Right Wing Operative Bolts Mobile for DC?

Quin Hillyer of The Mobile Register has exited stage right. Very right! He's off to The American Spectator as a top brass editor. That this "thirty year veteran of the conservative movement" leaves us with an indictment of our 1901 Constitution, Alabama's regressive tax policy, Goat Hill's "parliament of whores legislature" ... ought to make us realize that these concerns are really not an idealogical issue.

His last column, admittedly a bit dated now, is entitled "One last look at what's right and wrong with Alabama". This piece is perhaps an idication of how effective the Right has been in placing operatives across the nation. Although the Spectator (Prowler?) has fallen somewhat on hard times these days perhaps Mr. Hillyer is being rewarded for a job well done. Heading off to greener pastures he manages to get in one last plug for The Alabama Policy Institute. "Imagine that?" and "I wonder why?" immediately crosses my mind ... and then my keyboard.

Lke so many of these ultra-conservative "think tanks" or "advocacy organizations" such as The Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute, and The American Family Association with their structures and efforts at least somewhat linked, API is affiliated with The State Policy Network. Committed to the "free market", privatization of government services, viruntley anti-union, hostile to public education, favoring even more deregulation, the SPN is tied to The Castle Rock (Coors) Foundation and other right wing groups.

It appears that the Right is using state-based organizations and local/regional "journalist" more and more. That the Right still plays "poor outsider" yet is so linked into power structures is especially frustrating. Part of the reason for taking up blogging is to try to confront their efforts. Peace ... or War!