Heritage Action to Pour Millions Into 2018 Elections

Here is more from the Wall Street Journal:

Heritage Action for America, a political sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, has spent years getting Republicans riled up in policy fights. Now the group is trying something new: getting GOP lawmakers elected.

Founded in 2010, Heritage Action spent its early years stirring controversy as it pushed GOP leaders and lawmakers to take a more combative approach in negotiations with former President Barack Obama, a Democrat. But with President Donald Trump, a Republican, in office, the group is recalibrating its strategy and, for the first time, is getting significantly involved in congressional elections.

“The tactics have to change when you [Republicans] have the House, the Senate and the White House,” Tim Chapman, executive director of Heritage Action, said in an interview Monday.

“We have got a very good apparatus built for stopping bad legislation and for holding people accountable. We’re not quite as effective as we’d like to be at passing good pieces of legislation,” he said.

To change that, Heritage Action plans to spend $2.5 million, starting in early September, to help Republicans win in 14 congressional districts. The group plans to use its money on direct mail and digital ads promoting its view of how the tax law passed by Republicans last December is benefiting voters there. Additional money raised could be used on television ads, said the group’s vice president, Jessica Anderson.

The hope is that the campaign efforts will create allies on Capitol Hill and give Heritage Action ways to reward lawmakers, not just criticize them when the group views their voting records as not conservative enough. 

In related news, Heritage Action has created a "pro-Kavanaugh activist toolkit to secure the Supreme Court for decades to come," according to Right Wing Watch.

German Think Tanks Hit By Cyber Attacks Ahead of Elections

Think tanks both in the US and elsewhere continue to be big targets for cyber attackers trying to steal information or influence election outcomes.

Here is more from Reuters:

Two foundations tied to Germany’s ruling coalition parties were attacked by the same cyber spy group that targeted the campaign of French presidential favorite Emmanuel Macron, a leading cyber security expert said on Tuesday.

The group, dubbed "Pawn Storm" by security firm Trend Micro, used email phishing tricks and attempted to install malware at think tanks tied to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Feike Hacquebord said.

Hacquebord and other experts said the attacks, which took place in March and April, suggest Pawn Storm is seeking to influence the national elections in the two European Union powerhouses.

Pawn Storm set up a fake computer server located based in Germany at kasapp.de to mount email phishing attacks against the CDU party's Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) and a server located in the Ukraine at intern-fes.de to target the SPD's Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES).

As Think Tank Watch has widely documented, cyber attacks on think tanks are becoming more prevalent, and nearly every major think tank has faced multiple attacks.

Roosevelt Institute Becoming Clinton's Go-To Think Tank?

The liberal think tank Roosevelt Institute has gained enormous influence during the past year as more and more are taking their work seriously amid an increased focuses on inequality and progressive politics.

Here is more from the New York Times Magazine:

Felicia Joy Wong runs the Roosevelt Institute, a small think tank (for lack of a better term) that originated in trusts established to promote the legacies of Franklin and Eleanor.  Its chief economist, the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, indirectly coined the Occupy movement's enduring slogan ("We are the 99 percent"), and Stiglitz and Wong each saw the election as an opportunity to channel Occupy energy into national politics.

...Unlike the myriad other white papers that each week were drafted, edited, somnolently received at other think tanks and shelved without fanfare, this report [Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy] had captured wide and consequential attention.  In the months leading up to its publication, the Roosevelt team was in close touch with Clinton's speechwriters and advisers, and in subsequent rallies the candidate continued to draw upon the report, even at the level of explicit language; calls to "rewrite the rules" found their way into more of her addresses.  The many news reports that linked the speech to Wong's organization consistently and erroneously relocated her team to Washington.  (Their headquarters are in Midtown Manhattan, in an Art Deco tower in the shadow of the Citigroup Center.)

