November 9, 2025
'Think' Tanks vs. Doers
By Clarice Feldman
I confess to a bias against political think tanks. If candidates can’t figure out what they believe in and why they do, armies of bow-tied college grads aren’t the answer: Better candidates are.
I feel the same way about campaign consultants. You need people to keep track of filing requirements, but not how to answer reporters and constituents. You know where you’re going or you don’t belong there, even if grifters are happy to sit in a D.C. office placing ads no one watches to get 15% placement percentages on top of their salaries. It’s a well-funded racket. Do you really need to “focus group” every notion or was the late Bob Strauss right -- that the way to gauge public opinion in an area is to go to local diners, order an omelet and talk to the other patrons? Do you imagine President Trump needed think tanks to tell him the temper of the voters? I don’t.
DataRepublican (small r) is a brilliant woman who posts her findings on X. Instead of paying attention to pundits with often bizarre opinions on what happened on Tuesday, read her. She details how the Democrats have financed a far superior “voter engagement” program which hires hundreds of thousands of people to get their voters to the polls, a structural issue the Republicans still have failed to counter. Here’s one example:
“This is from a website put together by Democracy Funders Network …ran by the Pritzker family. According to the website, the total "democracy" NGO ecosystem revenue is 33 billion *annually* with more than 200,000 staff. 22% of that funding comes from government grants.”
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/11/think_tanks_vs_doers.html
