To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine by Newt Gingrich Page A

rapid influx of money from a few rich liberals united in their opposition to George W. Bush and their frustration with the Democratic establishment’s ineffectiveness and lack of ideological purity.
    Horowitz and Poe’s book The Shadow Party , along with Matt Bai’s The Argument , detailed the modus operandi of this new power center. By funneling money through interlocutor organizations to left-wing groups, these benefactors created an alternative structure that compliments the Democratic Party while pushing it to the Left. Conveniently, this method allows the donors to avoid compliance with campaign finance laws that regulate political parties.
    This funding enriched established far-left groups like ACORN and People for the American Way. But it also helped to create new liberal “message machines” like the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America, organizations that quickly grew to dominate the Democratic Party, scooping up its resources and volunteers.
    Having aided the Democratic victories in the 2006 mid-term elections, this shadow party was also instrumental in the overwhelming fundraising and organizing success of the Obama campaign, creating a ready network of volunteers and financing to defeat Hillary Clinton and then John McCain.
    A small group of far-left tycoons presides over this entire effort: George Soros, Peter Lewis, Herb and Marion Sandler, and Stephen Bing.
    Soros, who declared in 2003 that defeating President Bush was “the central focus of my life,” is the key figure. Through his various
organizations, he finances an array of domestic and international left-wing causes. A major supporter of international efforts to curtail gun rights, Soros funds the International Action Network on Small Arms, which is pushing for a UN arms treaty to regulate international weapons sales. The Bush administration opposed this anti-democratic power grab, but the Obama administration has vaguely indicated openness to it.
    Soros also finances marijuana legalization campaigns, contributing over $15 million through his organizations to such efforts, including ballot initiatives in several states. Furthermore, he was a big supporter of campaign finance reform. There’s some irony in that; Soros backed the McCain-Feingold Act, touted as a way to remove the corrupting influence of money from politics. Yet, since the act’s approval in 2002, Soros himself has donated tens of millions of dollars to political action committees (PACs) and other advocacy organizations that can circumvent the act’s restrictions.
    Soros first united with the other big money families to flex their muscle in the 2004 presidential election, when Soros, Lewis, and the Sandlers donated more than $20 million to America Coming Together (ACT), a PAC supporting Democratic candidate John Kerry. ACT marshaled an impressive army of activists and volunteers who went door-to-door to turn out the vote for Kerry. According to Bai, it was also the first time such a small group of people had invested so much money in a single campaign.
    Frustrated by Kerry’s narrow loss, the left-wing money families redoubled their efforts. Influenced by former Clinton lawyer Rob Stein, who explained to them how conservative think tanks and policy journals ostensibly help shape the Republican message, they set out to create not just a parallel voter turnout organization, but also an alternative “messaging machine” to the Democratic Party.
    The funding families formed a new organization, Democracy Alliance, to channel cash to liberal organizations. Soros, Lewis, and
the Sandlers alone provide about 40 percent of the alliance’s funding.
    Democracy Alliance gives tens of millions of dollars in grants to far-left organizations. But it’s impossible to know exactly who has received how much, since the alliance prohibits grant recipients from revealing its funding. This makes the alliance a major source of undisclosed and unaccountable political