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Meet some of the conservative grassroots organizations that are coming into their own this year.
What do conservatives do after the Tea Parties? What do you do when the protests are over? How do you harness all that energy? How do you turn it into a permanent force?
When hundreds of thousands of peopleby some counts, well over half a million- protested nationwide against big-government-gone-wild on April 15, the near-spontaneous passion of the "Tea Party" demonstrators gave a major boost to the spirits of more seasoned conservative activists. And even bigger, more organized Tea Parties are reportedly on tap for July 4. But it's one thing to get people to voice their frustrations; it's a much more difficult thing to channel those frustrations into something longlastingly positive.
The good news is that even before anybody dreamed of the Tea Parties, a number of conservative grassroots organizations, almost completely divorced from Washington/New York direction, were mobilizing in the far-flung towns and cyberspace wikis of this great nation. Candidate recruitment and training, media and Internet entrepreneurial efforts, intellectual stimulation and policy innovation- all are getting jolts of energy and talent from new organizations. Even better, many of those organizations were well positioned to build directly on the Tea Party momentum while working to create the next generation of conservative political infrastructure.
Indeed, one such organization, American Majority, almost immediately posted a new website called, yes, AfterTheTeaParty.com. "Run for local office," says one sub-link at the site. "Be an activist!" says another. "Support freedom!" says a third. American Majority's main objective is to recruit and train candidates for local and state offices such as town councils, school boards, county commissions, and state legislators- or, if people don't want to run for office, to at least train them to be effective activists.
"You have to move from protesting to becoming 'implementers,'" said American Majority president Ned Ryun. "We are saying to people: We will empower you. If you want to be involved, we will give you the tools."
Ryun continued, "We're trying to stay very much on the cutting edge, to teach things like: How do you use Twitter, how do you use Facebook, Plurk, and Ning? How do you use social networking tools in campaigns or in...