Norquist disagrees. On the website for his organization, Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist predicts independent voters, or the “silent majority,” will support the bill at the polls on November 8, when it will be decided by the veto referendum Issue 2.

However, Norquist also seems misinformed about the bill itself.  He identifies as the “major tenets” of the bill three clauses: SB5 would require public employees to pay at least 15 percent of their health-care costs, 10 percent of their pensions (by eliminating pension pick-up) and would mandate merit-based raises over automatic-pay increases.

While the law, passed in March, does indeed include those reforms, few would identify them as its “major tenets.”  SB5 severely restricts collective bargaining, prohibiting negotiations on minimum staffing, pension pick-up and classroom size for teachers.  It also ends the practice of third-party binding arbitration, instead allowing management to implement their last offer if negotiations reach an impasse. In addition, SB5 would criminalize strikes for all public employees with heavy fines and even imprisonment.

“No longer do government workers take less pay but better benefits for the opportunity to perform a public service,” wrote Norquist.  “Now they get great benefits and a bigger paycheck than the rest of us, with nearly no accountability to those of us paying the bills.” (According to the IRS (PDF), Norquist receives a $200,000 salary from his foundation for 24 hours of work per week, and an additional $22,419 in “other compensation” from ATR and “related organizations.”)

But highlighting the increases on health care and pension-matching actually identifies some of the least meaningful parts of the bill, as most public employees in Ohio already pay 10 percent of their pensions and 15 percent of their health care, and have been voluntarily conceding pay raises and benefits for years.

Municipalities that are short on cash have also long been allowed the flexibility to pick up some or all of an employee’s pension in lieu of higher wages, which increases the cost of the employee through higher payroll tax obligations and paying more for overtime.

In another post from Nov. 2, Norquist also blastes Republican David S. Smith, mayor of the small Ohio city of Lancaster, for a comments he made to The American Independent in which he said “SB5 doesn’t save the day for anybody,” as well as his decision to put a .25-percent local income tax increase before residents of his town. Lancaster recently had to lay off 13 firefighters and close a fire station, and, due to budgetary constraints, has been unable to fill police billets to replace officers that had retired.

“Soon after the layoffs of 13 city firefighters because of spiraling labor costs, Mayor Smith opted to push a large tax hike rather than concede that Issue 2 will prevent such sudden layoffs and preserve response times for police and fire fighters,” wrote Norquist.  “Apparently Mayor Smith has not been paying much attention to current events in Columbus, so I offer a quick primer: Republicans chose to balance the state budget without painful tax increases, in fact reducing Ohio’s overall tax burden.”

Smith told The American Independent unions had voluntarily opened up their contracts and made repeated concessions, including picking up more of their health-care costs and foregoing pay raises for the last two years. In fact, Smith blamed the state budget for his city’s financial woes: The Kasich administration cut the Local Government Fund, which distributes sales taxes collected throughout the state, by half.

Norquist’s organization, founded at the request of former President Ronald Reagan, is opposed to all tax increases as a matter of principle, according to the mission statement on its website.

During a panel discussion on “Sharia Law and the Constitution,” Gaffney blamed Norquist, who is married to a Muslim, for “enabling and empowering Muslim Brotherhood influence operations against our movement and our country,” as reported by ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes.

Gaffney inserted Norquist’s image in a PowerPower presentation on the influence of radical Muslims and told the audience, “This is how that has happened.”

Watch the video:

In a separate interview with ThinkProgress, Norquist accused Gaffney of waging “a direct attack on religious liberty.”

Asked if the concern of Sharia law will play a constructive role for the GOP, Norquist told Keyes: “I don’t know that it’s having much impact one way or another. The challenge there is a religious liberty issue. When you say, we’re going to start telling people you can’t build a church, a synagogue or a mosque somewhere, that’s a direct attack on religious liberty.

Listen to the interview:

There was a grand unveiling ceremony the Wednesday following Beck’s appearance at CPAC. But since its unveiling, the board has yet to be used. Apparently, it got in the way of speakers who use microphones and PowerPoint slides to make their point.

