After playing such a pivotal role in the November elections, Tea Party activists vowed they would keep a close eye on Congress. They weren't kidding.
The Tea Party Patriots, one of the largest organizing groups of the movement, want to assign personal bloggers to track every member of Congress, not just the ones they supported.
The group will launch a recruitment drive this week coinciding with a weekend policy summit being held in Phoenix for state and local coordinators. Shelby Blakely, a stay-at-home mom from eastern Washington state who is organizing the project, said she has little doubt they will be able to round up enough people to tackle a job that she describes as "citizen journalism meets adopt-a-congressman."
"One of the strengths that the Tea Party has is we have a massive army," Blakely said. "We have millions of manpower hours and thousands of people willing to do heavy lifting."
There are already dozens of political and news websites that track the big picture of Congress. Hometown newspapers, TV stations and websites sometimes track individual members of Congress.
The Tea Party Patriots believe a centralized hub for member-by-member blogs would not only hold their Tea Party legislators accountable but would better highlight for voters how non-Tea Party legislators are voting in Washington.
Since bloggers for the Tea Party Patriots would be unpaid volunteers, they wouldn't need to worry about currying favor with legislators, said Tony Tarquinto, a financial adviser from Southern California who will likely blog about a member of the House Ways and Means Committee.
"The traditional media, they want to get close to the (representative) and get the skinny. That's not going to happen with the Tea Party," Tarquinto said. "We're not going to get invited to the Christmas party or get to know them socially. We're not going to be worried about disagreeing with them."
While Tarquinto said that distance would allow for an objective, factual accounting of each member's performance, Democratic consultant Steve Elmendorf said such objectivity is unlikely since each Tea Party blogger would view each congressman's actions through the filter of the Tea Party principles. "They're trying to argue a point of view," said Elmendorf, who was an adviser to House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt.
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Dick Cheney Noam Chomsky Bill Clinton Hillary Clinton Tom DeLay
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