November 2006
CONTENTS
George Soros: The Left’s One-Man Message Machine
Page 1
The “Porkbusters” Law: A ModestStep Toward Good Government
Page 7
Philanthropy Notes
Page 8
George Soros:
The Left’s One-Man Message Machine
By Neil Maghami
Summary
:
George Soros recently said hewants to get out of politics. Don’t believehim. The billionaire philanthropist’s quest to influence domestic politics continues.Soros’s methods change, and the issues shift – but his goals remain the same.
Does this photograph show billionaire leftist George Sorosdelighting in the possible demise of the Republican Party?
I
n 2004, George Soros tried to put Demo-crat John Kerry into the White House. In2005, the billionaire philanthropistlaunched a jihad against the Bush adminis-tration and the Republican Congress, fund-ing an array of tax-exempt liberal policy andmedia outfits. In 2006, Soros is hoping for aDemocratic Party breakthrough in the Houseof Representatives. And in his latest book,
The Age of Fallibility:
Consequences of theWar on Terror
, he’s vowed to “support theDemocratic Party until the Republican Partyis recaptured from the extremists.”Love him or loathe him, there is no denyingthat George Soros plays a central role in left-of-center U.S. politics – not only as a funderof causes and candidates, but also asfreelance spokesman and pundit. Soros, inthe words of conservative activist DavidHorowitz, is the leader of a “shadow party”that wants to control the Democratic Party,and eventually, the U.S. government.In 2006, according to mid-September fil-ings, Soros had donated at least $2.3 millionto either Democratic candidates or groups inthe current election cycle. That is much lessthan he contributed in 2004. A $120,000 giftwent to Majority Action, a 527 directed byMark Longabaugh, a former vice presidentfor political affairs at the League of Conser-vation Voters. Soros also hosted a much-publicized fundraiser at his home in New York City’s Upper East Side for 60 guests wholistened to remarks by Senator CharlesSchumer. It raised $250,000 for DemocraticSenate candidates. But while Soros has pulledback on his campaign funding, he remains ascommitted as ever to shifting the climate of ideas by issuing public statements, makingspeeches and granting interviews. Soros ismore willing than ever to launch partisanattacks.Will this be Soros’s final electoral cam-paign? Perhaps. The New York Post reportedin late September that Soros told a Council onForeign Relations meeting, “In the future, I’dvery much like to get disengaged frompolitics…I’m interested in policy and not inpolitics.” That’s understandable – Soros,now in his mid 70s, may be tired of politicians’hat-in-hand visits. But the disdain he claimsto feel for politics will not keep him out of thepolitical arena.
Foundation
Watch
2November 2006
Editor:
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Soros sees a tough fight ahead for the Demo-crats in 2006. Interestingly,
in
The Age of Fallibility,
Soros argues that the principalreason why Democrats must win in 2006 is sothat moderates can recapture the
Republi-can
Party:Because of the way congressionaldistricts have been gerrymandered,capturing the House [by the Demo-crats] will be no easy task in spite of the swing in public opinion againstthe Bush administration. Moreover,the Republican Party is supported bya well-financed conservative move-ment, and the Republican NationalCommittee has an electoral machin-ery that is far superior to that of theDemocratic National Committee…Theultimate objective has to be to recap-ture the Republican Party from theconservative and religious extremistswho now control it….If we are torestore the balance, the extremistsmust be routed. A resounding Demo-cratic victory in 2006 would achievethat.Is that surprising? In 2005 Grover Norquist,president of Americans for Tax Reform, intro-duced Soros as a surprise guest speaker athis celebrated Wednesday morning meetingof the “center-right coalition.” At the meet-ing Soros observed, “I probably would bemost comfortable as a moderate Republican,but [the party] has virtually eliminated itsmoderates.” Later, Norquist reportedly inter-rupted the meeting to reveal that VermontSenator Jim Jeffords, a liberal Republicanturned Independent, had just announcedthat he would not seek re-election. Noted theWashington Times, “Nearly everyone presentbut Mr. Soros broke out in applause.”In 2004, Soros was a big believer in large-scale get-out-the-vote drives. In that elec-tion cycle, Soros won global notoriety byspending, according to most estimates, morethan $27 million to mobilize voters. This pushfocused on what are known as 527 politicalaction committees, which derive their namefrom a part of the U.S. tax code.A 527 group is permitted to accepted unlim-ited contributions and use these towardsadvocacy efforts such as voter mobilizationand political advertising – provided it re-frains from working directly with a politicalparty. Three 527s benefited most from Soros:the Joint Victory Campaign ($12 million),America Coming Together, or ACT, ($7.5million), and MoveOn.org ($2.5 million). [Formore information, see www.opensecrets.org.]MoveOn.org is the 527 that in 2004 helpedcirculate a video that juxtaposed PresidentBush’s image with a speech by Adolf Hitler.Another video circulated by MoveOn.orgused similar imagery accompanied by thewords: “What were war crimes in 1945 isforeign policy in 2003.”Even in an age of attack ads, this is 150-proof stuff. But it pales in comparison toSoros’s own in-your-face approach. In aWashington Post op-ed that appeared inDecember 2003, Soros wrote: “If Americansreject the president’s policies at the polls, wecan write off the Bush Doctrine as a tempo-rary aberration and resume our rightful placein the world. If we endorse those policies, weshall have to live with the hostility of theworld and endure a vicious cycle of escalat-ing violence.” Nearly three years after thisprediction, violence persists, but the U.S. hasfaced no repeat of 9/11. However, this has notdeterred Soros, who continues to argue thatBush policies create violence rather thanforestall it.In September Harold Meyerson, a Wash-ington Post columnist and editor of the leftistAmerican Prospect magazine, examined theDemocrats’ voter mobilization strategy andnoted that Soros-linked 527s play a muchsmaller role in November’s contest.“The most important Democratic player inturning out the base in 2004 can’t point to ahigher level of activity this year,” wroteMeyerson. “Indeed, it has ceased to existaltogether. America Coming Together(ACT)…which pushed Democratic turnoutto record, if insufficient highs in [variousstates], died a quiet death last year when [topfunders George Soros and Peter Lewis] pulledthe plug.”Apparently the billionaire decided hismoney was not well spent. That month, speak-ing to an audience assembled in Washing-
Soros’s decision to cut off funding for‘527’ groups has alienated key Demo-crats like Congressman RahmEmanuel (above).
