I’ve been reading "The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party" and wow, is it a eye-opener. So I decided to do a series of posts from the book dealing with the front groups that Soros and his cronies have used to bypass McCain-Feingold to put millions of dollars into the hands of the Democrat party and push that party further to the left.
First some background. The term "Shadow Party" was coined in 2003 by Lorraine Woellert of Business Week in September of 2003 while writing about the 527 groups being assembled by George Soros to circumvent the McCain-Feingold soft money ban. Since McCain-Feingold banned soft money contributions to politicians and political parties, only allowing limited hard money contributions, Soros was easily able to circumvent the ban by giving money to political front groups that were "independent" of any party. An example of a "independent" organization that Soros gave to would be MoveOn.org…..real independent huh?
To the extent that the Shadow Party can be said to have an official launch date, 17 July 2003 probably fits the bill. On that day, a team of political strategists, wealthy donors, left-wing labor leaders and other Democrat activists gathered at George Soros’ Southhampton estate called El Mirador, on Long Island. Aside from Soros, the most noteworthy attendee was Morton H. Halperin, whom Soros had hired the previous year to head the Washington office of his Open Society Institute.
It was at this meeting that Soros laid out his plan to defeat George Bush in the coming election. No one has published a full list of attendees at the meeting but partial lists are 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, who – despite his disloyalty as a Pentagon official during the Vietnam War (or mor likely because of it) 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’ estate 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 left-wing 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, found and president of Emily’s list…
[…["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 left-wing unions, enviromentalists, abortion-rights activists and minority race warriors from civil rights organization.
The author then goes on to detail how Soros summoned Wes Boyd, founder of MoveOn.org, and pledged to donate $1 for ever $2 Boyd could raise from his members, up to 5 million dollars. By November 2003 Soros announced to the world that he had donated millions for one goal, "Toppling Bush".
Under Soros’ guidance, the Shadow Party infrastructure had assumed a coherent shape by early 2004. Making up its framework were seven ostensibly "independent" non-profit groups, which, at the time, constituted the network’s administrative nexus. Let us call them the Seven Sisters. In chronological order, based upon their launch dates, they are:
- MoveOn.org (launched 22 September 1998)
- Center for American Progress (launched 7 July 2003)
- America Votes (launched 15 July 2003)
- America Coming Together (launched 17 July 2003
- The Media Fund (launched 5 November 2003)
- Joint Victory Campaign 2004 (launched 5 November 2003)
- The Thunder Road LLC (launched early 2004)
With the exception of MoveOn.org – based in Berkeley, California – all Seven Sisters maintained headquarters in Washington DC. Testifying to the close links between these groups were their interlocking finances, Boards of Directors and corporate officers. In some cased, they even shared office space.
For example, two of the Seven Sisters – The Media Fund and Joint Victory Campaign 2004 – shared an office in Suite #1100 at 1120 Connecticut Avenue, NW. Three other groups – America Coming Together, America Votes and The Thunder Road Group – leased offices in the Motion Picture Association Building at 888 16th Street, NW.
The authors, David Horowitz and Richard Poe, then detail how involved Hollywood is with this Shadow Party, which should surprise no one. They write about the Democrat lobbyists who have become MPAA presidents, hell…even Clinton’s Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman became the MPAA president. They point out that Jane Fonda was the fourth largest donor to Democrat 527 groups in 2004….again, not surprising. The same people putting out pieces of garbage like "A Mighty Heart" are the same people behind the scenes in the Shadow Party attempting to turn this country into a Socialist heaven.
Over the next few posts I will excerpt this excellent book on each and every one of the Seven Sisters. It’s important information that needs to be disseminated to all conservatives to understand what we are fighting against.
See author page