Dontgo

I have been a little skeptical of the whole #dontGo thing. Perhaps inappropriately so. I saw three thinigs today that might be changing my mind about the effect. At the very least, it is changing Democratic minds and raising GOP coin. I can't ask for better than that.

Grist and Open Left's Matt Stoller both object to this language from a letter from Al Gore's We Can Solve It campaign:

Last week, the U.S. Congress left Washington without addressing the energy crisis. They didn't deal with gas prices. They didn't move on solutions to climate change. What's worse, their inability to renew the clean energy tax credits means that government incentive programs to support the solar and wind industries will expire at the end of this year. Jobs will be lost as a result of their inaction.

Grist and Matt are right. When the greenies use that framing, we win.

Second, a Democratic candidate in upstate New York running against Rep. Randy Kuhl (R-NY) demands that Nancy Pelosi bring back Congress:

A top Democratic House candidate is calling for Congress to convene a special session to address the lingering energy problems that went unaddressed when the chamber adjourned earlier this month.

Gulf War veteran Eric Massa, who is making his second attempt at taking down Rep. Randy Kuhl (R-N.Y.), stressed that he disagrees with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on the issue. Pelosi has resisted calls — which have come almost exclusively from Republicans — for a special session.

And third, the RNC got in the game with an email this morning. This is both educating activists and raising coin. As Morton Blackwell noted last Friday, Republican activists see the GOP fighting for something. That's good.

I have been struggling for the last couple of days with the question of whether #dontGo is important. I am genuinely undecided. Here is some thinking on the positives, but also why it is not nearly enough and we need to keep our eye on the ball.

#DontGo is really important because Republican activists are feeling energized. There is something to fight for. This is new. People are chatting. But that doesn't make a movement.

#DontGo also changes the focus to Congress. The Democrats' strategy right now is to focus everything on Bush and the Presidential race. If Congress and its single-to-low-teens is the focus, even for a little, that helps Republican Congressional candidates.

But these are defensive actions. Republican candidates are coming to town and getting local press for fighting for something. That's great, but it is defense.

Where is the offense?

The only robocalls I know of are going into Colorado because Mark Udall skipped a vote. I asked Tom Cole about more ... and he ducked. I have not seen stories of people crashing townhalls demanding House Democrats do something.

Where are the existing groups? The American Family Association has a 3.3m email list and has emailed on this issue. Have they sent something out about charging townhalls? No. What about Newt Gingrich, American Solutions, and their 1.5m? No.

In general, it is not clear what exactly #dontGo would do to put points on the scoreboard. There are three options.

First, Congress could pass a bipartisan energy bill in September. There are now bills in bvoth the House and the Senate that would suffice, although the House bill is substantially better. We need Nancy Pelosi's buy-in to bring stuff to the floor. And to do that, we need to pressure Democrats. And no one is doing that.

Second, Congress could just let the OCS and shale ban expire. This is the premise of the "Energy Freedom Day" proposals. Some argue that this is better than a bipartisan bill. Here, we need either 40 votes in the Senate against a Continuing Resolution or a majority in the House willing to block legislation that contains an extended OCS ban.

Third, we can polarize the environment on this issue.

What I don't understand is how #dontGo is directly on the path to any of these. We need to actually win something. This is improtant. And I see more motion than movement.

Earlier, I wrote about how Steny Hoyer tried to give cover to Mark Udall for skipping the vote on the adjournment resolution in the House. Earlier, I had also argued that the whole #dontGo thing -- before it was a thing -- was a major strategic victory for the Congressional Republicans.

Well, the hammer is beginning to fall on Udall -- and hopefully others.

Today, Freedom's Watch dropped a web video and a robocall. First the video:

The robocall script is after the jump.

The return of the Guerilla Congress today was a huge encouragement and it is really exciting to see what the House GOP can do when it sets its mind to it. The Dontgo movement is growing minute-by-minute and people want Congress to return to work and pass the American Energy Act.

Everybody is taking leadership in his or her own way. We've got Danny Glover and Jason Carini working on media distribution channels, Media Lizzy and Jenn Sierra promoting the events on internet talk radio, Robert Bluey and Reps. Culbertson and Wittman twittering from the floor, and Eric Odom setting up websites for the Dontgo movement. People are offering to drive visitors to the Hill, collecting money to buy food for Members, and creating promotional flyers, all on their own.

