Oct

Conservative Grass Roots Organizations: Unification=Power

Steve Hayward’s column, Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?, in the Wall Street Journal, Sun. 10/04/09, (reprinted on 10/11/09 in the St. Paul Pioneer Press as Glenn Beck, Restorer of Equilibrium?) describes the conservative movement as,

“thrown off balance, with the populists dominating and the intellectuals retreating and struggling to come up with new ideas.”

He also says that the

“brain-waves of the American right continue to be erratic, when they are not flat-lining”,

since the majority of conservative best-sellers are from people like Malkin, Coulter and Beck, but are

“conspicuously missing…intellectual works.”

He goes on to say, however that Glenn Beck, with his combination of ordinary guy and serious critique of liberalism actually helps the conservative movement and,

“if more conservative talkers challenged liberalism’s bedrock assumptions as Beck does, liberals would have to defend their problematic premises more often.”

One of the other points Hayward has in this column regards the

“Tea Party phenomenon”. He applauds the movement but rightly describes it as “unfocused, lacking the connection to a concrete ideology…”

I say “rightly” because observing the Tea Party movement in my own State of Minnesota, I have noticed something missing from it: not only is the Tea Party movement unfocused but it is also unorganized and nonintegrated. On April 15 and September 12, many of the separate Tea Party and similar organizations across the country combined to show Obama and DC the power of its numbers. But what happened afterward? It feels good to stand around with signs on the Capitol Lawn, listening to great speakers preaching the need for more Conservatives in government and bashing the current administration and Congress for their largesses when using our tax-money, but what happens when we go home?

At a recent American Majority “Activist Training Session” I attended, one of the most common questions was “What can we do?” The trainers, smart, well-informed young men, attempted to answer that question with lessons in Candidate Campaigning and use of Facebook and Twitter to promote the “coalitions” we were supposed to go out and form within our own communities. American Majority spoke of finding a cause that people from all backgrounds could join together and fight for, be it less crime in a neighborhood or lower taxes in our counties, and the need to have a mission statement for each coalition. They also said to become more involved with our local politics, join the “BPOUs” (Minnesotan grass-roots political organizations) and push for the candidates that most represent our values or run for office ourselves. All of this is great advice as we all should be doing these things to promote the conservative cause; however, the lack of real-time coordination between the many smaller conservative and libertarian groups renders the cause ineffectual in many ways.

When President Obama chose Minneapolis as the spot for his Obamacare Rally on Sept. 12, the media was alerted only four days in advance – not a lot of time to organize a proper protest at the Target Center for those in opposition of Obamacare. Thousands attended the rally, standing in line for several hours before being admitted into the Target Center. Across the street from the entrance, a small but determined group of people protesting Obamacare stood peacefully holding their signs and occasionally erupting (usually in response to Obamacare supporters’ chants) in chants of “Kill the Bill!” and “Freedom!” They were laughed at, sworn at, engaged in debate by passers-by and generally dismissed by many in the crowd. The media portrayed them as angry white people, comparing and contrasting the protesters with bright-eyed, blank-faced Obama-ites proclaiming their “love” for a President who was giving them “hope.”

Unfortunately, the crowd of protesters was grossly smaller than the crowd entering the rally. I believe that had we had a unified system of communication – minimally one website where anyone could go to and find info regarding the protest that day – and a contingent of dedicated people from each of the individual “Freedom” or “Tea Party” groups with access to members’ phone numbers or email addresses, the group of protesters could have been ten times larger than it was that bright Saturday morning.

In a state like Minnesota, where it feels and seems more blue than red, it is hard as a Conservative to feel like there are any others like you in the state. Minnesota is not unique in this way; there are many states where conservatism is a minority belief. It is in those states where it it becomes necessary for the grass-roots groups to come together, find their mission statement, and, as Hayward states, “robust alternatives for both foreign and domestic policy” and to “challenge liberalism at the intellectual level…do better than merely invoking ‘markets’ and ‘liberty’…”

Chicago Tea Party

We have been able to come together to fight the so-called “Healthcare Reform” and to protest the signing without lawmakers even reading the first “Stimulus Bill” because the various groups found a common cause for which to fight. Now all the small grass-roots groups need to find another means by which to unite – by county, by town, and/or by state(s); so that we are no longer a bunch of chickens separately dashing around screaming “The sky is falling!”, but a unified group of people that are taken seriously by those who have dismissed us as “racist tea-baggers.” The idea that there is strength in numbers is not a new one. The Right needs to find a way to connect all the individuals together and use all those individuals to show that we will not go blindly into “Socialism-lite”, we will fight for freedom for our children, our future, our countryman and ourselves. If we combine all the individual talent and skill of the most competent, hard-working people in this great country, we may find the leaders we need who can lead the way off the path that was started long before Obama, back onto the one forged by the Founding Fathers and continued by Ronald Reagan: the only path that leads back to freedom and prosperity for all.