Roosevelt is a 501(c)(3), and though it does maintain a political-action arm, it does not work to elect specific candidates.  Still, various representatives from Clinton's speechwriting and policy teams regularly solicit the organization's input.  Roosevelt in turn has redoubled its efforts not only on advancing the ideas in "Rewriting the Rules" but also in recruiting the personnel necessary to carry them out, in the form of a methodical effort to find suitable candidates for economic positions in a future presidential administration.

Here is more about Ms. Wong:

[Felicia Joy] Wong really does seem like an improbable person to preside over a think tank.  She grew up in Silicon Valley, studies poetry at Stanford, got a Ph.D. in political science at Berkeley, worked as a high-school teacher and then at a valley start-up and then happened into a job at the Democracy Alliance, a semi-secretive club of progressive donors.  She can barely bring herself to utter the phrase "think tank," much less "policy shop."  Late one evening in Washington, we walked by a thickset monolith that glowed with cold marmoreal light, as if James Turrell had built a fortress for some paranoid ice king.  The front read CSIS: the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  Wong rolled her eyes, theatrically shuddered and tucked her runaway hair behind her ear.  "Now that's a think tank."

On Roosevelt Institute vs. Center for American Progress:

On the left, there are lots of small organizations in Washington that publish granular research on specific economic trends.  But the most significant liberal think tank in recent years has been the Center for American Progress, founded in 2003 by former Bill Clinton chief of staff (and current Hillary Clinton campaign chair) John Podesta as his party's answer to the conservative Heritage Foundation.  CAP has done a lot of innovative policy work, especially on universal preschool and health care, but it was always less of a research organization than a shadow government for an opposition in exile.  When Obama was elected, roughly a third of CAP's staff went into his administration.  (Today, CAP's economic ideas are more in line with those of Roosevelt, and in 2015 it released a report on short-termism that anticipated part of "Rewriting the Rules.")

On How Roosevelt Institute has changed in the Obama era:

In 2009, a political scientist named Andrew Rich, known for writing about the "war of ideas," was drafted to reinvent the Roosevelt Institute as a place for the radical thinking that postcrisis politics seemed to require.  Roosevelt at the time was an ad hoc collection of spare progressive parts, including the upkeep of the F.D.R. Library in Hyde Park, N.Y.  Rich believed that if you weren't in Washington, and you weren't beholden to the party apparatus, and if you got the right people - people who were too idiosyncratic or rough-hewn for academia, or academics who wanted to be politically relevant bu needed help with finding an audience for their work - you could crate a new kind of institution on a looser, livelier model.  Rich brought on [Joseph] Stiglitz and Mike Konczal, who pseudonymous financial-crisis blog had a cult following among progressives

On Roosevelt Institute ties to Elizabeth Warren:

Elizabeth Warren is a key Roosevelt ally.  While Warren worked on the TARP oversight panel, she needed somewhere to park her aide-decamp, Dan Geldon, to help draft the details on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that was being set up on the basis of her ideas.  He served as a fellow, and he and Warren maintain close ties to Roosevelt.

On the think tank's recruitment efforts & "Rewriting the Rules":

When Wong took over in 2012, she continued to recruit staff members and fellows who were at once nonaligned and well connected: to the A.F.T. and S.E.I.U., Demos, MoveOn, the Clintons.  By January 2015, Wong had decided, along with her communications director, Marcus Mrowka, and her vice president of research and policy, Nell Abernathy, to prepare for the coming election by creating a full-dress economic agenda that would be there for the candidates' taking.  "Rewriting the Rules" got funding from the Ford Foundation, whose decision last year to refocus around the issues of inequality was influenced by Roosevelt...While written by Stiglitz, the paper was worked out in consultation with labor officials, academics, congressional staff members and - unusually for a think tank - advocates from places like Color for Change, Naral and the Black Civic Engagement Fund.

