New grassroots activists

Usually, the left likes the idea of grassroots activists organizing to try to influence government policy. However, when the activists are supporting a conservative cause such as the anti-government spending tea party protesters gathering today, the reaction is somewhat different. As Glenn Reynolds writes today in the WSJ, this is a totally bottom-up phenomenon that, while Republicans might welcome it, is not being created or organized by the Republican Party.

What's most striking about the tea-party movement is that most of the organizers haven't ever organized, or even participated, in a protest rally before. General disgust has drawn a lot of people off the sidelines and into the political arena, and they are already planning for political action after today.

Cincinnati organizer Mike Wilson, a novice organizer who drew 5,000 people to a rally on March 15, is now planning to create a political action committee and a permanent political organization to press for lower taxes and reduced spending. Tucson tea party organizer Robert Mayer told me that his organization will focus on city council elections in the fall as its next priority. And there's lots of Internet chatter about ways of taking things further after today's protests.

This influx of new energy and new talent is likely to inject new life into small-government politics around the nation. The mainstream Republican Party still seems limp and disorganized. This grassroots effort may revitalize it. Or the tea-party movement may lead to a new third party that may replace the GOP, just as the GOP replaced the fractured and hapless Whigs.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a third party. Our winner-take-all electoral system and limitations on getting on ballots make the success of a third party practically impossible. Successful politicians will find a way to absorb this issue just as the two parties have absorbed third party movements since the mid-19th century.

But like Glenn Reynolds, I find the idea of people organizing themselves to protest against runaway spending exciting. Liberals have been doing this for decades. In my history class this week we're looking at the 1960s and all the activist groups that sprang up modeled up on the civil rights movement. This is just another chapter. It's time for politicians to listen to the voices of fed up taxpayers who are sick of their representatives passing these massive spending bills without debate or even reading the bill and without consideration of the long-term impact of such policies.