Colorado software entrepreneur Tim Gill. Among the organizations that did not receive financial support were such well-known centrist groups as the Democratic Leadership Council and the Truman National Security Project.
As if to drive this leftward shift home, Rob Stein, co-founder of Democracy Alliance, said:
"It is not possible in the 21st century to promote a coherent belief system and maintain political influence without a robust, enduring local, state, and national institutional infrastructure. Currently, the center-left is comparatively less strategic, coordinated, and well-financed than the conservative right. These comparative disadvantages are debilitating."
If so, the possibility exists that the Democratic Party may find it difficult to conjure up marketable core values, no matter how much money they squander in the effort.
Furthermore, this may be a perilous course to take, as to do so not only drags the party farther away from legitimate core ideals they once embraced long ago, but alienates the very party members who honorably served as standard-bearers. It certainly can't help that by targeting moderate liberals such as Joe Lieberman, the Democratic Party is revealing its true, far-Left agenda to America. Can any store-bought values system overcome such negatives?
It is questionable whether the hot-blooded radicals who now control the Democratic Party succeed in selling its new-found bundle of beliefs, when and if it is ever cobbled together. Sales depend on how much Middle America remembers that these are the same people who derisively equate heartland values as nothing more than xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia.
And that just won't sell in the heartland.