Ned Ryun is a regular contributor to the American Spectator. This month he dove in to the history of the progressive movement as it compares to today’s tea party movement.

Even more important, however, the Tea Party needs to realize is that its objective is not about shifting paradigms or having a short-term impact. It’s about crushing paradigms and creating a new set of rules that dictate how the game is played decades from now. America needs a renewed system of government dedicated to reversing the damage of the Progressive movement and promoting American values. The Tea Party, if it is to be remembered a hundred years from now, must shrink the bureaucratic state, returning government to its proper role. It must also fundamentally change the process of electoral politics, whether it’s a return to a caucus and convention nomination process or even repealing the 17th Amendment and the direct election of Senators. Real change is about the Tea Party and the American people transcending the Progressive system of government, the ruling class it created, breaking it and its cronies, devolving power from the federal government, and changing the playing field and rules by which the “game” of politics and government is played. Fundamental change has happened before, and it can be done again, and that is the measurement of true success the Tea Party should seek to attain.

To read the full article, head on over to the AmericanSpectator.org

“I’m afraid of what we’ve done here.”

That’s how a long-time liberal incumbent of the local school board in Loudoun County, Virginia reacted to cuts made in this year’s bloated education budget. And what strikes fear into the heart of this long time big spender? A coalition of newly elected conservative members, led by the board’s new Vice Chair, freshman member Jill Turgeon. Jill, a former public school teacher, is an American Majority alumni, and her story epitomizes our nationwide strategy perfectly.

You see, just four months ago, Jill’s normal day consisted of teaching in a public school, coming home, and knocking doors every afternoon until dinnertime for her school board campaign. Now, she’s leading the coalition that has cut $13 million from her county’s exorbitant education budget. Even nationally syndicated talk radio host Mark Levin took notice of Jill’s work, and praised the new members of the Loudoun County School Board on his radio show last week.

“What we’re doing is unheard of,” Jill says. And it hasn’t been easy. “Our biggest issue this year is the status quo. There is a difference of philosophy among members of the board. Some members believe that they are representatives of the schools to the people. I believe that I am a representative of the taxpayers to the schools.”

Jill is just like millions of Americans – a regular person, concerned for her community and her country. But she had no prior experience as a candidate for office. With American Majority’s training, she gained the knowledge and skills she needed to carry her campaign across the finish line: “American Majority helped me by laying out the basics of what needs to be done on a campaign. They showed me anyone can do it. It’s truly a grassroots approach – American Majority is training citizens, not politicians.”

Jill is not alone. American Majority has already trained 2,000 conservative citizens to run for office and win. This year, we’ll double that figure. Every week, our trainers are bringing our cutting-edge training and resources to fiscally responsible, liberty-minded individuals who will run for office, win their elections, and implement sound-minded policy in their local and state governments.

Could you imagine thousands of conservative candidates doing the same thing across the country this year? If you haven’t already, take a look at the trainings we offer or consider requesting a training in your area.

Our trainees depend on American Majority for cutting-edge materials and training, and when we train, they win. It’s as simple as that. Please consider partnering with us today to replicate Jill’s story thousands of times nationwide.

Ned Ryun, President of American Majority, released the following statement today in reaction to the untimely passing of his friend Andrew Breitbart. Ryun is a contributor to Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com website. Breitbart also worked collaboratively with American Majority over the last several years.

“Today, the conservative movement has lost a powerful voice in the fight to protect our freedom. Andrew Beitbart was a pioneer in using social media and digital technology to bring a courageous conservative message to America’s grassroots. He did something many in the conservative movement are afraid to do – go right at the left and not back down. Andrew served as an example to the rest of the conservative movement of how to fight for our values without apology or compromise.”

“He was never afraid to tackle the most pressing issues of our time, the most damaging special interests, and the corruption and hypocrisy that threaten the American way of life. Andrew was a soldier for this nation’s core values of limited government, and individual freedom. We will carry on this great cause of protecting freedom from government excess using his passion and energy as inspiration. While he has been taken from us too soon, his voice will undoubtedly resonate and his impact will be felt long after this sad day.”

