FreedomWorks, the top-tier Tea Party organizing group run by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), is gearing up for a very busy 2010.
The group sent out an e-mail yesterday to its list, “The Freedom Movement: A Historic 2009 Gives Way To A Busy 2010,” promising an increased range of activities in the big election year of 2010. There will be sustained activism against the Democrats’ health care bill, an April 15 Tax Day Tea Party at the White House itself, and electoral activity by the FreedomWorks PAC.
FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon told me that the PAC will enable the organization to get directly involved in elections, instead of the issue advocacy to which they’ve been limited. In addition, it will help activists in one state point their money and energies to targeted Democrats in other states, such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) or Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), and help out favored Senate candidates like former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-PA) and former state House Speaker Marco Rubio (R-FL).
What’s more, FreedomWorks will help to mobilize a national grassroots effort that has been just taking shape this year. Tea Party groups have sprung up in large numbers; some have merged, some have died away, and the movement has gone through a process of formation, which will need to have a more orderly makeup going into a national election.
“The Club For Growth, they get the big checks,” said Brandon. “We’re looking at not getting the big checks, we’re looking at the small checks, the $50 checks, and putting that all together.”
Brandon’s mention of a focus on small checks reminded me a lot of the Obama campaign — and also of something Brandon has told me before, that FreedomWorks’ goal is to emulate the organizational tactics of the left and apply it to the right. Am I right, I asked Brandon, to think that FreedomWorks is trying to recreate the energies of the 2007/2008 Obama campaign, only in opposition to Obama?
“We studied everything about the Obama model. We’ve been, almost like homework, assigned to study in our respective areas,” Brandon said. “You look at the Obama activists, that insurgency to take out Hillary Clinton was phenomenal. There it was, the insurgency against the machine, and they won, and we really see ourselves the same way. What we’re really trying to do is prevent the need for a third party, because that would be very bad for everyone. I think that would be really bad for the country, if the Republican Party got smashed into bits and had three branches that can’t get along. That would be handing the country to the Democrats for life.”
