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A new book by David Horowitz and Richard Poe has enraged the Left and alarmed many conservatives. It exposes the machinations of a radical clique working at the highest levels of government and finance to undermine American power. That book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party. It hit the New York Times bestseller list in its first week in print.
Here to tell us about The Shadow Party is co-author Richard Poe, our esteemed colleague at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, where he serves as director of research. Mr. Poe has written a number of bestselling books. His last two releases were Hillary's Secret War and The Seven Myths of Gun Control.
FP: Richard Poe, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Poe: Thank you, Jamie.
FP: So what exactly is the Shadow Party?
Poe: The Shadow Party is the real power driving the Democrat machine. It is a network of radicals dedicated to transforming our constitutional republic into a socialist hive.
The leader of these radicals is multibillionaire George Soros. He has essentially privatized the Democratic Party, bringing it under his personal control. The Shadow Party is the instrument through which he exerts that control.
FP: How does it work?
Poe: It works by siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions that would have gone to the Democratic Party in normal times, and putting those contributions at the personal disposal of Mr. Soros. He then uses that money to buy influence and loyalty where he sees fit.
In 2003, Soros set up a network of privately-owned groups which acts as a shadow or mirror image of the Party. It performs all the functions we would normally expect the real Democratic Party to perform, such as shaping the Party platform, fielding candidates, running campaigns, and so forth. However, it performs these functions under the private supervision of Mr. Soros and his associates.
The Shadow Party derives its power from its ability to raise huge sums of money. By controlling the Democrat pursestrings, the Shadow Party can make or break any Democrat candidate by deciding whether or not to fund him.
During the 2004 election cycle, the Shadow Party raised more than $300 million for Democrat candidates, prompting one of its operatives, MoveOn PAC director Eli Pariser, to declare, “Now it’s our party. We bought it, we own it…â€
FP: Everyone knows that Soros has poured money into MoveOn. Can you name some other Shadow Party groups?
Poe: The Shadow Party is always changing. New groups form and old ones dissolve. For instance, America Coming Together -- which raised $135 million for Democrat get-out-the-vote drives in 2004 – has been mothballed, at least for now. The most active Shadow Party groups today are probably the Center for American Progress, America Votes, Democracy Alliance, the New Democrat Network, the New Politics Institute, ACORN and, of course, MoveOn.org.
FP: How does Soros use his influence over the Party?
Poe: He uses it to push the Party leftward. He is systematically purging the Party of moderates and packing it with radicals. For instance, the Shadow Party ousted Senator Joseph Lieberman in favor of Ned Lamont, because Lieberman refused to support a “cut-and-run†policy in Iraq.
FP: Isn’t that just politics as usual, though – wealthy fat cats funding their favorite candidates?
Poe: Funding ordinary candidates, be they Democrats or Republicans, would be politics as usual. Funding radical candidates who seek America’s destruction is not. Money is a tool. It can be used for good or evil. The Shadow Party is using it for evil.
FP: Does the Shadow Party really seek to destroy America?
Judge for yourself. In his new book The Age of Fallibility, Soros writes, “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.†He announced in 2003 that it is necessary to “puncture the bubble of American supremacy.†Soros is working systematically to achieve that goal.
On the economic front, he is shorting the dollar in global currency markets, trying to force a devaluation. At the same time, Soros is orchestrating a nationwide movement to encourage mass immigration into the United States, and to mandate the provision of free social services to illegal immigrants. These measures alone have the potential to bankrupt the nation. However, if they fail, Soros has another program that will certainly finish the job. A long-time Soros operative named Jeffrey Sachs has been placed in charge of the United Nations Millennium Project – a global war on poverty designed to transfer wealth from rich countries to poor ones. Sachs is currently demanding that American taxpayers turn over $140 billion per year to his global welfare bureaucracy.
On the political front, Soros has poured massive funding into such groups as the ACLU, which uses lawsuits to hamstring the War on Terror. Soros also funds Amnesty International, whose US executive director has called for the arrest of President Bush as a war criminal. Another Soros-funded group, The Center for Constitutional Rights, has drawn up detailed articles of impeachment against the President.
FP: Why don’t more Americans know that Soros is pushing these destructive policies?
Poe: The Shadow Party operates through deception. It uses the Democratic Party as camouflage. By posing as ordinary Democrats, Shadow Party candidates trick mainstream voters into supporting them. Their true agenda remains concealed. As Soros writes in The Age of Fallibility, “[T]he Democratic Party does not stand for the policies that I advocate; indeed, if it did, it could not be elected.â€
The fact is, Soros aspires to establish a neo-socialist order in America. In the Atlantic Monthly of February 1997, he wrote, “The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat.â€
FP: Tell me about Soros’ efforts to rewrite the U.S. Constitution.
