[Typo3] Typo3, CivicSpace and Drupal

[Mike]

This question makes some reference to CivicSpace and Drupal however, I 
would like to ask this question from a Typo3 perspective.

I need to set up an online collaboration website where users can pool 
together their views and ideas on particular political issues. It would 
be a "think tank" created by collaborative authors and the outcome will 
be to construct a political platform for a political party. I need to 
control user access to only certain people or certain groups of people. 
CivicSpace seemed to be the perfect CMS for this purpose however I have 
read eventually it may merge back with the main Drupal CSM. Therefore, 
early in my selection process, I questioned whether to use CivicSpace or 
Drupal. I need the chosen CMS for this project to have a future and I 
didn't want to set up CivicSpace if it wasn't going to be supported in 
the future. I did not wish to invest significant time into something 
that may not have a future - Drupal seemed to have more staying power 
than CivicSpace. (This is all based on speculation only however - and I 
am not knowledgeable enough about Drupal to make any accurate assumptions)
My requirements for this political platform site may include a wiki, a 
discussion forum and online polls and whatever additional online 
collaboration tools may be necessary to bring people's views together.

Then I spend some time on the typo3 website and I am now leaning toward 
typo3 for several reasons. Typo3 seems to be able to have more uses. 
Although CivicSpace may be the perfect tool for this particular single 
website I am working on today, typo3 would be more useful for all my 
websites now and in the future. Of course I would like to learn both 
(CivicSpace and Typo3), however if I could solve all my issues with just 
one product it would be ideal. Typo3 seems to be more versatile, 
flexible, scaleable and have an excellent workflow for the end user - 
although it has a steeper learning curve. And so my question is, can I 
configure Typo3 to play the same role(s) as CivicSpace? Or is it a silly 
idea to try to make one tool attempt to duplicate another? Which Typo3 
modules could be used to mimick CivicSpace reasonably closely? Or should 
I learn both CMS systems - both CivicSpace and Typo3? I am concerned 
that learning both Typo3 and CivicSpace would simply take too much time 
and if I could just use one CMS to fullfill all my requirements that 
would keep the learning curve more reasonable. To summarize: CivicSpace 
may fulfill my current project needs but may not be enough to solve the 
needs of all my websites. On the other hand Typo3 may fulfill all the 
requirements of all my websites - but I need advice whether it can act 
sufficiently as a political "think tank" such as CivicSpace. I am trying 
to save time and it would be ideal to only have to learn one system.

Should I learn:
1. Typo3 and CivicSpace
2. Typo3 and Drupal
3. or just Typo3?

If Typo3 would suffice, which modules would make it similar to CivicSpace?

Could someone offer any advice?

Thank you

(I have researched many CMSes before I narrowed my selection down to 
these three.)


-- 
Mike