G.O.P. Group to Promote Conservative Ideas

A group of prominent Republicans is forming an organization to develop and market conservative ideas, copying a successful Democratic model and hoping to capitalize on the fund-raising and electioneering possibilities opened up by a recent Supreme Court ruling. The organizers, including former Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the senior policy adviser to Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign, describe their emerging American Action Network as a center-right version of the Center for American Progress, the six-year-old group for progressive policies that was founded by John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and an informal adviser to President Obama. The formation of what Mr. Coleman calls an “action tank” or “a think-and-do tank” reflects the philosophical ferment in the Republican Party as it seeks to rebuild from political and policy setbacks of the Bush years. Similarly, the center-left Center for American Progress opened in 2003 when the Democrats were in political exile and Republicans controlled both the White House and Congress...read more