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This Week on the Right

The Glue that Binds the Movement

By Michael Flynn

They are the glue that binds American conservatism—in all its flavors: neoconservative, libertarian, evangelical, triumphalist—into an effective political conglomeration. They fund the right’s magazines, the think tanks, the policy institutes, the writers, and the advocacy groups. They help spearhead public policy campaigns as well as idea networks. And they seem to never take their eye off the ball. They are the conservative foundations—the expansive trough of cash that nourishes much of the right-wing’s political infrastructure.

They are also the envy of liberals and Democrats. “The right has done a marvelous job,” says Rob Stein, a former Clinton administration official who heads up the liberal Democracy Alliance. “They are strategic, coordinated, disciplined, and well financed. And they are well within their rights in a democracy to have done what they’ve done.”

The conservative foundations have been so successful, in fact, that one of their most important members, the John M. Olin Foundation, announced in May that it was closing down, claiming that most of its goals had been achieved. “I guess I would say, looking back on this period, that it’s worked out a lot better than we had any right to expect when we started,” James Piereson, Olin’s executive director, told the New York Observer. “I’m sure some stuff failed or didn’t go anywhere, but not a lot of it.”

Not that Olin’s conservative brethren are resting on their laurels. Just the opposite: Having tasted victory on everything from the nation’s response to terrorism to the effort to push faith-centered enterprises, the foundations are aiding efforts to push through a slate of rightist social policies, including abstinence-only programs, anti-tax initiatives, and campaigns to block stem-cell research and same-sex marriage. The culture wars, it would seem, are as hot as ever. [ Read entire article]

Featured Profiles

Where Would We Be Without Them?
Without their largesse, the American Enterprise Institute might have remained a marginal inside-the-beltway chatter box, the Christian right would not be one of the nation’s premier political forces, the Heritage Foundation might never have existed, and creationism would not have morphed into the nuanced political campaign advocating “Intelligent Design.”
Right Web Profiles of conservative foundations: Olin, Scaife, Castle Rock, Earhart, Bradley, Smith Richardson

See also

Right Web Profiles: Richard Mellon Scaife, Philanthropy Roundtable, Michael Joyce, Leslie Lenkowsky

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