On Roosevelt Institute vs. Heritage Foundation:

In July, The Boston Globe reported that Roosevelt had been leading a campaign to help staff the economic-policy positions in future presidential administrations.  Since the 1970s, movement conservatism has consistently outperformed progressives in laying a talent conduit.  Heritage identifies young candidates and grooms them for a smooth climb through the system; adjacent to its headquarters is a library-dorm for its interns, replete with piles of free Hayek.  Roosevelt's project, likewise, is about finding people with the economic, legal and regulatory experience to change the country's balance of power.

The report "Rewriting the Rules" can be found here.  And here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece on how the think tank has been trying to influence Clinton's cabinet picks.

Also, here is a Politico article on how the think tank in helping draft a blacklist of prospective Clinton hires.  Among those already on the blacklist include Tom Nides (now Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Wilson Center) and Lael Brainard (formerly of Brookings).

Roosevelt Institute Trying to Influence Clinton Cabinet Picks

The New York-based liberal think tank Roosevelt Institute is trying to influence who Hillary Clinton chooses for her Cabinet if she becomes president.  Here is more from the Boston Globe:

Now left-leaning Democrats, worried about being shut out of a centrist administration if Hillary Clinton wins in November, are furiously compiling what amount to binders full of liberals for the presumptive nominee’s consideration.

Spearheading the effort is a New York-based liberal think tank called the Roosevelt Institute, whose top economists include a prominent Warren ally. Staff members from the institute have been interviewing hundreds of progressive economists and other professionals who could fill posts throughout a Clinton administration.

“It’s a big undertaking to staff up an entire government,” said Marcus Mrowka, a spokesman for the institute. Eager to avoid seeming presumptive and creating a backlash, the institute is billing its work as an intensive networking effort.

The Roosevelt Institute is a liberal counterweight to the more centrist power bases in Washington like the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution, which are loaded with Clinton loyalists.

Five people familiar with the Roosevelt Institute’s initiative who weren’t authorized to talk about it publicly said the goal is to ensure that a hypothetical Clinton administration has access to a cadre of potential staff — particularly on financial issues — who aren’t closely connected to Wall Street interests.

The article notes that the Roosevelt Institute is the home of Joseph Stiglitz, a key Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) ally.  "Working for him and conducting many of the interviews is Lenore Palladino, a well-respected progressive who has been on the payroll of MoveOn.org and Demos, a left-wing group co-founded by Warren's daughter."  [Her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, is Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Demos.]

The Roosevelt Institute, however, isn't the only think tank trying to influence a Clinton Cabinet.  The article also mentions that some think tanks are putting together "opposition-research-style dossiers" that detail past positions taken by more centrist Democrats who might be in line for regulatory jobs in a Clinton Administration.  Here is more on that effort:

Some of that work is being done by the Revolving Door Project, an initiative housed in the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). It is part of a coalition of groups that is waging a more overt push to lobby around presidential appointments.

“In this environment, appointments really matter,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, who said he’s pushing for political appointees who focus on the public interest. “There are a lot of different progressives that have come to the same conclusion over the last eight years, that focusing exclusively on legislative goals is impractical.”

Despite that effort, think tanks closer to the Clintons, including Center for American Progress (CAP), Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and the Brookings Institution, will likely play an overwhelming role in helping decide and staff actual Cabinet posts.

DNC Hackers Also Targeting Think Tanks

It seems that foreign intelligence agencies want to tap into the mind on Hillary Clinton's top advisors.  To do so, they are breaking into computer systems of think tanks that have employees who have close ties to the Clintons.

The latest example: Hackers who targeted the Democratic National Committee (DNC) have also been going after US think tanks.  Here is more from Bloomberg Politics:

The Russian hackers who hit the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign burrowed much further into the U.S. political system, sweeping in law firms, lobbyists, consultants, foundations and the policy groups known as think tanks, according to a person familiar with investigations of the attacks.

Almost 4,000 Google accounts were targeted in an elaborate “spear phishing” campaign -- intended to trick users into providing access so that information could be gleaned from personal and organizational accounts -- from October through mid-May, according to the person, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information.

