On Thursday, Facebook guru Mark Zuckerberg, along with other high-profile politicos and technology honchos, launched FWD.us – known to the non-internet savvy as Forward U.S. – a massively powerful 501(c)4 that looks designed to push a politically liberal agenda under the guise of bipartisanship. The group is founded by 11 people including Zuckerberg; Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman and a major Obama acolyte; Marissa Mayer, chief executive of Yahoo and a major Obama acolyte; and Reid Hoffman, co-fonder of Linked-In and a major Obama acolyte. But it has the patina of bipartisanism, thanks to the involvement of Rob Jesmer, former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Dan Senor and Joel Kaplan, both from the Bush White House.
Politico reports that the group has a bevy of goals, including “ads, campaign support, public communications and grassroots organizing.” The apparently suicidal former Republican staffers will be lending credibility to the Obama agenda, beginning with immigration reform. Because the group is technology-oriented, they’re stumping for more temporary visas for technology workers from abroad. Why this requires comprehensive immigration reform remains unanswered.
This 501(c)4 hopes to raise $50 million. And on Thursday, Zuckerberg wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post pressing forward immigration reform, stating, “We need a new approach, including comprehensive immigration reform that begins with effective border security, allows a path to citizenship and lets us attract the most talented and hardest working people, no matter where they were born.” Zuckerberg didn’t have a tough time placing the op-ed – the CEO of the Post, Donald Graham, sits on Facebook’s board of directors. As for the Republicans in the group, Jesmer says, they’re just looking for bipartisanhip: “FWD.us is about coming together in a bipartisan way to help solve big problems, focusing on issues rather than partisan politics.”
If these Republicans believe that Obama lackeys will do anything other than carry water for the Democratic Party, they’re about to have a rude awakening. For when this 501(c)4, taking its name from Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign slogan, gets going, its targets are sure to be all the folks from whom Jesmer and company once earned a paycheck.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
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