For the past week, I have been in Washington DC looking at some of the campaigning methods utilised by the American conservative and libertarian movements in order to promote their work and influence the policy process. It will come as no surprise to hear me say that the British conservative movement has some catching up to do.
By far the most interesting meeting I attended during the week was Grover Norquist's Wednesday morning for influential members of the centre-right movement at the headquarters of Americans for Tax Reform. Represented at the meeting were congressional candidates looking to fight marginal seats in the House of Representatives, think-tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, the Republican National Senatorial Committee and the Whitehouse.
With a maximum contribution from each speaker of only three minutes, summing up their organisation's work over the past seven days, discussion was brief, free of what Bill O'Reilly calls "bloviation" and hugely informative. Sure, I didn't agree with or even feel comfortable with the content of every speaker's presentation but you couldn't help but leave the meeting impressed at the unity of purpose displayed by American's conservative coalition.
"Hey", I heard one speaker call to another after the meeting, "really interesting point you made there about business deregulation, do you think we should put together a joint conference on that?". Another attendee, clearly impressed at the strength of a congressional candidate’s presentation, offered his think tank’s help in exposing the pro-tax votes of his opponent.
Websites such as ConservativeHome have gone a great way towards uniting the conservative coalition in the UK, but the British centre-right coalition - from Policy Exchange to Cornerstone, from the Adam Smith Institute to Conservative Way Forward - could do with working together much more.
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