Among the policy groups targeted was the Center for American Progress (CAP), which has ties to Clinton and the Obama administration. “We are constantly reviewing our security and operations to prevent and thwart unauthorized activity,” Liz Bartolomeo, a spokeswoman for the center, said in an e-mailed statement. “We have reviewed our systems and we believe our security measures have prevented unwanted access to our systems.”

As Think Tank Watch has previously reported, several influential think tankers, including CAP President Neera Tanden, sit on the DNC policy committee that is helping Democrats draft their policy platform for the upcoming elections.

Bigwig Think Tanker Calls Trump "Dangerous"

R. Nicholas Burns, a former Bush Administration official and think tanker, bashed Donald Trump's foreign policy speech this week, calling him a "dangerous" man.

Burns is the latest think tank power player to critique Mr. Trump's foreign policy.  Several weeks ago, more than 100 Republican foreign policy and national security leaders signed an open letter denouncing Trump.

Burns, who serves on the board of directors of Atlantic Council and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), is also a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Over the past few weeks, Mr. Trump and his team have been cozying up more to think tanks, holding secret meetings with some of them.  Earlier this week, Trump was hosted by a conservative think tank in Washington, DC to present his foreign policy address.

Will Think Tanks Control President Trump's Policies?

Will think tanks play a big role in a Trump Administration?  According to Justin Vaughn, Associate Professor of Political Science in the School of Public Service at Boise State University, they very well might.  Here is more:

The president today is arguably more of a manager than ever before, overseeing thousands of staffers and millions of bureaucrats. Sure, the president generally sets the White House’s agenda, chooses many of the individuals tasked with achieving it and ultimately serves as what George W. Bush called The Decider. (Or, if you prefer, as Harry Truman suggested, the president remains where the buck stops.) But what they are not is deeply involved in the minutiae of the policy proposals they attempt to get through Congress, or even many of the unilateral policy actions such as executive orders, signing statements and memoranda that the White House routinely issues.

Instead, a great deal of what is included in these bills and actions comes not only from the president’s chosen advisers, but also from relevant government agencies, think tanks, private industry and previous versions of failed legislation.

In fact, research I’ve conducted with José Villalobos and Julia Azari shows that when the president stresses the influence that bureaucrats and policy experts have had on a policy the White House is pushing, the legislation is more likely to pass than if they instead emphasize that a bill is a priority of the president, that it is something popular with the public, or even that the bill is the result of bipartisan cooperation.

A number of think tankers are very concerned about a Trump presidency because it appears that he would not rely as much on think tanks and think tankers compared to past presidents, the current president, and other possible future presidents such as Hillary Clinton.

Richard Reeves, Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution expresses those exact concerns here.  A scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said that everyone is turning to Google to find out about Trump's new team.

As Jack Caravelli recently reminded us, competition for the president's attention is keen, particularly in a city like Washington, DC that is full of think tanks.

Of course, think tanks have been bashing Mr. Trump for months, so it is no surprise that there may be some tension.

Think Tank Third Way Hates Sanders, Loves Clinton

The center-left think tank Third Way and its scholars do not have nice things to say to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

Just check out some of the recent tweets:

To be clear, Senator, you are saying that Barack Obama wants to devastate American cities and towns. https://t.co/uIduX7eJJp

— Third Way (@ThirdWayTweet) February 3, 2016

Sen. Sanders: Gallup says that 32% of progressives call themselves "moderate". Are they wrong about something? pic.twitter.com/hlsbCEgvr7

— Third Way (@ThirdWayTweet) February 3, 2016

Was it progressive or moderate to vote against comp immigration reform in 2007, Senator? Both? Neither? https://t.co/iRz0PEU2fD

— Third Way (@ThirdWayTweet) February 3, 2016

This sounds a lot like the Tea Party to us, Senator. Leave the purity tests to them - we need a big tent party. https://t.co/iRz0PEU2fD

— Third Way (@ThirdWayTweet) February 3, 2016

Can't enact a progressive agenda w/o moderates. Democracy requires 51%. @BernieSanders doesn't know how to govern. https://t.co/SPf7uprRhQ

— mieke eoyang (@MiekeEoyang) February 3, 2016

And in an apparent nod to Hillary Clinton, Third Way retweeted this:

1) This shouldn't be a debate about who gets to define "progressive"—it should be about who will get real results for American families.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 3, 2016

Can you guess which side Third Way is on?

