Who They Are (and How to Fight Them)

Henry Fernandez of the Center for American Progress writes:

While it is important strategically that anti-immigrant and now anti-health care forces appear to be simple manifestations of spontaneous disgust with progressive legislation, that is simply not the case. There are a small number of Washington-based organizations that provide strategy, funding, and talking points to "grassroots" groups.

In the case of the anti-immigrant cause, FAIR, NumbersUSA, and the Center for Immigration Studies, provide legal support and regional organizers to foster local groups, give them talking points and organizing strategies, as well as furnish them with easy-to-use online tools to get in touch with their members of Congress. In the anti-health reform arena, well-funded groups such as Americans for Prosperity, Conservatives for Patients Rights, and FreedomWorks play the same role. Other groups, among them Grassfire.org, are happy to switch between immigration, health care, and climate change to mobilize mostly manufactured conservative rage wherever they can find it.

The lesson: All strategies involving pushing back against these astro-turf forces should include addressing the national organizations, not just their local tentacles. Research how they are funded, what their ultimate goals are and what means they use to engage local activists. Then build the capacity to address them accordingly.

At the same time, it is important to ensure that local media treat the local manifestations of these groups as what they are; part of a conservative national strategy. These abusive hecklers are not local, suddenly angry people who otherwise might vote for a progressive.

On the immigration front, we learned that these organizations built large lists of issue-specific activists, boast sizable online organizing capacity, and direct specific field operations. With this information in hand, we are able to specifically organize responses to what they do and understand they are our primary nemesis, not some amorphous and spontaneous "will of the people."

Read the whole story at Campus Progress.
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