Conservative Think Tanks Spreading Their Ideas Like Wildfire

by Bill Berkowitz

Some argue that it is because the Right has most of the good ideas. That is nonsense. There are many Progressive organizations doing great grass roots organizing and putting forth terrific programs.

Others simplistically say that it's right-wing money that makes the difference. While there's no question that money has a huge impact, it does not automatically lead to a successful initiative. Good ideas and seemingly unlimited resources are only two weapons in the Right's multi-layered arsenal.

One of the most underrated, yet most significant weapons of the Right is their ability to market their ideas. In many cases it doesn't matter if the ideas are correct or not -- it is often the sheer weight of the argument that rules the day.

In marketing, the Right trumps the left by a large margin.

Does it always have to be this way?

At their own peril, Progressive organizations frequently either refuse to acknowledge the importance of marketing, do not devote the time or resources to it, or find it downright distasteful. It goes without saying that Progressives have been painfully deficient in this area.

Ed Fuelner, President of the Heritage Foundation, recognizing the importance of marketing says: "we don't just stress credibility...we stress an efficient, effective delivery system. Production is one side; marketing is equally important." Heritage, now more than twenty-five years-old and perhaps the most succesful of all the right-wing think tanks, manages its own well-staffed and highly-funded information delivery system.

Karen Judd, author of the Welfare Reform Update for the Pro-Choice Resource Center's Opposition Primer writes that "in a historic shift, responsibility for support for poor families moved from the federal government to the states, which now have wide latitude to design their own programs."

The right's "welfare reform" initiative did not drop fully-formed from the sky. It can be traced back to the "Old" Right of the 1960s -- during the halcyon days of Barry Goldwater and the John Birch Society. At first glance, it appears pretty amazing that ideas which began with such a strange pedigree came to fruition several decades later. However, it was not the weirdness of its origin, so much as the tenaciousness and firepower of its later-day backers, that won the day.

"Welfare reform" was polished, sharpened, and nudged forward bit-by-bit by well-funded think tanks and policy institutes. At the same time Ronald Reagan's phony anecdotes about "welfare queens" -- and don't for a moment think this wasn't marketing -- set the political stage.

It is not much of a stretch to realize that the current discussion over the privatization of Social Security might be heading in exactly the same direction.

The marketeers are spreading the message prepared by the researchers and advocates from beltway think tanks.

In this age of devolution -- the movement of public policy initiatives from the federal government to the states -- it is not surprising that one of the fastest-growing right-wing enterprises is the phenomenon of state-based conservative think tanks. The whole process, developed in Washington, is shifting to the states.

Like their older sisters, state-based organizations are supported by the concerted efforts of a number of conservative foundations and individual philanthropists. David Callahan, author of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's recent study, $1 Billion for Ideas: Conservative Think Tanks in the 1990s, points out that, "spending by the top twenty conservative think tanks will likely top $1 billion in the nineties. In 1996 alone, these organizations spent $158 million to develop and disseminate policy ideas -- an amount comparable to what the GOP raised in soft-money political donations that year....Much of this money comes from corporations and wealthy businessmen, with conservative think tanks increasingly acting as magnets for special interest money."

Clarkson writes that this network was designed to "provide resources for state-level activists, offering leadership training that would strengthen state-level Republican Parties and, over time, would reinvigorate the Right's national-level leadership."

One of the most significant state-based policy groups is the Heartland Institute. Founded in 1984 by Joseph L. Bast, Heartland is both a think tank and an information clearinghouse -- combining conservative advocacy with state-of-the-art technology. If ever a trendy phrase "just-in-time" information delivery has meaning, it is most assuredly illustrated by Heartland's PolicyFax project.

Heartland's PolicyFax is best exemplified by its 300+ page yearly catalogue which contains over 3,000 research documents, articles, and commentaries, collected from more than 200 think tanks, policy institutes and industry associations. These 4-10 page documents cover the right-wing perspective on a full-range of issues from agriculture to education; from civil rights to the environment; from health care to privatization.

In addition, the conservative and very powerful American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) offers PolicyFax users access to nearly 300 pieces of model legislation. Want to argue against a living wage initiative or in favor of the greater criminalization of youth? All you have to do is check out the ALEC pages in the Heartland catalogue.

Here's the kicker -- this service, open twenty-four-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, is absolutely free to every elected official (regardless of position), every media worker, and researchers from all the other think tanks.

The Ft. Wayne, Indiana-based State Policy Network (SPN), founded in 1992, harnesses the activities of many of these burgeoning state-based think tanks. SPN's role, says Clarkson is to "serve as a coordination agency for 37 state-level think tanks in 30 states...[which] focus on conservative/libertarian campaigns, from welfare reform to school privatization."

It doesn't take an information specialist to realize that these well-funded groups have advanced an unprecedented amount of public policy during the past ten years alone. In fact for the Right, one of the sidebarsof producing all this research is that Progressive groups are often forced to devote precious time and resources to addressing them.

In the mid-seventies I was hired as the first Promotion Director for the North American Congress on Latin America. My job was to double the sales of NACLA's Report on the Americas -- a terrific publication then, as it is now. It was quite a struggle to get the writers and researchers to begin to think in terms of promoting their research, selling magazines and increasing the organization's subscription base, and getting the word out.

That was truly several eons ago in the information business. While methods and vehicles for distribution and delivery have changed dramatically, the need for it to become a priority is still very much in play. Until Progressive organizations develop their own multi-faceted delivery mechanism, similar in some ways to Heartland's all-purpose PolicyFax, Progressives will always be wondering what hit them when the next right-wing idea comes hurtling down the pike.