Star Parker: "New Ideas?"

The conservative Republican commentator discusses a new partnership funded by wealthy Democratic donors called the Democratic Alliance, through which millions of dollars will be funneled to a network of new and existing liberal think tanks to compete with conservative organizations. She wonders: where are the new ideas?: "Americans are not deprived of the liberal - now called 'progressive' - point of view. It's been with us since FDR. We are surrounded by it, from our public schools, to our universities (where 72 percent of faculty members identify themselves as liberals) to the media (where 7 percent of the national press identifies itself as conservative and 88 percent as moderate to liberal). Certainly in the black community, support for the Democratic Party has been eroding because increasing numbers of blacks understand what 'progressive ideas' have done to our community over the last 50 years. The new Democratic strategists should take a close look at the results of a study just produced by Democratic pollsters Karl Agne and Stan Greenberg, based on focus groups done with rural voters in Wisconsin and Arkansas. The study concludes that cultural issues - 'gay marriage, abortion, the importance of the traditional family unit and the role of religion in public life' - trump and swing these voters in favor of the Republican Party. It is ironic that Democratic strategists cannot seem to grasp that the big-government themes and moral relativism that define their party disproportionately hurt lower-income groups. Reconciliation with the truth that traditional values and ownership are the best ticket into the American middle class will open the door to fresh thinking and new ideas in the Democratic Party and build new bridges to traditional Democratic constituencies. From what I see, this new Democratic think tank initiative amounts to rich liberal elitists looking for new marketing techniques for their same old ideas."