Liberal activist Van Jones is taking another page out of the Tea Party playbook.
Along with MoveOn.org, the former Obama administration green jobs czar is pushing an initiative called the “Contract for the American Dream.” It’s a way of generating progressive ideas for legislation from liberals online.
The whole project is similar to the Tea Party-inspired “Contract from America,” a document of legislative desires that received a fair share of press attention last year. Candidates and office-holders were asked to sign it and pledge support to the ideas.
In an email to MoveOn.org supporters, Jones said more than 6,600 new ideas have been generated for “creating jobs and fixing our economy.”
“Today we’re looking at how to get the money to pay for all those good ideas,” Jones said. “America is the richest country in the history of world. But we can’t make the investments we need because giant corporations and the super-rich aren’t paying their share.”
He has publicly stated his desire for a liberal version of the Tea Party movement. And in a speech at Netroots Nation this summer referenced the “Contract from America,” talking about how it was “written by 100,000 people, as a wiki.”
“I’ve studied the Tea Party,” he said then. (GOP senators bash Holder’s decision to give civilian trial to Somali terrorist)
Ryan Hecker, the Tea Party activist behind the Contract from America, said he’s “honored” that Van Jones and MoveOn.org are trying to “deliberately copy the success of the Contract from America.”
“However, I believe their efforts will be futile, as the Contract from America is backed and strengthened by the powerful grassroots, bottom-up tea party movement, and in-step with the economic conservative views of a majority of Americans,” Hecker said.
“The efforts of the Left to copy the Contract from America are, on the whole, a top-down affair and a fringe effort out-of-step with the current political climate.”
Attempts to reach a spokesman at MoveOn.org were not successful.