What Washington needs
Powerline has a nice post about the Center of the American Experiment, which John Hinderaker describes as
…the forefront of the effort to transform Minnesota from a bastion of archaic liberalism to a modern, conservative state. The Center is a think tank, a lobbyist, a home for creative conservatives of all stripes, and the foremost intellectual presence, by far, on Minnesota’s political scene.
I was in Minnesota for the two key years of this transformation, and I saw this very clearly. I attended several of the Center’s events, and was fundamentally impressed with the way it served as a common turf for all conservatives in the state. It is something that, regrettably, Washington State does not have.
We do have three very good conservative think-tanks, the Discovery Institute, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation and the Washington Policy Center, all of which have done marvelous things, but I’m afraid that–perhaps because there are so many of them–none of them manages to be the all-encompassing, expanding conservative bastion that CAE is. Having only recently returned from Minnesota, I’m still feeling out the exact lay of the land here, but it appears that each group has their own slant, their own attitude, and their own pet issues, meaning that none of them manage to have the centralizing power that an organization needs to transform the intellectual and political landscape of an entire state. Perhaps this will change, but with three groups competing for the same conservative ideas, dollars, members and mediashare, it is going to be difficult. But conservatives hoping to turn any blue state red should look to Minnesota and the Center of the American Experience for a model.
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