But that should be no surprise.  Third Way has a number of Clinton connections.  For example, Third Way co-founder Matt Bennett worked on both of the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton.

Even though Third Way is careful to label itself simply as a "centrist" think tank, it is widely known that Third Way is first and foremost a Democratic think tank.  Some have labeled it the "Wall Street Wing of the Democratic Party."

In 2013, Third Way sparked at war in the Democratic Party when President Jon Cowan and Senior Vice President for Policy Jim Kessler wrote an op-ed arguing that the Democratic Party should not embrace the economic populism of people such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).


Update: The Union for Non-Profit Workers, the DC-based local union of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president.  The Clinton-backed think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) has just unionized with IFPTE, probably making for some awkward political battles within the think tank.

2016 Republicans Outsource Policy to Secret Group of Think Tankers

Although the John Hay Initiative (JHI) - which is made up of a variety of powerful think tankers and conservative insiders - is super-secretive and not well-known, it is the go-to source for Republican candidates to get foreign policy ideas and advice.  Here is more from Josh Rogin:

There's a good reason so many GOP candidates seem to be well-prepared yet uncannily in sync when it comes to foreign policy: Most of them have tapped the same group of experts for guidance, a shadow foreign policy campaign infrastructure just waiting for a nominee to emerge.

Ever since Mitt Romney lost the race in 2012, his foreign policy team has been working to remain intact, become a resource for as many primary candidates as possible, and position itself to influence the next president, if he or she is a Republican. For candidates who haven't the time or resources to build their own foreign policy staffs at this stage, the project, called the John Hay Initiative, is a handy tool to get smart fast on complicated subjects and even hand off some heavy lifting on national security issues.

The co-founders say the group issues biweekly policy papers on a range of issues, does specific research for different campaigns on demand, and has briefed more than half of the 17 Republican candidates running for president. The Hay Initiative helped write recent foreign policy speeches for Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie, speeches that struck very similar notes. Members have also briefed Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham and others. Rand Paul and Donald Trump are the outliers who have no interaction with the group, likely because their foreign policy views don't jibe.

Here is Josh Rogin's original piece about the John Hay Initiative.  It says that the group is made up of more than 150 senior foreign policy and national security experts and former officials.  Now, JHI says it has 250 experts.  It was founded by three of the top leaders of the Romney 2012 foreign policy team: Eliot Cohen, Eric Edelman, and Brian Hook.

JHI recently released a book, dedicated to the next president of the United States, which "seeks to restore the bipartisan tradition of American leadership in world affairs."

The authors of the book include a number of think tankers, such as:

• Elliot Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
• Dan Blumenthal, Director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
• Jacqueline Deal, Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI).
• Paula Dobriansky, Senior Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard University's JFK Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
• Eric Edelman, a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).
• Aaron Friedberg, Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund (GMF) and a Senior Advisor to the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR).
• Rebeccah Heinrichs, Fellow at the Hudson Institute.
• Will Inboden, Non-Resident Fellow at GMF.
• David Kramer, Senior Director for Human Rights and Democracy at the McCain Institute for International Leadership.
• Jeffrey Kupfer, Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
• Clay Lowery, Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD) and Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
• Wess Mitchell, Co-Founder of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
• J. Peter Pham, Director of the Africa Center at Atlantic Council.
• Daniel Runde, Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis at CSIS.
• Michael Singh, Managing Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).
• Jim Talent, Senior Fellow at AEI.

More about the John Hay Initiative can be found here.