“We haven’t gotten to the technology where we can use the chalkboard yet,” ATR Communications Director John Kartch told Yeas & Nays. “We’re not advanced enough for that yet.”

Perhaps the speed with which their old statements has vanished down the memory hole says something about the hopelessness of their cause, but that’s no reason to deny them credit for their principled stands, which won them some enemies on the right.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) (ZUMApress.com)

The news that Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) had won the 2010 CPAC presidential straw poll was leaked early, to soften the blow. Before GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio had even begun to click through a Powerpoint presentation that shared the results, reporters were informed of Paul’s easy, 31 percent victory over nine Republicans tipped as serious 2012 contenders. Those reporters started to write stories on Paul’s surprise win, waiting for the official announcement — and an explosion of jeering and booing in the main ballroom of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. Sighing with relief, press aides for the annual conservative conference made sure that the on-site media had heard that reaction.

[GOP1] Just as relieved were mainstream GOP activists and traditional conservative thinkers who were pondering ways to make the party electable again. “I think Mitt Romney’s 22 percent was impressive,” said Rob Willington, a Massachusetts Republican strategist who’d designed GOTV technology for now-Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). He was reflecting on the poll — not too significant, he said — in Murphy’s, a bar a few blocks from the hotel, late Saturday. Romney’s forces, he said, hadn’t lifted a finger; Paul’s had campaigned for the prize.

In another corner of the bar, conservative author David Frum, editor of Frum Forum (formerly New Majority), brushed off the result. “The Paul people all voted and the others didn’t,” said Frum. “I’m hoping it’s a matter of self-selection.”

The importance of minimizing Paul’s win united conservative activists like almost nothing else that came from the three-day conference. Even Brad Dayspring — who, as a spokesman for GOP whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), counts on Paul for “no” votes — fired off two tweets dismissing the result. But the 2,395 ballots cast were a CPAC record, up from the 1,757 cast in 2009, when Mitt Romney scored his third conservative win. And moments after the Paul results were booed, the crowd gave a roaring ovation to radio and Fox News host Glenn Beck, who rewarded it with a 56-minute lecture on “progressivism’s” war on American values with historical lessons — the evil of the Federal Reserve, the destructiveness of Woodrow Wilson, the folly of “spreading democracy” — that had featured prominently in Paul’s speech, too.

For as little attention as it got — for the first time in anyone’s memory, the news cycle-driving Drudge Report did not even run with the news until the next day — Paul’s victory in an unscientific straw poll revealed plenty about the state of conservatism. Narrowly, it revealed that Paul’s quixotic 2008 bid for president created a significant and growing movement of libertarian-minded teens and twentysomethings whose role in the conservative coalition will become more clear outside of CPAC. More broadly, it provided a look at the ideological hardening going on within the conservative movement as it girds for the 2010 elections. According to some polls, the Republican Party is on track to recover control of Congress and have a voice again in how America is governed. At CPAC, there was far less attention on how the party would govern America than on the need to disavow its past, popular embraces of “big government” — and on the need to embrace a hardcore libertarian philosophy that views environmentalism and the progressive movement as fatal threats to freedom.

Photo by David Weigel

Paul’s youthful crusade of hopeful libertarians — its size and its enthusiasm — was one of the real surprises of the conference. Paul-inspired or affiliated groups occupied five booths in the event’s exhibit hall; the Campaign for Liberty (the organization he launched after folding his 2008 presidential bid), Young Americans for Liberty (the student group launched at the same time), Students for Liberty, the Ladies of Liberty Alliance, and the Future of Freedom Foundation. Libertarian CPAC attendees packed room after room for lectures by the likes of Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano and likely 2012 presidential candidate Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico. They passed out a documentary about the Paul campaign, “For Liberty,” and copies of “Young American Revolution,” a magazine for college students with contributions ranging from an essay on economics by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) to a Wake Forest University student’s tipsheet on how she organized a blockbuster speech by Paul on her campus.

