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08.31.2010 0

Too Hot Not to Note: Put down the party hats and put on the work gloves

  • On: 09/12/2010 18:59:34
  • In: Conservative Movement
  • ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured oped from the Washington Examiner, Lynchburg, VA Tea Party Chairman Mark Lloyd urges Americans to get involved politically — in their hometowns, and compares those efforts to attending rallies in D.C.:

    Put down the party hats and put on the work gloves

    By Mark Lloyd

    It is far past the time for true patriots to roll up our sleeves and get to work. The liberal Democrats and their “community organizers” learned long ago that elections are won around kitchen tables and front porches.

    Too many in the Tea Party movement think that big crowds, funny hats, and clever signs will convince the undecided and uneducated voters to get to the polls and save this Republic.

    Enough already with the D.C. rallies that draw tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of concerned Americans away from the real task at hand – stopping Obama from being able to accomplish the rest of his legislative agenda next session.

    It is time to take this movement into every home, in every community, all over the countryside and reignite the true spark of liberty in the hearts of our neighbors.

    This weekend, there will be more than one hundred volunteers working to educate voters in Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia’s Ninth Congressional district about the voting record of their incumbent member of Congress, Rep. Rick Boucher.

    They will be reaching 10 voters an hour over an eight-hour period, educating more than 8,000 people in a single day. In Maryland, critical primary elections are coming Tuesday, yet volunteers are being drained from helping candidates to attend a D.C. rally.

    One volunteer leader even went so far as to respond to a call to help this weekend by urging her members to come to a D.C. rally because, “This is the last time we will have to tell this Administration how we feel.”

    Exactly wrong! Election day is the last time that we get to tell this administration how we feel, and all the rallies in the world won’t matter if we fall short on election day due to wasting the enormous time, energy and money of the tea party activists on made for television rallies.

    Obama strategist David Plouffe is sending out videos urging Obama supporters to win the “ground game.” Contacting voters, walking precincts, making phone calls, helping campaigns win.

    Yet, some national Tea Party “leaders” are urging their followers to spend their time, energy and money trekking back to D.C. one more time, after just two short weeks ago, Glenn Beck’s rally drew between 250,000 and 500,000 of the same supporters.

    Imagine the staggering impact that 250,000 of the people who attended these rallies instead had spent that eight hours working for the candidate of their choice contacting 10 voters an hour each. That would be 2.5 million voters reached an hour, and 20 million voters reached on one weekend day.

    Reaching and educating 20 million voters is the difference between shifting 60-80 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and only shifting 35. Yet, for some reason, the Washington, D.C. intelligentsia continues to call those most likely to put their shoulders to the hard work of winning their neighborhoods back to D.C. to appear as little more than astroturf props.

    While I am certain that these national tea party organizers have the best of intentions, it has to provide comfort to Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and give them a good chuckle, to know that while their union machine is hitting the ground to defend their freedom-squelching majority in Congress, the ground troops for free enterprise and individual liberty are busily mounting their vehicles and travelling once again to a media show in D.C.

    It makes one question their real motives, and wonder whether they really want to win after all.

    Mark Lloyd is chairman of the Lynchburg, VA, Tea Party. He is a U.S. Naval veteran, a Boy Scout leader, and a salesman.


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