7 Steps to Ensuring Your Liberty

A Washington Post/ABC News poll shows a major shift in sentiment toward (against?) the tea party movement.

As an original tea party organizer, this shift doesn’t surprise me. By “this shift,” I refer to the the tea party’s popularity waning among Southerners and people aged 18 to 29. The poll shows that a full 50 percent of Americans now have a negative view of the tea party.

Sure, there may have been some chicanery with the questions to skew the results. But only a true shift in sentiment would result in change this big. After a year of wall-to-wall coverage of “tea party,” this downshift should come as no surprise.

I think there are several issues here:

1. Rand Paul’s performance since the primary has been a net negative. I pointed out on Larry Kudlow’s show on CNBC the day after Kentucky primary that Paul’s candidacy is not a referendum on the tea party movement. Nothing is. But he and some tea partyers insisted on linking the two, and his handling of controversy has been less than spectacular.
2. In Nevada, Michigan, and elsewhere, leftists have created fake “tea party” parties that have damaged the brand by running Democrats pretending to be tea partyers. The idea is to split the center-right vote to allow the like of Harry Reid back into Congress.
3. In-fighting among tea partyers has left a foul taste in the mouths of many. This development shouldn’t be a surprise. The tea party movement has no structure or hierarchy to keep order, and it’s filled with people who are new to this arena. We make mistakes, people. Get over it.
4. Some disenchanted Republicans who were early tea partyers have returned to the GOP. That doesn’t mean they won’t continue to fight the good fight. It means they’ll do so under a banner they’re more familiar with.
5. Zealots and purists have splintered off and driven away more pragmatic reformers. We’ve seen this in numerous places across the country. When the zealots lose, they tend to take their balls and go home. They also tend to turn off the people who just want their country back.
6. After a year of hearing “tea party, tea party, tea party,” many people are probably just tired of hearing about it. I am tired of hearing about it. I want to rack up some damn wins and get about fixing the country, and really don’t care what was call the thing that does it.
7. We’re in The Dip

These shifts in sentiment should come as no surprise. Instead, they indicate that our movement is growing up. Part of that maturation process involves channeling our energies into outgrowths of the tea party movement.

Ensuring Liberty and similar organizations allow the tea party passion to yield actual results. The tea party movement is indispensable for its passion and energy and new blood, but 10,000 angry people don’t win elections. Ten thousand voters, multiplied by tens of thousands precincts, win elections. Ensuring Liberty–founded and directed by local tea party organizers from several states–combines the spirit and values of the tea party with strong campaign experience and a Congressional caucus.

Together, the people, the passion, and the principled accountability give grassroots conservatives a tool for managing Washington that we’ve never had before.

So what can you do? How can you take this passion, this glorious coming together that we’ve experienced since February 27, 2009, and turn it into a wild victory celebration on November 2? Let’s start with this list:

1. Invest in an organization that is engineered to win important races and to hold the new Congress accountable. I helped launch Ensuring Liberty to do just that, and we need your support to get there. Please join today so you can tell your kids, “I helped ensure your liberty. Now clean up your room.”
2. Take personal responsibility to register everyone in your house to vote.
3. Launch a community building project like St. Louis’s Block Captain and Liberty Evangelism project. Give people the power of personal freedom by handing them a Constitution with your email address on it, saying, “Please take this as a gift. Please read it and decide for yourself whether Washington is living up to the promises in those documents.”
4. Use the buddy system to make sure everyone you recruit votes in the primary and on November 2. That means you commit to getting someone to the polls, and someone commits to making sure you vote. Take ownership of this job. Let nothing stop you.
5. Put in for vacation on November 1, 2, and 3. Do it right now. Your kids need you to get out the vote on their behalf. Let nothing stop you. (You will still be partying on Wednesday at 10:00 a.m., so you might as well not even think about working that day.)
6. Vote early and get your friends and neighbors who agree with you to vote early.
7. Every night before you go to bed, write a positive journal entry describing the feeling, the sounds, the news of November 2 and 3. Go ahead and project. Describe Ed Martin’s victory speech when he unseats Russ Carnahan in Missouri. Or write about Nancy Pelosi breaking down in tears as she kisses the Speaker’s Gavel good-bye. What will Frank Rich say? How about Paul Krugman? Keith Olbermann? What could be more fun than hearing Chris Matthews describe the “Tea bagger temper tantrum” that overturned Congress? Write Rush Limbaugh’s opening monologue for November 3.

The name of the movement doesn’t matter. It never did. Names are symbols. The name came from the name of an event–a “tea party” held to demonstrate that we’d had enough. That phase is over. Everyone knows we’ve had enough. Now it’s time to act.