Hillary's "Nonpartisan" support groups

Donald Lambro:

An extensive political network of advocacy think tanks and bloggers that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her campaign donors helped create and bankroll is playing a strategic role in her bid for the White House.

Two of these Clinton-formed groups — the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank run by John Podesta, one-time chief of staff in the Clinton White House, and Media Matters, a Web site known for its fierce attacks on the New York senator's conservative critics — are financed with tax-deductible contributions under the tax code because they say their mission is educational.

But their work has helped the Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton, promote their agenda and mount a more aggressive, sustained offensive against political opponents, raising questions about the organizations' claims of being nonpartisan.

"There is no question that these [tax exempt] 501(c)(3) groups engage in activities that a lot of people would see as political and, to a certain extent, they are allowed to do that," said Massie Ritsch, communications director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group that tracks campaign-financing abuses.

Mrs. Clinton claims credit for helping create these groups when she was preparing to run for president by encouraging her campaign contributors to pour tens of millions of dollars into their activities.

In a campaign appearance before the Yearly Kos convention of liberal bloggers, she said the political left had "certainly suffered over the last years from a real imbalance in the political world in our country."

"But we are righting that balance — or 'lefting' that balancing — not sure which, and we are certainly better prepared and more focused on taking our arguments and making them effective and disseminating them widely and really putting together a network in the blogosphere in a lot of the new progressive infrastructure — institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress," she said.

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"Clinton's extended family of contributors, consultants and friends has played a pivotal role in helping Media Matters grow from a $3.5 million start-up in 2004 to its current $8.5 million budget," wrote reporter Glenn Thrush of the Long Island newspaper Newsday.

The tax-exempt Center for American Progress bills itself as a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization "founded on the ideals of the progressive movement." But it was founded by three of the Clintons' staunchest allies: Mr. Podesta, billionaire financier George Soros and Democratic policy-maker Morton Halperin.

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Mr. Brock has concentrated much of his organization's resources on what he has described as an "aggressive ad campaign" against Rush Limbaugh. Besides a steady drumbeat of criticism of the conservative radio talk-show host on the Media Matters Web site, he also made a TV spot attacking Mr. Limbaugh over remarks he made about the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal that aired on Fox, MSNBC and CNN, among other networks, at a cost of $100,000.

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When Mrs. Clinton triggered a storm of criticism for dodging a direct answer to a debate question from NBC's Tim Russert about New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's plan to give illegal aliens driver's licenses, Media Matters ran lengthy defenses of her remarks from friendly analysts and bloggers.

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A growing network of bloggers also is being aggressively deployed to promote her candidacy. At DemocraticUnderground.com, a forum billing itself as a "Hillary Clinton Supporters Group," visitors learn the latest about the New York senator's campaign — from "Hillary's article in Foreign Affairs" to how "The New Comeback Kid — Hillary Clinton — is building a firewall in New Hampshire."

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Don't look for any crackdowns on these "Nonpartisan" abuses of the tax code. That would be too Clintonian. The aggressive relentless attacks have begun to backfire on Media Mutters. Their attack on Limbaugh was ridiculous and when they got some Democrat Senators to go along, they were humiliated by Limbaugh's charitable auction of their ridiculous letter attempting to shut him up. Still, more attention needs to be brought to their partisan actions.

CNN reports that Obama has developed his on response team but he is doing it straight up on a campaign web site.