The Paul-inspired groups were responsible for one of the pivotal moments of the three-day conference. On Friday, Students for Liberty president Alexander McCobin used his speech in the rapid-fire “Two-Minute Activist” line-up to “commend CPAC for inviting GOProud,” a gay Republican group. That got a rise out of Ryan Sobra, an anti-gay activist who followed McCobin and condemned the conference for inviting the group. When he was booed, Sobra confusingly attacked Jeff Frazee — the head of Young Americans for Liberty. But he was onto something — it was the presence of Paul fans, who had crowded into the room for his upcoming speech, that meant Sobra would get more boos than cheers.

“I was thanking my lucky stars that the Ron Paul fans were there,” said Jimmy LaSalva, the executive director of GOProud, in a Saturday interview with TWI. “The Campaign for Liberty deserves a lot of credit for setting that tone.”

Paul’s influence surfaced in other ways that were less helpful for CPAC’s optics. The far-right John Birch Society, of which Paul has been a longtime supporter, made a showy return to the mainstream conservative fold with a co-sponsorship and booth at CPAC; because the organization helpfully offered free, spacious merchandise bags, plenty of CPAC attendees walked around sporting JBS logos. Oath Keepers, a year-old coalition of right-wing military veterans, helped distribute copies of the Paul documentary — a favor to Paul activist Michael Moresco, who had won the organization’s “citizen activist of the year” award for biking from the Statue of Liberty to Alcatraz Prison. “It’s the direction I think this country’s headed,” said Moresco — from freedom to imprisonment.

But far from being controversial, Paul’s critique of conservatism — that the GOP lost its way by growing government and must promise to slash and abolish as much as possible if it wins again — was a constant theme. It was present on Saturday when Ann Coulter, a CPAC star for whom the ballroom filled up an hour before her speech began, argued that conservatives needed to abolish the IRS and the CIA. When she ran out of jokes about John Edwards’s sexuality and Ted Kennedy’s drinking, she suggested that the GOP needed a no-to-everything philosophy similar to Paul’s. She paused and mugged when that inspired a chant of “End the Fed” — a Paul-divined slogan.

“I’m curious about this movement over there for eliminating the Fed,” said Coulter. “Yes, End the Fed.” She answered a Paul fan’s question by admitting that “if Ron Paul supports it and it’s not about foreign policy, I’m for it.”

On the surface, rhetoric like that contradicted a much-noticed CPAC theme — praise for George W. Bush. Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, told TWI that Bush boosterism was a friendly show of support for “our guy” after eight years of drubbing by liberals. And that was it.

“For seven years he didn’t speak at CPAC,” said Norquist. “The eighth year we didn’t want him and he showed up because CPAC was one of the only places he could speak to without being booed. Here was a man who deliberately divorced himself from the movement.” Medicare Part D, the Department of Homeland Security, and all the rest of it hadn’t been forgotten.

Outside of the conference, some critics accused activists of a kind of nihilism that wouldn’t be productive for Republicans. “CPAC has becoming increasingly more libertarian and less Republican over the last years,” grumbled Mike Huckabee on his Fox News show, “one of the reasons I didn’t go this year.”

Huckabee would only allow that the Paul win reflected “the anger and the mood” that was fueling Tea Party protests and Democratic losses in some key elections. In a separate straw poll question on activists’ opinions of conservative leaders, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) was found to be the most popular figure in Republican politics– 71 percent said they liked him. In the Senate, DeMint has worked to block and filibuster as many Democratic initiatives as possible while proposing government-slashing, entitlement-cutting, brazen bills of the kind Paul’s long discussed. At CPAC, he said he’d rather have a Senate with “30 Marco Rubios” — the Florida candidate for Senate who keynoted the conference — than “60 Arlen Specters.” When TWI asked him how that made sense in the era of constant filibusters, DeMint said a crisis would lead the way to more pure policy.