Poe: Mr. Soros advocates deep structural change in our system of government. In April 2005, Yale Law School hosted an event called, “The Constitution in 2020â€, whose stated goal was to formulate “a progressive vision of what the Constitution ought to be.†Of the event’s five institutional sponsors, one was Soros’ flagship foundation The Open Society Institute, and two others were Soros-funded Shadow Party groups; the Center for American Progress and the American Constitution Society. We nicknamed that event the Shadow Constitutional Convention.
FP: What parts of our Constitution does Soros want to change?
Poe: He appears to have a special animus against the Bill of Rights. Take freedom of worship, for instance. Soros seems to favor some sort of religious apartheid, with fundamentalist Christians banished to a socio-political Bantustan. For example, in a New Yorker interview of October 18, 2004, he said of President Bush, “The separation of church and state, the bedrock of our democracy, is clearly undermined by having a born-again President.â€
Then there’s the Second Amendment. Soros has provided massive funding to anti-gun groups and anti-gun litigators. The unprecedented assault on gun rights during the 1990s was largely bankrolled by Soros.
FP: You and David Horowitz have also accused Soros of promoting political censorship in America.
Poe: Most Americans do not realize that the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002 was a Trojan Horse. Its stated purpose was to reform campaign finance law. Its actual effect is to regulate political speech. McCain-Feingold was a Shadow Party initiative. Soros and a group of leftwing foundations spent over $140 million to get it passed.
Here’s how it works. McCain-Feingold authorizes federal election officials to decide who may or may not run political advertisements during election season, and what sorts of ads they may run. In September 2004, a federal judge expanded McCain-Feingold’s reach by ordering the FEC to begin censoring the Internet. Blogger outrage forced the FEC to back down, but McCain-Feingold remains on the books. Sooner or later, it will be enforced, to the full extent its creators envisioned. We can thank Mr. Soros for these developments.
FP: Of course, we can also thank Republican Senator John McCain, who co-sponsored the bill.
Poe: Yes, but McCain has a long history of collusion with the Shadow Party.
During the 2000 presidential campaign, Soros sponsored two so-called “Shadow Conventions,†held at the same time and in the same cities as the Republican and Democratic Conventions, in Philadelphia and Los Angeles respectively. Their purpose was to promote campaign finance reform. John McCain gave the keynote speech at the Philadelphia “Soros Convention†(as columnist Robert Novak dubbed it), while Russ Feingold did so at the LA event.
McCain’s service to the Shadow Party brought him financial benefits. In 2001, McCain founded the Reform Institute for Campaign and Election Issues. The Institute’s major funders were mostly leftwing foundations. Prominent among them was George Soros’ Open Society Institute.
FP: It seems ironic that Soros spent ten years lobbying for campaign finance reform, only to emerge as one of the biggest influence buyers in Washington.
Poe: As I said, the McCain-Feingold Act was a Trojan Horse. It made the Shadow Party possible. Among other things, it forced the Democratic Party into a financial crisis, enabling Soros to swoop in and buy up the Party at a bargain-basement price.
Democrats have traditionally relied on large, soft-money donations from unions, while Republicans relied more on small, “hard-money†donations from mom-and-pop donors. When McCain-Feingold outlawed soft-money donations to the parties, Republicans were not unduly hampered, but Democrats flew into a panic. They faced the real possibility of bankruptcy.
Enter George Soros. After forcing the Democrats into a fiscal crisis, he then offered to rescue them. He set up a network of non-profit, “issue-advocacy†groups – the Shadow Party – and invited all the big Democrat donors to contribute to his network. Thus they could still contribute to the Democrat cause, but without giving directly to the Party. The Party became dependent on Soros to raise campaign contributions which the law now forbade the Party itself to raise.
FP: You and David Horowitz charge that Hillary Clinton has a secret alliance with Soros.
Poe: That’s right. They have to keep their alliance secret because any political coordination between them would violate federal election law. Soros’s Shadow Party is barred by law from coordinating its activities with official Democratic Party candidates, such as Hillary.
It’s a poorly-kept secret, however. At the annual Take Back America conference on June 3, 2004, Hillary gave Soros a glowing introduction, saying, “We need people like George Soros, who is fearless, and willing to step up when it counts.†More importantly, her right hand man, Harold Ickes – who served the Clinton White House as deputy chief of staff – now serves Soros as de facto CEO of the Shadow Party. Ickes plays a significant role in running Hillary’s political machine and Soros’ Shadow Party simultaneously. This is arguably illegal, but no controlling authority seems willing to intervene.