3November 2006
Foundation
Watch
For frequent updates on environmental groups,nonprofits, foundations, and labor unions, check out theCRC-Greenwatch Blog at
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ton, D.C. by the New America Foundation,Soros meekly volunteered that “You can’tbuy elections with just money,” the FinancialTimes reported September 14.Soros’s decision to stop funding the 527shas not gone unnoticed. As the WashingtonTimes noted (also in September), IllinoisRepresentative Rahm Emanuel, head of theDemocratic Congressional Campaign Com-mittee, is particularly incensed:Referring to Mr. Soros and a couple of other 2004 big spenders, Mr. Emanuelangrily complained recently to Wash-ington Post columnist E.J. Dionne:‘These guys – where are they?’Emanuel is only one of the latest figures onthe political left to vent his exasperation withSoros. But while the politician Emanuel wantsmore Soros giving, liberal pundits and re-formers suspect his money. In October 2004,Fred Wertheimer, of the campaign financereform advocacy group Democracy 21, de-scribed Soros to the Financial Times as hav-ing “gone from being part of the solution tobeing part of the problem.” Even the Wash-ington Post has pointedly editorialized: “Whois he to determine the public interest?”Still, however much the Democrats lose inSoros donations this time around will be morethan made up by Big Labor. The Times hasnoted that labor-affiliated political actioncommittees (PACs) raised about $100 millionin 2005. (See the November 2006
Labor Watch
for the most recent filings of labor 527 politi-cal contributions in 2006.)If Soros won’t bankroll the left in 2006, whatis his role? Full of suggestions, he apparentlysees himself as a “wise man,” an adviser andmentor to politicians and policymakers. Sorosonce said he hoped to be “the conscience of the world.”“I think it’s essential to capture the House[of Representatives],” he told RawStory.comin a September interview. Why? In part, touse “the subpoena power to bring to light themisdeeds by the [Bush] administration.”In the same interview, Soros praised thecarbon tax – his obsession of the moment.(See inset box on page 4. The fullRawStory.com interview is available at http:/ /www.rawstory.com/news/2006/ A_man_in_full_George_Soros_0918.html.)
Soros and the War on Terror
However, it’s foreign policy that is onSoros’s mind most of the time, if his highlypartisan public statements are any indica-tion. Pointing out what he considers U.S.policy failures, he deploys a rhetorical stick against President Bush.Interviewed by the London-based Specta-tor last July, Soros shared his own uniqueinterpretation of the last five years of Ameri-can history:[After 9/11] Bush exploited fear in Ameri-can people. The Bush administration re-inforced the threat posed by terroristsand declared war on terror, making it thecenter piece of his policy – it is reallyexploitational...The practical message forEuropeans [from the rise of the Bushadministration] is that the world reallyneeds a strong European Union with amission which is different to America’spriorities.This is a constant Soros theme. In a Novem-ber 2004 op-ed in the far-left London-basedIndependent, Soros complained that Bush’scampaign “is shamelessly exploiting the fearsgenerated by 9/11. But fear is a bad counse-lor; we must resist it wherever it comes from.If we re-elect President Bush, the war onterror will never end. The terrorists are invis-ible, therefore they can never disappear. It isour civil liberties that may disappear instead.”This August in the Wall Street Journal, hedescribed the “war on terror” as “a falsemetaphor which has led to counterproduc-tive and self-defeating policies….Most Demo-cratic politicians subscribe to it for fear of being tagged as weak on defense.”Soros explains why he wants to retire themetaphor: “Terrorism is an abstraction. Itlumps together all political movements thatuse terrorist tactics. Al-Qaeda, Hamas,Hezbollah, the Sunni insurgency and theMahdi army in Iraq are very different forces,but President Bush’s global war on terrorprevents us from differentiating between themand dealing with them accordingly.”So would Soros prefer to negotiate with the
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