The Conservative Revolution

This story ran today in Human Events about the hundreds of taxpayer tea parties being held across the country this weekend. It quotes yours truly and my colleague Adam Brandon extensively. One thing that isn’t quite correct is the agenda for the march on Washington on September 12th. The updated agenda for the event is here.

Brendan Steinhauser, a national coordinator for FreedomWorks, has been traveling around the country since February working with grassroots activists organizing tax protests. FreedomWorks and a coalition of organizations believe it is time to take the tax protests straight to Capitol Hill. There are more than 6,000 people from all over the country registered to attend the National Taxpayer Protest March on Washington. Steinhauser expects that number to grow substantially as people learn the details of the Obama administration’s health care and cap-and-trade energy plans and what those plans will do to their personal finances, tax rates and medical care.

“Some of the media missed the story on this,” Steinhauser said, referring to the tea party movement that erupted in April, but was summarily ridiculed and dismissed by the media. He plans on speaking at the tea party Miller is helping arrange and is assisting other groups and individuals organizing protests in other parts of the country. The idea for a March on Washington came from a group of organizers who put together the April 15 tea parties and felt that the message the protests sent to elected officials had been ignored. The march is a three-day event including visits with congressmen and senators, workshops and seminars and gatherings at area memorials leading up to the march from the Lincoln Memorial to the United States Capitol Building on Saturday. FreedomWorks and their coalition partners have invited numerous politicians and personalities from the media and entertainment fields to participate.

Steinhauser also noted that the people he meets who are dealing with all the details of setting up these tea parties do not have political aspirations themselves, but they are taking time away from their careers and families because the men and women running their country are not listening to their constituents.

“It’s a good group and a coalition of the willing,” Steinhauser said. “This has the potential to get huge.”

Adam Brandon, FreedomWorks press secretary, said the tea party movement goes beyond party lines. At several past events there were as many liberals and independents as conservatives in attendance and he cited Rep.Walt Minnick (D.-Idaho) and Rep. Gene Taylor, (D-Miss.), as allies to the tea party cause because of their voting records which are “better than some Republicans.”

“They are absolutely welcome to join with us,” Brandon said.

He said momentum is building and the message is getting through to politicians such as Sen. Ben Nelson, (D-Neb.), whose office was slammed with e-mails and phone calls from tea party members letting the senator know what they thought of the current state of affairs. That momentum will make it difficult to ignore the protests.

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin for bringing this great video to my attention. People from around the country are organizing July 4th Tea Parties. I will be speaking at the March for Liberty at Upper Senate Park at 1pm. I hope that all of you attend the tea party nearest you.

Michelle Malkin has a “wanted” poster of the 8 Republicans who voted with Nancy Pelosi to raise the price of energy on all Americans. Here are the names of the sellout Republicans, who should hear from the American people every day about their terrible mistake. Already, protests are happening around the country today as people fed up with more government and less freedom reach a boiling point.

Today is the day that the national energy tax will be voted on in the House of Representatives. You can CLICK HERE to send an email to your Representative, asking him or her to vote against this massive energy tax on everyone in America. The purpose of this tax is to make our energy supply more expensive so that the greens can make Al Gore and his green companies rich by spending taxpayer dollars on green energy.

All taxes on oil and gas will be passed along to consumers, which is another example of president Obama breaking his promise to not raise taxes “one dime” on the middle class. Shame on the liberal Democrats for trying to impose billions of dollars in new taxes on the American people during a recession.

George Will has an excellent column on the health care debate taking place. He points out that liberals are exaggerating the number of American citizens who don’t have health insurance.

Almost 39 percent of the uninsured are in five states — Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, all of which are entry points for immigrants. About 21 percent — 9.7 million — of the uninsured are not citizens. Up to 14 million are eligible for existing government programs — Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, veterans’ benefits, etc. — but have not enrolled. And 9.1 million have household incomes of at least $75,000 and could purchase insurance. Those last two cohorts are more than half of the 45.7 million.

As Will points out, the left cares more about making people dependent on government than providing health insurance to the neediest people. Other reforms would make it easier for the folks that want health insurance but can’t get it. The absolute last thing we need to do is grow the size of government, add further to our national debt and the tax burden on hardworking Americans. This health care debate will heat up over the next few weeks, and conservatives should make the point over and over that the number of uninsured in America is exaggerated and that the changes being proposed by liberals in Congress would simply cost more than we can bear.

There are a lot of people worried about the attempt to rush through government-run health care this summer before the American people have a chance to debate such a scheme. I’ve been talking to activists around the country who want to do something to stop ObamaCare, but they don’t know where to start. Below is a campaign plan that can be applied to any local volunteer leader that wants to make a tangible difference in this fight.

Targets: The best targets for this campaign are the swing votes in the Senate, like Sen. Lincoln (AR), Sen. Bayh (IN), Nelson (NE) and Nelson (FL). Moderate Democrats and Liberal Republicans should be the main targets of any effort to stop ObamaCare.

Timing: We don’t have much time, so activists should get busy now. We will need to keep the pressure on the politicians from now through the August Recess.

