I like your fight, and this amnesty issue is absolutely critical.
Our supposed ‘real conservative’ leaders are either taking a pass on the issue—e.g., Gov. Palin—or have turned up on the permanent-Democrat-majority opposition team—e.g., Rubio and Rand Paul.
It’s got to be a grassroots effort from the ground up it seems. Where do we go from here? Contact all reps? Write to the press? How can we get the tea party machinery oiled up for this? Can Free Republic play a role, if only to get FReepers activated?
All these things you say, and you’re right, the grassroots are the key to it. It’s how we took down the last amnesty effort in 2006 and 2007, when the Republicans in the Senate, like now in thrall to the cheap labor and neocon lobbies, tried to ram an amnesty and H1B increase through.
But the grassroots mobilized, calling and writing emails and letters just about every day. And it worked, because the Reps became terrified that they’d be primaried, or turnout would be low for the general election, or the public humiliation would endanger their consultant jobs after office.
Passion is the key to success in politics, and on the other side, our elected reps fear a fuss, public humiliation and an uproar from the base more than anything else. If it becomes clear that they’ll suffer humiliation and electoral defeat, or even just an uncomfortable series of news cycles if they press with something unpopular (especially passionately unpopular), they’ll back down.
I remember reading how in 2006 and 2007, the Senators and Congress members reported how the calls, emails and mailed letters were coming in 100:1 against the immigration reform bill, and so they backed down. This does work. It has to be sustained and intense, though, single-issue style. And it has to be full-spectrum, not just contacting their offices but going onto the radio shows, writing letters to the editor, supporting primary candidates against the RINO traitors and thus making warnings for any GOP representatives who even consider supporting this betrayal (or don’t oppose it hard enough). An interesting sidelight is that the Democrats have their own reasons for opposing this bill, which many in Congress already are, and the Dems I know also hate it for bringing in cheap labor when the economy is still crap. (And they are blaming Obama for not doing enough this time, so there’s also an element of political opportunity for us here.) It’s all about passionate opposition, sustained day after day, and organizing, being creative with the ways that we make ourselves know, and attracting media attention to the grassroots efforts.