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Media Inquiries Contact: Thomas Basile at TBasile@EmpireStrategy.com or call 917-579-2216

There’s a lot of wishful thinking in Washington. Beltway Democrats wish for more of our money to spend. Beltway Republicans wish no one would notice they’ve done nothing about the deficit.

President Obama is wishing from the 18th green that the economy will magically improve enough to make him appear competent. And his progressive allies wish the Tea Party, which defeated well-heeled liberal forces in 2010, would just go away.

The Left thinks it’s getting its wish as Tea Party rallies fade into history. But that doesn’t mean that the Tea Party is dead. In fact, what progressives have hoped was the demise of the most effective grass-roots movement in recent history has actually been a needed evolution.

Large, decentralized, authentic grass-roots movements are so often nothing more than flashes in the pan. Not so with the Tea Party. It remains a potent political force but just not in the same way as in 2009 and 2010.

Even the Tea Party name has slowly begun to fade as citizen-activists and citizen-politicians who first engaged in the national political discourse three years ago now are building political infrastructure to effect long-term, systemic reform.

They’re ready to do something as much as say something. Being stuck in a 2009 mentality will not help build a counterforce to public employee unions and other well-funded progressive constituencies.

It is an uphill battle to be sure, but it was similar to the mountain progressives climbed against the corporatists 100 years ago. This time around, the fiscal conservatives and constitutionalists are beginning to drive hard against the statists.

Read More at the Washington Examiner

Making its way through cyberspace is a bold, brash and largely accurate depiction of the state of American government and politics. Delivered on his last nightly broadcast, Judge Andrew Napolitano takes on the system in a five-minute rant about just how upside down the whole political process really is. His conclusion? It’s about them, not us. “Them” refers to the elite class of elected officials, senior-level bureaucrats and political machinery who first created and now maintain a system in which people matter less and government matters more, or people I refer to as the Ruling Class.

Napolitano’s pseudo-endorsement of Ron Paul may be a bit off, but the general point is one all of us need to appreciate. Ron Paul is not electable and some of his ideas, particularly on foreign policy, are outright dangerous. But broadening Napolitano’s argument to suggest that we need to change the status quo beyond merely switching parties in control of Congress or the White House is a good dose of sense.

The two-party system hasn’t failed Americans. A political culture that is too timid to challenge well-financed special interests has. As Napolitano points out, both Republicans and Democrats, from Reagan to Bush have pledged to the American people to reduce the size of government and not only did they fail to keep that promise, all of them grew the size of government considerably.

READ MORE ON BIGGOVERNMENT.COM

Certain people keep opining that the Tea Party is all but dead, but those who wish for the demise of the Tea Party are missing the emerging new political infrastructure where Tea Party groups have set aside rallies for political action. Consider Wisconsin to determine where the Tea Party is going in 2012 and beyond.

From New York to California, newspapers are weighing in on the importance of Governor Scott Walker’s recall in Wisconsin. Stephen Moore in the Wall Street Journal described it as “the most important non-presidential election of the decade.” The Orange County Register even penned an editorial about how important it was that the public unions are stopped in Wisconsin.

A look at the Tea Party in Wisconsin shows serious political players in this incredibly important recall game.  During 2011, the Tea Party stepped up time and again during the protests over the Budget Repair Bill, the re-election of Justice Prosser, the Prosser Recount, the recalls of State Senators who fled to Illinois, and in the August Recall elections.

Fast forward to the Walker recall and it is the Tea Party leading the way to ensure the integrity of Wisconsin’s electoral process.  Three weeks after the Walker recall began, two Wisconsin Tea Party groups announced an unprecedented project called Verify the Recall(VTR).  The joint effort of the Wisconsin Grandsons of Liberty (led by Tim Dake) and We the People of the Republic (led by Ross Brown) soon drew thousands of volunteers across Wisconsin and the rest of the 49 states.  Their announcement came at a time when conservatives in Wisconsin were growing increasingly worried about Big Labor’s “at all costs” mentality of gathering recall signatures.