“In the short term, we can’t expect to get any of our ideas through,” DeMint told TWI. “But at some point, we’re going to be forced to do something. It’s not going to be so much a matter of political philosophy if we can’t pay our debts and we’re facing default. At that point I think you’re going to see even liberals realize we don’t have any choice. We just need to be in a position where we have enough conservatives to come up with some functional policies to get us out of this.” DeMint shook his head. “I hope it won’t take a complete breakdown for us to come together.”

Paul wasn’t around to enjoy his triumph. On Saturday morning, he returned to his east Texas district to debate three opponents in his early March Republican primary. But before leaving on Friday night, he reflected on how and why his constant refrain for fiscal austerity and abolishing most 20th century government expansion had become Republican dogma.

“When I went back to Congress in 1996, Tom DeLay came out to a function in my district,” Paul told TWI. “He came out of it and he said, ‘You know what? Ron said that 20 years ago! Now it’s the same message and 20 more years.’” Paul turned and stopped to talk with a gushing middle-aged fan, then turned back to TWI.

“And with more credibility on the economics!”

It’s worth reading the whole thing for quotes from standby conservative leaders like Grover Norquist and ACU’s David Keene acknowledging — for perhaps the last time — that the conservative movement blew it in the Bush years and the new blood is welcome. (Denying Bush and all his works was a major theme of CPAC 2009.) It’s also worth reading between the lines. For all of the chest-pounding about new leadership, really only Sarah Palin has tried to write the conservative establishment, represented at CPAC, out of the movement. Newt Gingrich, who horrified Tea Partiers in 2009 by endorsing Dede Scozzafava in NY-23, (and also endorsing TARP in 2008) is back at CPAC with a prime speaking slot. And Tea Party leaders are clearly relishing the chance to meet these leaders on new, solid footing — not really pushing them out of the way.

National Tax Limitation Committee President Lew Uhler Poses with the Mount Vernon Statement and George Washington impersonator James Manship (Photo by David Weigel)

The ceremony was moved into a small building set apart from the main house. Inside, a George Washington impersonator, James Manship, made the rounds as conservative activists shook hands and caught up with one another. They included Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice, Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots and Robert Bluey of the Heritage Foundation. In the press section sat R. Emmett Tyrrell, editor of the American Spectator, John Fund, political columnist for The Wall Street Journal, and Mark Tapscott, opinion editor of the Washington Examiner. I asked Tyrrell what, if anything, was new or politically impactful about this statement.

“We’ve said this for 50 years, and we’re saying it again.” said Tyrrell. “We don’t have to update anything!”

Shortly after 2:30, the signatories of the statement — including former Attorney General Ed Meese, Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist, the Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell and the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins –  lined up on a stage alongside a blown-up version of the statement. Meese rhapsodised about how far the movement had come since the 1960 Sharon Statement crafted by some of the same people in the room today — it now included, he said, “people of various minority groups.”

“If he were here, Ronald Reagan would be among first to sign the Mount Vernon statement,” said Meese. “Indeed, Ronald Reagan named the framers or the founding fathers more than his nine predecessors combined.”

Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America led the audience in a prayer, asking God to “equip us and guide us as we strive to advance constitutional principles.” And the ceremony kept that high level of pomp. Colin Hanna, the honey-voiced president of Let Freedom Ring, lectured the crowd on the history of conservative mission statements, crediting William F. Buckley with the most eloquent ones.

“Of course,” said Hanna, “William F. Buckley used Latin as a conversational language!”

Hanna read through the Sharon statement and argued that it remained relevant, if one replaced key words. “Communism — or today we would substitute the word ‘terrorism’ — must be defeated, not simply contained.”

Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online offered up more links between this “historic” event and the conservatives of the past. “Not just here today, but around the nation, we’re seeing people do what Bill Buckley did in that first issue of National Review.” Lopez waved a facsimile of the issue. “I had to do show and tell. We have them around the office.”