This is possible because a large group of people have been inspired by the Guerilla Congress and it touches on themes that all of us recognize. This event, at least for me, reminds me of why I became a Republican in the first place. Transparency, smart usage of modern technology, principled free market policies, and the thrill of fighting the establishment is what the Republican Revolution was all about.

Over the past two days, many people have worked to build an alternative to the MSM to get media from the floor out to the general public. However, as the phantom sessions gain more attention, it will become harder and harder to smuggle media out of the House chamber. What we need to focus on now as a movement is how to bring the American people into their House.

We can pump tweets out continuously and get some precious video or audio out from time to time to maintain page A13 attention, but we need crowds of energized Americans clamoring for change in the Capitol to take things to the next level. Right now, the MSM is dismissing the Guerilla Congress as a GOP stunt, but that will be much harder to do if there are long lines of excited and angry people waiting to get into the chamber specifically to take part in the phantom sessions. I know from experience that constituents are usually bored and disappointed when visiting the House gallery - if they are engaged and excited, that is a news story in itself.

We can make this happen. During the summer, a flood of people drive to Washington for vacation and take exhausted kids around the Mall in the humidity and heat, trying to show them the monuments and teach them about American democracy. They have just driven hundreds of miles and spent large amounts of money on gas - more than most other Americans would. They are almost the ideal target audience for the shadow sessions, and they have every right to be mad that the Dems skipped town for a vacation of their own when their vacations are cut short or made less enjoyable because of the price of gas.

If we build on this foundation, and add in the opportunity to spend time inside with the AC and let their kids go on the House floor while it is in a pseudo-session to interact with 20-30 members, we can probably draw people in. What we need to figure out is how to frame it, publicize it to tourists and do it right. It's an opportunity we can't afford to pass up.

Last Monday, Mark Udall promised he would vote against adjournment to force Congress to deal with gas prices and the energy issue. The thing is, he didn't. He missed the vote and got totally slammed by his opponent Bob Schaffer. From the Denver Post:

"While Coloradans are paying $4 a gallon for gasoline, I guess it wasn't important enough for (Udall) to show up for work this week," said Dick Wadhams, the campaign manager for Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer. "He made a commitment Monday, he didn't even show up for work Tuesday and then he missed the vote today."

The Democrats won that vote 213-212. If Udall had been there, it would have been 213-213 and failed, because a tie-vote loses in the House.

In other words, Mark Udall broke his word. When it came down to him versus Nancy Pelosi's leadership, he chose Nancy. Now Udall, will tell you he didn't break his word. Read on to see the machinations that he and Steny Hoyer went through to give Udall cover.

From the Facebook group, "Let's Rock This House! I Support the Guerrilla Congress:"

Things are moving very fast, and the floor protests will continue on Monday. and if we all act today, we can do our part to make the Guerilla Congress an even greater success as it continues.

The next step is for the netroots to provide any Republican member who is willing to return to the House floor tomorrow with the assurance that events on the floor will be quickly captured, made public, and broadly distributed. If we act today, we can create an citizen-powered alternative to the MSM that the Democratic majority will find difficult, if not impossible to suppress.

There are three specific capabilities we must develop today to get this to work.

First, we need to have people on the floor or in the gallery who are willing to capture audio, pictures and video and upload it to some central repository. We need someone to coordinate the effort to make sure that we have a person on the floor at all times, for starters. We have a number of people in the DC area in the group, and the more people sign up, the more we can spread the time around.

Second, we need some central repository for audio, pictures and video from the floor. For now, the Facebook group would probably suffice, but if anyone has the ability to set something up which is more versatile, it would make an impact.

Third, we need people to take the audio, pictures and video from the central repository and distribute it over the Web and to the MSM. Almost all of us could help out with this part, by posting links on social networking sites and blogs, or sending links to the media. It would also be helpful for somebody with media savvy to step up and coordinate this effort.

I have created three threads on the Facebook group on each of these three capabilities, and if each of us chooses an area that we can help out with, we can get the job done TODAY. If we can get everything up and running today, any GOP member who wants to come back Monday and talk in the People's House will be able to do so knowing that their words will be heard by the American people.

Please visit the group, pick a thread, and get involved in the project.

As Rep. Culberson tweeted, "This is an exciting moment for America: this event is the dawn of real time democracy through real time representatives, and no turning back."