Henke on CAP
Jon Henke has a smart post at The Next Right about CAP/CAPAF and the role these institutions have played in the progressive revival.
One word of caution I would offer, however, to people looking at building the next set of conservative institutions is that while it’s always good to learn from precedent, it’s not smart to slavishly imitate what exists. Insofar as CAP’s been successful, it’s been successful because it’s been responsive to the specific situation and filled roles on the progressive side that needed filling. The “gaps” on the right are in different places. In particular, the communications spaces aren’t remotely close to mirror-images of each other. Conservatives have both the luxury and the burden of operating with big, entrenched, profitable conservative media institutions like Fox News and the talk radio universe. I’m not sure what the specific implications of that are, but it does mean that if you’re thinking about creating and marketing new conservative ideas, you’re talking about operating under very different circumstances.
16 Responses to “Henke on CAP”
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November 20th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
We shouldn’t forget the failure of liberal talk radio as an example of an attempt to replicate a successful model that didn’t work when implemented by the other side.
Note that the conservative movement must have top down organizations as it is a direct reflection of their internal phychological structure. They won’t be easily able to replicate the structures that have worked for the liberal community as their preferred mode of communications are so different.
November 20th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
nate silver brought up an interesting point about talk radio today on 538 that ties into this somehow.
November 20th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
There is a significant danger in talk radio / fox doesn’t necessarily engage people and you are dealing with a conservative media structure that is interested in profit maximization more than policy action.
November 21st, 2008 at 12:42 am
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November 21st, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Stephen Teles has a great new book on these non-profit institutions (using a historical-institutional analysis), specifically the rise of conservative groups. He argues that the rise of liberal legal networks (in law schools, public interest law firms, and the like) pushed liberals into judgeships, regulatory positions, and government institutions bringing about progressive change (civil rights, Roe, affirmative action, etc.). Conservatives’ attempts to mimic these institutions failed to bring about favorable policy changes (aka the Burger Court). So they created new types of institutions like the Federalist Society in law schools and the conservative think tank (The Heritage Foundation) to create networks and expertise of their own. Ironically, CAP is based on the conservative institutional model but seems to work quite well for progressive policies. So in fairness, it’s not CAP that conservatives will try to model because it was their model before it was yours.
Obviously, the CAP of today is way different from that of 2003 and conservatives may try to model some of the technological and institutional advances, like Campus Progress or these blogs. This may or may not bring any success in the future, but my guess is they’ll have to find different models and your suggestion of big media outlets already in place will probably play a role.
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