Heritage Foundation president Ed Fuelner was given the task of reading out the statement, word for word. As he did so, Manship — the George Washington impersonator — nodded at key phrases like “tyrants and despots everywhere.”

“We must print out the statement’s text on our journals, our magazines and our blog posts,” said Fuelner. “We must distribute the video of today’s ceremony. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a country to save!”

Before attendees signed the document under Manship/Washington’s watchful eye, they got a special live message from radio host and author Mark Levin, who appeared on a large projection screen over the stage.

“I want to thank the media,” said Levin. “I see them all against the wall there. We’re saving or creating a nation, here.”

Levin lectured the room briefly on the importance of fighting “pseudo-conservatives” and the greatness of Ed Meese, whom Levin said respected the Constitution, “unlike the current attorney general, who never mentions the Constitution.” To the “pseudo-conservatives” he issued a warning: “It’s our turn. We’ve had about enough of you. We’re going to take you on and it’s time to defeat you.”

When Levin wrapped, the attendees lined up to sign the document, then hobnobbed with each other and a small group of reporters. Some hung around to take photos with the blown-up statement — a few grabbed Manship/Washington to pose with them.

“Whoever did this needs to do some more research,” said Manship/Washington, pointing at the giant paper sharing the photo with him. “The kerning’s too close.”

Last year, the first round of Tea Parties were held at the same time as CPAC — the D.C. Tea Party was held a few miles down the road. A month after that, Beck launched his “9/12 Project,” which has been surprisingly successful as an organizing force for local conservative groups. And a few months after that, Beck — aided by research from the once-ignored fringe — was a key reason for the resignation of Green Jobs Czar Van Jones and the sudden adoption of “No More Czars!” as a GOP rallying cry.

I’ll expect Democrats to hit Republican attendees of CPAC for sharing a stage with Beck, who faced weeks of scrutiny after accusing President Obama of bearing “a deep-seated hatred for white people.” But as Grover Norquist points out to Politico, people like Ann Coulter have always appeared at CPAC, said a few outrageous things, then gone on to sell their books. Beck (who’s also got books to sell) is going to provide some plan for action.

Late last year, Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation came to Eric Odom with a proposition. Odom’s group, the American Liberty Alliance–a free market, anti-tax group launched in March 2009, after its leaders had helped put together the first Tea Party protests–could sign on with the National Tea Party Convention that Phillips was organizing. ALA could promote the convention on its website and to its members. In return, it would become a “gold co-sponsor” of the convention, which would cost any other sponsor $5,000. That status would let Odom join other activists backstage with Sarah Palin, the event’s big-ticket speaker, before she gave her Saturday evening address. Odom signed up, and ALA joined the conservative women’s group Smart Girl Politics as the most prominent Tea Party groups promoting the event.

On January 12, Odom had to rethink his position. In the morning, he tried to convince local leaders of ALA that, despite some bad press coverage, the event was worth supporting. But at 2 p.m., Nashville-based Tea Party activist Kevin Smith posted a 6,700-word article on the “story behind Tea Party Nation’s dishonest beginnings.” In Smith’s account, Tea Party Nation had become a scam, promoting its own welfare while alienating local grassroots activists. The high cost of the convention–full-access tickets were $549, while access to Palin’s speech alone was $349. “It’s become clear to me that Judson and his for-profit Tea Party Nation Corporation are at the forefront of the GOP’s process of hijacking the tea party movement,” Smith wrote. “How can I honestly object to this same behavior in my Government and demand they clean up Washington when I am unwilling to risk the personal and political injury it takes to expose the fraud, corruption, and deceit to which I am privy?”

Smith’s attack on Tea Party Nation jumped from e-mail inbox to e-mail inbox. Hours later, 25 of ALA’s organizers told Odom that they wanted to pull out of the convention. Shortly after midnight, Odom announced that that ALA was quitting the convention because “when we look at the $500 price tag for the event and the fact that many of the original leaders in the group left over similar issues, it’s hard for us not to assume the worst.”

