Conservatives tend to argue

Sorry but it's true. I was asked yesterday if I could sum up the events from election day to now, wherein massive numbers of conservatives and activists have been collaborating on tea parties and social media ... but sadly have been arguing far too much to really get some things done.

Here's my attempt at a short history - which I'm sure will be severely attacked by anyone with a different opinion, but it's my perspective at least:

• On November 4th, we lost! In a very dramatic win, President Barack Obama won in a sweeping landslide that included our own State of Indiana in the Democrat column for the first time in decades. Americans from all walks and in huge numbers turned out for the vapid and empty slogan "CHANGE"
  
• Conservatives (in this term I include the various niches including Republicans and Libertarians and Liberty groups) noticed loud and clear that old methods of communicating and getting out the vote were beaten, were trounced, were shown to be washed up. Many elected officials and party insiders though may still have missed this lesson.
  
• Twitter was beginning to gain steam during the election, and some conservative were finding each other. But the big break late in the year was the announcement of a twitter list of conservatives, which started I think with just 100 names. Michael Leahy from Tennessee formed a blogspot site and began collecting names. I'm sure it jumped pretty quickly to over a 1,000 and I remember discussions that it may surpass 5,000 names by the end of the year alone.
• The blogspot site quickly morphed into a better site, and some structure was provided for mentoring new twitter users, signing up more people to the list, and action projects to begin collaboration on major projects. #tcot (the hashtag for Top Conservatives on Twitter) was for weeks the highest trending topic, although now twitter has removed it on the trending list since it would still be dominant every day.
• Another surge occured with the formation of Rebuild the Party, a group of technologically savvy Republicans demanding that the Republican Party change its ways. Some leaders listened but many did not. During the run up to the RNC chair vote, many of the candidates waited until the last minute even to engage online, only doing so when cajoled by Michigan GOP chair Saul Anuzis.
  
• The next big surge of activity followed the now famous rant by CNBC anchor Rick Santelli. When asked about TARP and the Stimulus Bill, on February 19th he went on a tirade against government bailouts of homeowners and called for a Tea Party in Chicago to remind government leaders that they were out of line.
• During March there were some smaller tea parties actually staged, as members of #tcot and a multitude of conservative groups began to work together to use the opportunity to unite. A call went out in March for a Tax Day Tea Party on April 15th. Although very little time to organize, and mostly using online resources, there were roughly 900 tea parties in the United States on tax day and some counts with as many as 1 million participants. The coalition that worked together to provide tools and resources included #dontgo, #tcot, American Solutions, Smart Girl Politics, Tea Party Patriots , Pajamas Media and hundreds of other similar groups.
• What next? Why of course independent minded conservatives, who just don't naturally collaborate ... have a series of arguments over who's in leadership. Bummer
• Right now the tea party movement is splintering into six or seven different groups all providing tools and resources to planned events on July 4th, and marches on Washington in September, a tea party tour across America, and literally hundreds of social network groups. I will try to update the links, but man do I wish they would work together so that regular Americans could find the information and ways to get involved more easily.
  
• Oh yeah, and #tcot is also running into some issues, with founder Michael Leahy being told by some that he's too pushy in taking credit and driving planning on projects like TCOT Report, and TCOT Projects ... so his technology parter Rob Neppell has suggested turning over the #tcot platform to a third party so the personalities can be taken out. Maybe a good idea but frankly why were they able to work together for a few months and then can't do so?
  

I'm not airing all this dirty laundry for gossip's sake, but to make a point, one that I've made numerous times before. Namely, conservatives aren't real good at collaboration. In our desire to make a profit, our rugged individualism, our self-reliance and our general desire not to be told what to do ... we argue and fight all too often. At the national level this is easy to see, at the state level as well, but don't think it doesn't exist even here at the local level.

Our own local tea party was totally disregarded by many normally conservative groups in Northwest Indiana. Although 300 may have attended from a relatively small community, many hundreds more should have been there and supported.

I see great potential for the majority of Americans who believe in a government too small to run our businesses, a government held accountable to its citizens, and individual rights over the twin ills of socialism and government largess. November 4th may have been the beginning to the next great conservative revolution to push back government growth, reduce taxes, regain our rights, and supercharge our economy for prosperity.

But it's time we begin to work together to these ends. Arguing about who came up with the idea, or trying to dictate to a thousand grass root groups what they will do, or even personality clashes over media attention are hindering our progress in raising awareness that our government has reached too far. Indeed, pretending that social media and online activists don't matter is one of the greatest errors being made by elected officials right now.