When they announced, VTR was the only known verification effort.  But it wasn’t just that the Tea Party was first to announce a verification project, it is also a very sophisticated venture aided by True the Vote, a Houston-based Tea Party group that has led similar projects.  VTR’s database will be cross-referencing double digit reference points to ensure that the name and addresses signed are accurate and living.

The establishment was not only late to the game in their verification efforts; they merely used volunteers for an in-person examination of recall petitions at their offices.  To create a database, they opted to use a third party group to enter the information.

VTR choose to use their 12,000+ volunteers who have a vested interest in finding recall fraud as they have heard numerous reports of errors, duplicates, and even outright recall fraud.  VTR also has had more than 64,000 people sign up to see if someone else has signed their name to a recall petition.

The Tea Party in Wisconsin is showing their grassroots muscle in a big way. The Tea Partyrallies are dead, as well they should be. But the real Tea Party that will enact political change is actually rising, growing stronger and more sophisticated in 2012.

(Cross Posted on RedState.com)

American Majority Racing is a national program of American Majority, the nation’s leading conservative grassroots training organization. The program is designed to target millions of NASCAR fans from all political backgrounds in an unprecedented effort to engage them in the electoral process. Having teamed up with NASCAR driver Jason Bowles and car #81 MacDonald Motorsports for the 2012 NASCAR Nationwide Series racing season, the American Majority Racing program is designed to educate Americans about how smaller government and less spending will “Keep America Free.” Through www.PledgetoVote.com, American Majority Racing encourages all Americans to register and vote in the 2012 elections.

Click the image of the #81 car below or visit http://AmericanMajorityRacing.com for more information.

For decades now we’ve been hearing about the dangers of America’s dependence on oil from enemy nations or unstable parts of the world. We’ve also been hearing since the 1970s about a need to expand domestic energy production in a way that protects the environment. With each successive election Americans are told about the nation’s energy crisis in bleak terms. That rhetoric is warranted. The problem is real. However, the environmental agenda is a charade.

The energy issue touches every aspect of our lives, from domestic policy to national security to job creation and food prices. Because of this cross-over, if there ever was a kitchen table issue it’s energy. As we have come to expect from an administration bereft of courage and American ideas, the Obama White House has abandoned its pledge to tackle the issue and every American is paying the price.
Obama’s rejection of the Keystone Pipeline is just one example of how he and other liberal politicians have allowed the eco-fringe to co-opt our government at all levels and our future.

The eco-fringe is the squeaky wheel of Democratic Party politics – a small, vocal, well-funded lobby that has bought off officials across the country, who in turn ignore the will of the people on energy policy and economic development. Under the guise of environmental protection, they ignore basic facts and the basic needs of Americans in an attempt to drive policies that aim to keep them relevant and make them money.

One hand washes the other. The Solyndra debacle is just one example of this colossal sham at the taxpayer’s expense. Billions of dollars have been wasted on risky so-called “green” energy or renewable energy projects as the Administration plays the tune of a small number of environmental groups and ignores the real solutions. While the majority of Americans want lower rates, an improved grid, less reliance on foreign oil, and the economic growth that comes from them, the eco-fringe and gutless liberals say no to America’s top priorities.

President Obama told us “we can’t wait” for the $787 billion stimulus so jobs can be created. He said “we can’t wait” for a jobs bill from the House Republicans…..

READ MORE ON INSIDER

Moving from suburban Philadelphia to a small, rural southeastern Oklahoma town would be a considerable culture shock to most people. And while this was most certainly the case for conservative superwoman Holly Gerard, her move to Durant, Oklahoma, in 2003 was a breath of fresh air. It also afforded her the rare opportunity to change the course of an entire state’s political direction.