Since the first announcements about the National Tea Party Convention in November 2009, the high-priced, first-of-its kind event has been a magnet for controversy, a divisive subject within the burgeoning movement, and a punching bag for local and national media. Those three factors have complemented one another, as angry activists like Smith, Florida organizer Robin Stublen, and California organizer Mark Meckler have attacked the convention in very public forums. The attacks have remained one-sided as Phillips has blown off questions about the criticism. He has not responded to multiple phone calls and e-mails from TWI and from other outlets such as TPM Muckraker. Asked to confirm that Palin was being paid $100,000 to appear at the event, Phillips only told Politico that its reporters’ sources were “not reliable.” The result: A steady stream of negative press that has been circulated inside the movement, culminating in the high-profile withdrawal of ALA.

“I think it is a great con of people making money off the passions of others,” said Erick Erickson, the editor of RedState.com and sponsor of the biannual RedState Gathering convention, in an e-mail to TWI. “A $500+ per person fee to a for-profit organization run by people most people have never heard of is neither populist nor accessible for many tea party activists. It smells more like a scam using Sarah Palin to build legitimacy while lining pockets with money from hard working tea party activists.” After talking to TWI, Erickson put up a blog post making the argument in even more detail.

“When I’ve talked to our members, they’ve said this is entirely too expensive,” said Jenny Beth Martin, the national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots. The decision not to participate was made in a December conference call with members. “I’m sure there are other people in the movement who haven’t given as much, haven’t been organizing events, and may feel more comfortable spending that money, going to see some speakers, and getting that training. But we’re focusing on a grassroots response to the State of the Union and on the next round of Tea Parties on February 27.”

But as humiliating as the National Tea Party Convention’s coverage has been for activists, critics and attendees alike see the ambition and political strategy of their movement becoming more and more mainstream. Nine months ago, Odom got national headlines for pre-emptively denying RNC Chairman Michael Steele a speaking slot at the Chicago Tea Party. “We prefer to limit stage time to those who are not elected officials, both in government as well as political parties,” he said at the time. Today, Steele is winning a Tea Party Nation web poll on whether he should speak the convention, and Odom is gearing up for a trip to Massachusetts to help the Republican candidate, Scott Brown, take the state’s open Senate seat. The Tea Party Express, an operation of the GOP-supporting Our Country Deserves Better PAC which has been utterly rejected by some Tea Party activists, is rolling into the convention and catching hardly any flack for it. The presence of Palin, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) at the convention is seen, universally, as a coup with import that will outlive the controversy over the event itself.

“Having Palin speak at the convention works to to their mutual advantage,” said Morton Blackwell, the president of the Leadership Institute, an organization that trains conservatives (program veterans include James O’Keefe, the videographer who taped damaging exposes of ACORN) and is getting a discounted sponsorship at the National Tea Party Convention in return for holding free sessions. “It’ll help them get thousands of people there, I think. And the leadership of the Tea Parties, that I’ve talked to, do not believe that they should start their own party.”

Despite the negative press Palin has received for demanding so much money for her speech, there’s agreement that her presence will help convince activists that they need to work for Republicans. “Palin is actually more Tea Party than Republican Party, anyway–she walked away from the governor’s office, for crying out loud!” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform–which is still undecided on whether to support the convention, based on conflicting suggestions from local activists. “But it’s important that they realize that they don’t have to be friends with the guys they replace the Democrats with. They get them to run on their issues. That’s how you avoid third party movements.”

Some of the people planning to attend the convention are still considering whether third party challenges to the Democrats and the GOP are viable. David DeGerolamo of NC Freedom, who is spending “thousands of dollars” to travel from North Carolina to Nashville and run a breakout session on consolidating state Tea Party groups at the convention, speculated that it would be an ideal place to “weed out” people who had the money to challenge the two parties. “I’ll tell you,” said DeGerolamo, “the GOP here in North Carolina is scared to death about what will happen at the Tea Party Convention.”