Tactic 1: District Office Visits. Send one or two volunteers into the local offices of the targeted politician every day that you can. Have volunteers agree beforehand on the schedule and follow up with them to make sure they drop by, meet with staff, take pictures and take good notes to gather intel. The best activists for an office visit are doctors, small business owners and health care workers. Ask them to give their personal stories as to why ObamaCare would harm them or the people they care for.

Tactic 2: Phone Calls. We should be hitting each target with 100 calls a day. Some of these should go to the district offices as well. Make sure that we at least get our total every day (even if people from out of state are calling) so that we keep the phones ringing constantly. When you call, ask to speak to the chief of staff or the legislative director, and leave them voice mails. Get your friends to do the same thing until their voice mailbox is filled up. This will send a message loud and clear.

Tactic 3: Letters. Get volunteers to hand write letters to the targeted politicians that can be delivered in person during a district office visit. Collect dozens of letters each week and ask people to provide their personal stories about how ObamaCare would harm them or someone they know. Also make sure that at least two letters to the editor are submitted every day about health care to the local newspapers. Your goal should be to have three or four letters each week in the papers that point out some problem with ObamaCare.

Tactic 4: Petitions. Gather hundreds or even thousands of petition signatures against government-run health care and higher taxes. Try to get as many doctors, nurses, patients and small business owners as you can to sign the petition. Use the petition gathering effort as a way to get media attention. Put out a press release announcing the effort and deliver the signatures each week to your targeted politician’s district office.

Tactic 5: Town Hall Visits. If your targeted politician is hosting a town hall meeting or listening session be sure to get there. Bring as many people with you as you can and be the first ones to ask a question. Fill up as many seats as possible! Ask tough, specific questions about health care and put the politician on the spot.

Tactic 6: Protest. Schedule one or two protests per week outside the district office of the target. Hold up signs that say something like “Does Blanche Lincoln Support $1 Trillion in New Taxes?” Focus on the specific person, and deliver a message that makes the target defend themselves on the issues. Don’t talk about Obama or about Congress, but specifically about your targeted politician. Make it personal, and get as much media attention as you can.

FreedomWorks has put together another interactive map for the tea parties around the country. This time, the focus is on July 4th. We will continue to update the map throughout the next month. If you don’t see an event listed, just post a comment in the comments section on the map. Hope to see you at one of these events on July 4th!!

View What’s Next? in a larger map

Here at FreedomWorks we have launched a major effort to derail plans to take over the U.S. health care system, starting with grassroots activity in key states with moderate senators or important committee members. You can read more about our strategy here, and take action by sending a letter to the editor, calling the targeted senators and sending emails to their chiefs of staff.

If we can convince senators Nelson (NE), Nelson (FL), Lincoln (AR) and Bayh (IN) to oppose government-run health care, and/or the trillions of dollars in new tax increases to pay for it, we have a shot at stopping this massive government takeover of the health insurance industry.

I arrived in Billings, Montana yesterday to organize some grassroots resistance against government-run health care and the taxes being proposed to pay for it. Montana is a beautiful state with a lot of open space, rolling hills and snow-capped mountains. Driving from town to
town is a real treat.

Yesterday I met with some conservative activists and talked about FreedomWorks’ strategy to fight government-run health care. I talked with Dave, a former city council member and local activist at the Muzzle Loader Cafe. The food was good, but not great. Dave is a very interesting person and I enjoyed swapping war stories with him and talking about how we can try to prevent our country from heading over a cliff toward outright socialism.

Billings is the largest town in Montana, at 100,000, and it has an interesting downtown, but not a whole lot of restaurants or bars. Last night I had a late dinner and drinks at the Rex Hotel in the historic district along Montana Ave. I tried the Missoula-based Bent Nail beer, which is a local IPA. Not bad at all.

Early this morning I left for Bozeman, two hours west of Billings. Bozeman is a cool college town — home of Montana State University. It definitely has a kind of liberal, hippie vibe like Austin or Burlington, Vermont. Main street is lined with coffee shops offering organic coffee, art galleries and college students. I met with a local volunteer, and then we headed over to Senator Max Baucus’s office to express our concerns with his plans for a government takeover of health care, and the idea of taxing alcohol and soda to pay for it. The staff was getting calls even as we were meeting with them. They told us that they have heard from a lot of people against socialized medicine, and that Sen. Baucus will not be pushing a single-payer system. The staff was nice and very accommodating, and gave us their contact information so we could stay in touch.

I had lunch with the head of the Montana Policy Institute, who filled me in on local politics and his work at the new think tank. We agreed to work together as much as possible on issues like taxes, the budget, health care and energy. We are planning to try and work toward a better organization among all the different grassroots groups in Montana. I’m looking forward to working toward that goal as I head to Helena right now. I will be meeting with activists there, as well as Senator Baucus’s staff. I’ll try to post another blog either tonight or tomorrow.

In the video below, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor publicly noted that she believes judges should make law. While she tried to walk it back, it’s clear what she meant, and what she will do as a Supreme Court justice. The Sotomayor pick is the intersection of activist judges and identity politics. Welcome to the age of Obama.