As a wife, mother of five, and political force, Holly Gerard is a busy woman. Currently serving as the Strategic Projects Director for the George Faught Congressional Campaign (2nd District – Oklahoma), Holly is tasked with traveling the eastern half of Oklahoma on behalf of the Faught Campaign to recruit volunteers, organize precincts, and coordinate county party involvement. This level of campaign involvement is a far cry from her beginnings in 2008 as she witnessed the national election results and feared for the direction of her country.

Soon after the 2008 elections, Gerard took it upon herself to begin the process of reorganizing her county party in the heart of Oklahoma’s “Little Dixie”. As a single-party stronghold since statehood, southeastern Oklahoma had never seen someone as determined as Holly Gerard to change their community and their nation. Furthermore, her willingness to take on the “good old boy” network spurred her on to become the GOP Vice-Chair of Bryant County where she began motivating other conservatives and recruiting candidates for state house and state senate. As part of this effort, Gerard was helpful in organizing an American Majority Activist Training in Durant in 2009 – the first in that part of the state.

Then in 2010, Gerard’s reputation and determination led her to manage the campaign of Josh Breechen for state senate and volunteering for various other campaigns. In June of that year, Brecheen and Gerard attended an American Majority Candidate Training in Oklahoma City as they began their campaign against a two term incumbent in a part of Oklahoma that had never elected a Republican state senator or house member. In November Brecheen won his election, and the future looked bright for southeastern Oklahoma and especially for Holly Gerard. In fact, in 2011, Gerard received the prestigious “Rising Star Award” from the Oklahoma Republican Party for her efforts and her resolve. For these reasons and more, Holly Gerard is an outstanding example to all conservatives of hard work and dedication, and we are proud to call her a dear friend to American Majority Oklahoma.

Please download and share with likeminded activists!

This may be the most important election year of our lifetime, and liberty-minded activists are preparing for an all-out sprint to the finish. Every step of the way, American Majority is empowering conservative activists and candidates to win elections in towns, counties, cities, and states where the voice of the people desperately needs to be heard – state and local governments dominated by a “Ruling Class” of long-time incumbents.

As AM’s work continues across the country, the hold of the Ruling Class begins to break. Every week, activists and candidates praise the effectiveness and accessibility of AM’s training programs, and in each election season, these activists and candidates are applying their newly acquired tactics and winning. And here’s the best part: the movement is only beginning to gather momentum.

We at AM firmly believe that these newly elected officials from the grassroots are tomorrow’s national leadership. They are the conservative “farm team” – a new crop of prospects that will be vetted and promoted to the major leagues, and some of them in just a few cycles. This farm team is crucial to the continuity of the cause of freedom – new “recruits” must continuously replenish the ranks of liberty-minded leaders at all levels of government.

But they cannot do it without your help.

American Majority is calling on its supporters to Join the Farm Team in 2012. To achieve victory this year, we must labor until the very end of the process, eleven months from now. Will you make a commitment today to sponsor the farm team for the next eleven months, and see their work through to the end?

Every month, over three hundred liberty-minded activists and candidates receive cutting-edge training and resources from American Majority, and all of it is made possible by generous supporters who have chosen to fund the farm team. Dedicated supporters provide all of the materials, personnel, and logistics necessary to bring these essential tools for victory to aspiring conservative leaders. In this crucial election year, would you consider becoming one of them?

Your support has a direct, tangible impact. Over the course of the next eleven months, your can provide members of the conservative farm team with invaluable resources for victory. Even as a Scout-level sponsor, for just $5 per month, AM manuals will be printed and distributed to 35 conservative activists and candidates. And the impacts only increase:

Scout: $5 per month will print and distribute AM manuals to 35 activists or candidates this year
Coach: $10 per month will print and distribute manuals to 60 local school board candidates in 2012
Manager: $25 per month will train 11 online activists in 2012 who will fight the Left on blogs, social media, Wikis, and other new media platforms
Executive: $50 per month will train 11 candidates for office in 2012 who will continue to break the hold of the Ruling Class in their state and local governments
President: $100 per month will fund an expansion of our local candidate manuals, empowering candidates to run for city council and county commission and win. These governing bodies are in desperate need of small-government representatives, as local government debt continues to build year after year.
CEO: $250 per month will fund an AM training in all 12 AM-identified battleground states in 2012.