But the chance of the Tea Party Convention becoming the start of a third party movement — something rumored for months and occasionally indulged by Palin — is remote. (On the January 13 episode of “Glenn Beck,” Palin admitted that “there are times that I have been tempted to bail from” the GOP but that she didn’t think third parties are viable.) The focus of detractors is on purifying the movement of buck-raking, but not Republican activism. The focus of convention defenders is While Kevin Smith’s explosive blog post warned against GOP exploitation, hours later the Louisiana Tea Party endorsed Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) for re-election.

“Sometimes, in conservative circles, you run into this purity test problem where any traction in political process is seen as selling out over principled,” said John O’Hara, a staffer at the libertarian Heartland Institute who helped organized the February 27 Tea Party in Washington, D.C. and whose book “New American Tea Party” hit shelves this week. “I’d hate to see the Tea Party relegated to a third party spoiler, and luckily I don’t think that’s happening.”

Neither Tea Party activists nor conservative movement figures who are linking up with them express much worry about the bad press the convention is getting. Some of the non-participants who’ve been quoted criticizing the convention, such as Adam Brandon of FreedomWorks, are fine with the media promoting the crusade of Odom, Stublen, and others while Brandon’s group quietly promotes its new PAC targeting vulnerable Democrats. “We wish them all the best, but we are too stretched on the health care bill,” Brandon told TWI.

And for all the bad press Tea Party Nation’s received, the very day the group announced extremely limited access for the media, its website revealed one profitable reason why.

“The First National Tea Party Convention is officially SOLD OUT!!!! You may place your name on the waiting list in the event additional tickets become available.”

State Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) in a Dec. 29 campaign ad (YouTube)

Days after the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling–an icon ever since his performance helped the team win the 2004 World Series–let the word get out that he was considering a run for the seat. Two weeks later, he decided to take a pass. A potentially sensational campaign became a surefire win for the Democrats. When state Attorney General Martha Coakley won the Democratic Party’s nomination, one newspaper reported, matter-of-factly, that she was “poised to replace Kennedy” in the January 19 general election.

On Monday, Schilling returned to the fray. He gave his stamp of approval to the less-famous Republican who ended up running for Kennedy’s seat: Scott Brown, a state senator from Wrentham, Mass.

[GOP1]“If this state does the right thing, and elects Scott Brown, it will, in addition to being a comeback/upset of 2004 proportions, put a screeching halt to the Democratic [Party's] fast tracking this country into an abyss,” Schilling wrote on his blog. “This state can literally change the Nation in one day, think about that and then go vote for Scott Brown and make it happen.”

With those words, Schilling captured the enthusiasm of conservatives who worry that a health care reform bill is hurtling towards President Obama’s desk. Tentatively, with only 14 days to go until the election, a number of GOP strategists, Tea Party activists, and conservative bloggers are trying to do for Brown’s campaign what they did for the campaign of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in last year’s NY-23 special election–hopefully, with more success. Hoffman, a first-time candidate, was propelled past a centrist Republican and ended up narrowly losing a traditionally Republican seat to Rep. Bill Owens (D-N.Y.).

“I’ve been emailing my contacts, saying that this is the start of the revolution,” said Barbara Anderson, the executive director of the Massachusetts anti-tax group Citizens for Limited Government. “If Brown wins, it will be a shot heard around the country.”

While interest in Hoffman’s campaign was nudged along by high-profile endorsements and polls showing the first-time, third-party candidate steadily rising, Brown’s campaign has gained traction by exploiting a gap in the news cycle. There has not been a poll on the race since a Western New England College survey released on October 26, 2009, which had Coakley leading Brown by 26 points. (On Monday, pollster Scott Rasmussen told TWI that his company would go into the field and conduct a poll on the race.) And over the last week of December, when little else was happening, Brown reported that he’d raised $600,000 and put out a TV ad comparing himself to John F. Kennedy, who held the seat before he was elected president–both of them, said Brown, wanted to cut taxes.