The institutional manifestation of the Hillary-Soros axis is a group called the Center for American Progress, whose president John Podesta formerly served as chief of staff to the Clinton White House. Hillary has no official connection to the Center. However, her dominance of the organization seems to be something of an open secret among leftists. One insider told a UPI reporter that the Center is “the official Hillary Clinton think tank.†Robert Dreyfuss of The Nation wrote of the Center, “It’s not completely wrong to see it as a shadow government, a kind of Clinton White House-in-exile – or a White House staff in readiness for President Hillary Clinton.†The Center for American Progress received its start-up funding from Soros and was, in fact, Soros’ brainchild.
FP: You and Mr. Horowitz have said that the Shadow Party purged Joseph Lieberman, in retaliation for his pro-war stance. How do you square that with the fact that Hillary supported Lieberman?
Poe: Hillary supported Lieberman only with lip service. She was just hedging her bets. What mattered was her announcement that she would support whomever won, be it Lieberman or Lamont. Please note that, within 24 hours of Lamont's victory over Lieberman, HILLPAC became the first Democrat political action committee to pledge money to Lamont’s campaign. With friends like that, Lieberman doesn’t need enemies.
FP: Some conservatives welcome Soros’ intervention. They say that the farther left he pushes the Democrats, the fewer people will vote Democrat.
Poe: It would certainly be nice if we could just sit back and wait for the Shadow Party to fizzle out of its own accord. Given what is at stake, however, I think a more energetic approach is in order.
In my view, the farther left Soros pushes the Democrats, the more dangerous they grow. The Party is becoming more cult-like and fanatical by the day. History teaches that a fanatical minority can prevail over a moderate majority. The Bolsheviks proved that in 1917. Before our eyes, the Democratic Party is transforming into a totalitarian cult, bent on seizing power by any means necessary. This is a time for vigilance, not complacency.
FP: Are we talking Red Guards in the streets? That’s a little hard to imagine.
Poe: Actually, the Shadow Party funds a number of groups which specialize in street action. Last March, about half a million protesters brought Los Angeles to a standstill, calling for open borders and free immigration. Some burned American flags and fought with police. Similar protests occurred simultaneously in many cities. The whole extravaganza was a Shadow Party operation. Virtually every sponsor was a Soros-funded group – at least eight organizations – including ACORN, La Raza, MALDEF and others. One of the organizers, the Center for Community Change, has received $5.2 million from Soros’s Open Society Institute.
FP: What is their plan? How does the Shadow Party intend to take power in America?
Poe: They appear to be pursuing a three-phase plan. The first two phases are based upon the successful strategy which the left used to force regime change in America during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
Phase One is to impeach President Bush for allegedly deceiving the nation into war. We call this phase Watergate II.
Phase Two is to force a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and to cut off aid to the Iraqi Republic, just as Democrats cut off aid to South Vietnam after Nixon resigned. We call this phase Vietnam II.
Phase Three is velvet revolution. This is a term used in Eastern Europe to describe the sort of bloodless coup for which Soros is well-known in that part of the world. He has used these methods to topple regimes in many countries, such as Yugoslavia, Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia.
Soros’ velvet revolutions always follow the same pattern. The rebels wait for an election, then precipitate a crisis by charging voter fraud.
We believe the Shadow Party may attempt something similar in the USA. If they fail to win legitimately in 2008, they will likely cry voter fraud, fomenting an electoral crisis similar to the Bush-Gore deadlock of 2000.
We must expect, however, that the left has learned a few lessons since 2000. It seems doubtful that they will stake their revolution on a decision of John Roberts’ Supreme Court. More likely, they will press for international arbitration this time, possibly under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This group actually monitored our elections in 2004. Its relations with Soros – and with the Democratic Party – are extremely cordial, to say the least.
In normal times, Americans would never accept foreign arbitration of an election, but a destabilized America, demoralized by military defeat, discouraged by the fall of a president, and alarmed by orchestrated unrest in the streets, might just go along with any plan that promised to restore order.
The 2004 election almost seemed like a dress rehearsal for such a maneuver, given the raucous demand by some Congressional Democrats for UN election monitors, and the so-called Boxer Rebellion, in which Senate Democrats challenged Bush’s electoral vote count.
FP: Will Hillary be the Shadow Party candidate?
Poe: That is likely, but not inevitable. Even a “velvet†candidate needs the illusion of mass support. That could prove difficult for Hillary to conjure up. Even so, Hillary can only benefit from these machinations. If the Democrats win, we can rest assured that Soros and Hillary will be pulling the strings behind the scenes, no matter which figurehead they choose to sit on the throne.
FP: How can we fight these kinds of radical tactics?
Poe: In the short time left before 2008, we need to learn everything we can about the Shadow Party and open the eyes of as many Americans as possible to its plans.
FP: Richard Poe thank you for joining us.
Poe: My pleasure.
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