{"id":840,"date":"2003-11-13T10:29:15","date_gmt":"2003-11-13T15:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/840.html"},"modified":"2003-11-13T10:29:15","modified_gmt":"2003-11-13T15:29:15","slug":"propac-is-a-great-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/propac-is-a-great-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"PROPAC is a great idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last 25 years, the right has made a concerted — and successful — effort to bolster its political and intellectual infrastructure with forward-thinking institutions such as think tanks and PACs. The left has lagged behind every step of the way, but the gap appears to be closing a bit.<\/p>\n

The left, particularly since the 2000 election, has realized its deficiencies in this area and has started playing catch-up. The creation of the Center for American Progress<\/a> is a huge step in the right direction, giving the left a well-funded policy organization with some of the leading figures in American liberalism. The CAP has quickly positioned itself as a serious and respected counterweight to conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation, Cato, and AEI.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, I was also delighted to see that several progressive leaders have created PROPAC<\/a> to mirror the tactics used so effectively by GOPAC.<\/p>\n

Championed by Newt Gingrich during his congressional tenure, GOPAC has done wonders for the Republicans — identifying, recruiting, training, and electing conservative lawmakers at the federal level. Despite GOPAC’s track record, the left was slow to create to similar entity for Dems.<\/p>\n

PROPAC is the latest in the drive to create parallel institutions for the left that the right has enjoyed for years. The PAC will apparently start with a limited focus — emphasizing a few key battleground states in 2004 — but with plans to expand in subsequent cycles.<\/p>\n

I’ve been complaining for years that the left has been too slow in creating these kinds of groups, but it’s better late than never. PROPAC, welcome to the party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last 25 years, the right has made a concerted — and successful — effort to bolster its political and intellectual infrastructure with forward-thinking institutions such as think tanks and PACs. The left has lagged behind every step of the way, but the gap appears to be closing a bit. The left, particularly since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}