The lack of hard polling data and the Brown-driven impression that his campaign was surging were picked up online. Over the Christmas and New Years holidays, the little-known, Massachusetts-based blog Conservative Revival conducted its own “citizens poll,” which consisted of the blogger and her husband calling names in the phone book and asking who they supported. If no one picked up the phone, they left messages informing voters that Brown “vote against the government’s takeover of our health care” and “bring balance back to our Senate.” Their amateur poll showed Brown in the lead. HillBuzz, a blog written by die-hard supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton who oppose President Obama, encouraged readers to make phone calls for the candidate and “stop Healthcare Rationing, Cap & Tax, Amnesty for Illegals, and every other crazy thing Liberals in Washington want to do by putting [Brown] into deceased murderer and womanizer Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.” On December 30, Republican strategist Patrick Ruffini–who is doing some online work for Brown–published a lengthy argument for conservatives to take a “calculated risk” and donate to Brown.

That enthusiasm hasn’t wafted up to strategists in either party. Neither the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee nor the National Republican Senatorial Committee has invested much in the race. While a spokesman for the NRSC pointed out that Brown’s race is one of the featured campaigns on the organization’s homepage, and that the organization has aided Brown’s campaign to the tune of $50,000, that’s less than one-tenth the commitment that the NRCC made to Jim Tedisco, the unsuccessful GOP candidate for a Democratic-held House seat in a New York special election last year.

“My guess is that nationalizing the election would help the other team,” said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform. “One reason that this is more doable is that the other team is not worried about losing. If RNC or the NRSC was running a billion dollars worth of ads, you’d put the Democrats on alert. I think the smart move is to concentrate on GOTV and talk radio.”

Norquist, a Massachusetts native, added that he’d seen more signs for Brown than Coakley when he was in the state last week. “But if signs could vote,” he said, “Ron Paul would be president.”

Mary Ann Marsh, a Boston-based Democratic strategist, offered a simpler reason for the national GOP’s approach to the race: It’s unwinnable.

“Massachusetts is not going to send a Republican to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat,” said Marsh. “There is a playbook for winning as a Republican in Massachusetts. Brown has ignored it.”

Marsh argued that Brown’s push to appeal to the national conservative base and gin up Tea Party enthusiasm–by promising, for example, that he “could be the 41st senator that could stop the Obama proposal that’s being pushed right now through Congress”–would backfire statewide. While Massachusetts was the site of multiple Tea Parties, and while those activists are swinging behind Brown, there’s no data suggesting that voters are in the mood to stop the Senate’s health care bill. A September 2009 poll conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Boston Globe found voters supportive of the state’s health care reform–a mandate that conservatives compare to the plan moving through Capitol Hill–by a 37-point margin. While Brown supporters argue that Coakley has run a lackluster campaign that hasn’t excited Democrats, polling has consistently shown the attorney general to be the state’s most popular politician, with favorable numbers in the 50s or 60s. And she is being advised by Lynda Tocci, a turnout guru who managed Hillary Clinton’s election-day effort in the New Hampshire primary. All of that, said Marsh, contrasted well against Brown’s strategy of “winning the news cycle” and “spinning” conservative bloggers into thinking he had a shot.

“Brown could get elected in Mississippi, but not Massachusetts,” said Marsh.

With two weeks to go, conservative activists are still divided on whether to bet on Brown. While Moe Lane has used his perch at RedState.com to advocate support for Brown–Lane has encouraged Sarah Palin to nationalize the race with an endorsement, as she did for Doug Hoffman–the site’s editor, Erick Erickson, was more bearish. “I think the odds are still against Brown in a way that they were not necessarily against Hoffman,” said Erickson.

Norquist, who was hopeful that Brown would at least make a “stronger showing than expected,” argued that conservatives had a reason to help out Brown. “This is one of those lopsided things where if they win it’s nothing, and if we win it’s the cover of Time magazine.”