GOP's plan to regulate think tanks could blow up in their faces: report

According to a report from Politico, Republican Party plans to cash in on a left-leaning think tank scandal may come back to haunt them as they advocate for new legislation that would mandate more stringent financial support reporting.

As Politico's Michael Schaffer wrote, they -- and some of their conservative donors -- may one day rue the day is those new regulations go into effect.

The report notes that the left-leaning Brookings Institution lost John Allen as its president after it was reported that there was a federal probe into allegations that he illegally lobbied on behalf of Qatar.

Seizing on that, Republicans, led by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) have proposed new regulations that could not only expose foreign government interference under the cover of a domestic policy-oriented think tank, but also deep-pocketed conservative donors who back likeminded rightwing organizations.

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"Yet while the proximate controversy, and the subject of Grassley’s bill, involve money from foreign sources, the logic of the criticism is that think tanks have an outsize effect on public policy and the public is therefore entitled to know who’s calling the shots," writes Schaffer. "It’s a logic that doesn’t necessarily stop at the water’s edge."

He added, "Any potential new wave of government-mandated disclosure rules, especially those that go beyond foreign money, would actually represent a bigger cultural change at right-wing organizations, some of which historically have tended to see donations as a form of free speech."

According to analyst Enrique Mendizabal of research group On Think Tanks, "It’s going to be a harder, bigger disruptor for center-right think tanks.”

Ken Weinstein, who worked for the conservative Hudson Foundation, said that the potential for any new laws to be passed should set off warning signals.

“People in the think tank world are worried,” he explained. “They want to keep the focus on the scholars. They don’t want to talk about the funders. The motives of the funders are not always the motives of the think tanks.”

You can read more here.