Horowitz did a study of UC Berkeley and found only 7% of the faculty was registered Republician.
So, for example, the DC Chapter trying to go "toe-to-toe" with A.N.S.W.E.R. doesn't impress me much. There's something awkward and pathetic about conservatives doing street theatre of the absurd and trying to beat 60's radicals at their own game. Then we wet ourselves when FR gets a mention in a wire story, or some air on C-Span. Big deal.
Don't get me wrong; I appreciate the work they do, trying to balance the liberal voices in the nation's capital. But one needs to be careful about the methods one employs, lest we become too much like "them." I don't doubt their motives, it's their methods I question. The ends do not justify the means. There are certain methods that conservatives should avoid because we believe in taking the high moral ground, and we believe in reasoned discourse and decorum. We should strive to elevate the marketplace of ideas.
That is to say nothing of the time they devote to being on the streets week after week. Commendable, you say? Don't they have families, I ask? Horowitz cheers on, (eggs on, actually,) people who may eventually develop a need to be out on the streets, waving banners, grabbing headlines and picking fights with left-wingers. I suspect that sort of activism is addictive.
I don't honestly value picking fights with irrational types. I don't think countering the people who make a living grabbing headlines in Washington, DC is a healthy lifestyle, over the long haul. Most real people look at those misfits and clowns and shake their heads as just keep on walkin'. They're buffoons. And we will be viewed in the same light, eventually, if we become too much like them.
In my mind, conservatives have to role model for each generation what it means to be "fit for liberty." Here's a link to a reflection on what it means to be fit for liberty (based on Federalist #1).