American Majority will be working harder than ever to empower the grassroots in 2012, seeing this year through until the job is done. We ask you to do the same by joining the Farm Team, and committing to sponsor American Majority’s trainees for the next eleven months. Together, we can restore prosperity and preserve liberty for our great nation.

If you think the progressive left is going to just lay down in 2012 and accept that their ideas have failed, think again.

What We Face in 2012

The left is renewing their efforts to impact state and local elections. Moveon.org, New Organizing Institute, Democracy for America and other left-leaning groups have committed to finding 2,012 progressive candidates for state and local elections. Their efforts are going so well that they have now raised their goal to 5,000 progressive candidates for 2012. You can learn all about their efforts at www.2012for2012.org.

How We Stop Them

We launched the New Leaders Project in 2010, asking local groups to pledge to find 10 new leaders in their communities in 2012 and 2013 to run for state and local office. So far, we’ve had 538 groups sign the pledge!

The Project is aimed at getting 1,000 local tea party and 9.12 groups to identify 10 new leaders in their communities to run primarily for state and local office. Another key aspect of this project will be training campaign managers to run effective campaigns, and continuing to train activists on how to be effective grassroots workers in hardwiring precincts, doing GOTV, and conducting voter registration drives.

American Majority will train these new leaders on the nuts and bolts of running for office; since our launch in 2008, we have already identified and trained over 1,200 candidates for state and local office. These leaders will also be trained on how to articulate their message effectively and continue to raise awareness in their communities right through Election Day. As more and more leaders come into the process at the state and local level, not only will they impact those levels of government, they will also be creating a farm team for higher office. We will also be training people on how to run and manage campaigns so that these leaders will run the most effective campaigns possible.

The New Leaders Project is also about empowering the local tea party organizers: it’s important to remember that the movement would not exist, or be successful, without the local leaders. As I mentioned on Fox and Friends this morning, this movement, and its success, is about Chris Littleton and the Cincinnati Tea Party and the Ohio Liberty Council, Lesley Hollywood and the Northern Colorado Tea Party, Catherine Engelbrecht of the King Street Patriots, Ana Puig and Anastasia Przbylski of the Kitchen Table Patriots, David Crow of the Faulkner County Tea Party, Tim Dake of the Wisconsin Grandsons of Liberty, and the Jason Hoyts and Colleen Conleys and hundreds of other like them.

The Kenosha Tea Party of Wisconsin signed the pledge and has already identified more than 20 local candidates to run for office this spring. Focusing locally, their candidates are seeking election for county, school board, various city councils and village boards in Kenosha County. Dan Hunt, the leader of the group said, “American Majority got me thinking in this direction [focused on finding local candidates] in the first place. I am grateful for American Majority’s trainings in preparing us to win elections.”

Cross posted on RedState.com

2012 WILL BE A HOUSE TO HOUSE FIGHT AGAINST STATISM

If you think that the progressive left is pinning its hopes for victory on Obama this fall – think again. In fact, they’re adopting the same approach conservatives started taking in 2009. National progressives, known for their outstanding ability to organize and mobilize, are stealing a page from the Tea Party and focusing on a more bottom-up strategy to promote their values rather than let Obama’s performance drive the train. Tea Party members and conservatives need to double-down now on the same approach, which has yielded countless electoral victories in the past three years for liberty-minded Americans. Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, but progressives sweeping in and erasing conservative gains at the local and state level is a complement Americans can do without.

Any effective attempt to embed a set of values into government must be a multi-tiered effort. Progressives are grumbling privately – and some publically – about the Obama Presidency. They’re not going to lie down and leave the future of their flawed, anti-American ideology to their once “great savior.” To the contrary, the left is renewing its efforts to impact state and local elections in 2012.

