Despite their strong head start, conservatives are taking the new threat from liberals seriously. Dietrich Weismann, the head of New York asset management firm Weismann Associates, is also chairman of the Manhattan Institute, a 28-year-old think tank that preaches the gospel of its founder, Antony Fisher. A British fighter pilot and gentleman farmer with libertarian leanings, Fisher’s legacy boasts an annual $10 million operating budget utilized primarily to sway public opinion. Manhattan Institute Executive Vice President David DesRosiers describes his group as a “red-thinking think tank for the blue zone.” It holds panel discussions for journalists and policymakers at which its scholars argue against such policies as affirmative action and Medicare entitlements.

Weismann is seeking new supporters to counter a budding network of liberal benefactors, the Democracy Alliance, that is raising a significant amount of capital. “It is true: $80 million is a war chest to be reckoned with,” Weismann wrote in an appeal last fall to the Manhattan Institute’s 1,000 existing donors and a pool of potentials. “. . . we do need to answer their challenge. If you are giving all you can, stay the course—we are facing new challengers and losing generous benefactors. If you can give more, consider doing so . . . .”

The most effective of these advocacy think tanks would burn through that war chest in a couple of years—hence the need for constant fund-raising. In 1971, Joseph Coors seeded the precursor to the Heritage Foundation with only $250,000. (In 2004, Heritage brought in $46.9 million.) Today, James McGann, director of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, a conservative think tank, explains donors should expect to spend at least $750,000 per year to fund a think tank focused on one issue, factoring in the cost of office space, an administrator and grants to keep several research fellows working full time.