Read More On The Insider Blog

eu·pho·ria noun \yü-ˈfȯr-ē-ə\

: a feeling of well-being or elation

Examples of EUPHORIA

The initial euphoria following their victory in the election has now subsided.

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Sure, we all know the complete craziness that descends upon us this time of year. And anyone who’s been watching cable news also of course knows about the presidential primaries that promise to spoil many a New Year’s Eve in snowy states like Iowa and New Hampshire. I’m not even going to talk purely about those.

Because of what else I’m seeing, I started thinking this month about writing a little piece called “The Balkanization of American Politics”. But that phrase has been so overused as to become mind-numbingly boring and ultimately meaningless.

Yet a phenomenon I first heard of while I was training in the tiny, former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia is exactly what’s happening right now.

Now Macedonia, like many of the former Iron Curtain countries, has been finding their way and “transitioning” to functional democracy for twenty years. And part of their journey has been figuring out how to “do” direct representation, choosing and electing Members of Parliament from their many regional and ethnic voting blocs. A friend in the capital city of Skopje was the first to term it what it was, cycle to cycle, calling it “euphoria voting”.

I laughed.

“Euphoria voting”, in a place where unemployment is 42% every day, seemed counter-intuitive to say the least. But my friend was on to something: every four years, all the brand-new-to-democracy, first-time candidates promised the moon: full employment, investment, minority rights.

Hope—and change—rode high in the hearts and minds of regular citizens. (Sound familiar?) Newly franchised voters believed in even the most outrageous platforms and campaign claims. The freshly engaged country–students, pensioners, you name it–was in an absolute state of euphoria.

Election Day came and went. Politicians who had led exciting rallies and got thousands of ballots cast failed to deliver a new dawn for a troubled nation. And then a politically naïve electorate, upon realizing that there were no silver bullet solutions to their deeply ingrained social and economic problems, lost faith.

Four years later—at the end of terms, voters unceremoniously dumped the entire Parliament. They unelected each and every member, putting in another entire bunch that no doubt had been making campaign hay from the broken promises of their predecessors. And so the cycle continued.

Again, any of this ring a bell?

I find it funny that we, as one of the world’s longest continuously functioning democratic countries, are now fully in the grip of “euphoria voting”. Look at the congressional elections of 2006. The presidential election of 2008. The emergence of Ron Paul and the liberty movement. The Tea Party. The mid-term elections of 2010. Occupy Wall Street.

Even the typically staid, Republican presidential contest has become a complete, mad scramble of a horserace. Temporary surges, flashes in the pan, and the ever-shifting scrutiny and loyalty of a newly empowered conservative grassroots as they search for a true champion have totally upended the most carefully laid plans of establishmentarians and D.C. operatives. This ain’t your daddy’s primary.

These roiling waves of unrest across the American electorate aren’t stopping, at least anytime soon. And while a situation as described in Peter Schweizer’s new book Throw Them All Out probably isn’t ideal (like it or not, some semblance of institutional knowledge is probably good), more euphoria in each and every election cycle should be a goal we’re constantly working on.

Why should the average congressional election return 98% of incumbents to their gerrymandered, protected seats? Even the watershed elections of 1994, 2006 and 2010 only lowered that number down into the 80th percentile. Don’t you think your “representatives” (many times much more focused on committee chairmanships and national leadership tracks) should fear for their re-election every two years?

What if we as free market, fiscally conservative activists and leaders could get that number down closer to 50% every election cycle?

What kind of power do you think that would confer upon you in a candidate’s district? What if you organized your fellow “fed-up” citizens, month in and year out and focused on replacing the ruling class that makes so many decisions that directly affect your freedom? And then, if your replacements don’t hold up their end of the bargain, keeping them accountable and replacing them?

Think of the great feelings of accomplishment, of success against all odds, of stemming the tide of socialism’s and statism’s growth we shared just over a year ago. And then think of what we could really do if we sustain this momentum, taking our newfound knowledge of how the system works locally and nationally into 2012?

It’s time for an even bigger dose of euphoria in the way we choose our government.