The biggest obstacle to creating a liberal majority of the kind One Nation envisions is the presence of all the other non-liberal Americans.

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At first, the Left hated the Tea Party movement.  Now it wants to create one of its own.  With liberalism under siege across America, pro-government talking heads are trying to convince themselves that a statist grassroots movement is inevitable.  Here’s why they’re wrong. 

Amid much fanfare, 170 liberal and civil rights groups created One Nation Working Together, a web-based umbrella organization designed to “counter the tea party narrative” and help the Left mobilize supporters.  The groups’ policy goals echo standard liberal calls for more government spending on social services, education and just about anything else they think needs more taxpayer money. 

Launched in 2010, One Nation hasn’t caught fire.  It’s “news” section lists minor official campaign activities in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two states that voted for Republican governors and legislative majorities by wide margins in 2010. 

It is little wonder why One Nation is a dud: A political organization – no matter how well-funded and managed – cannot create and maintain a significant grassroots movement.  

And as Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) learned, trying to beat back a movement already in progress is a bad political strategy. 

The 2010 election cycle was almost as bad for Cornyn professionally as it was for liberals politically.  From Florida to Utah to Kentucky, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee consistently picked the wrong candidate in the primary.  Thankfully, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) saw principled conservatives in long-shots like Marco Rubio, Mike Lee and Rand Paul.  What liberals should have learned from Cornyn’s experience is that the Right is not nearly as monolithic in its thinking as the Left.

Part of what makes the Tea Party such a viable force in Republican campaigns is the uneasy relationship between conservative activists and Republican establishment types.  Both need each other to win, but the balance of power tilts decidedly in favor of the grassroots. 

The differences between conservatives and Republicans are visible on any college campus where there is both a conservative activist group and a College Republican chapter. 

As a student at Baylor University, I was a member of both the Young Conservatives of Texas and Baylor College Republicans.  The key difference was this: YCT endorsed candidates in primaries; CRs worked for whoever made it into the general election.  For CRs, any Republican is better than a Democrat.  For YCT members, only a true conservative was worth supporting. 

For people motivated by ideas, YCT – and the conservative movement in general – is the natural choice of political identity. 

Liberals don’t understand this.  They look at Ronald Reagan and see Mr. Republican.  What they should see is a conservative leader who gave the Republican establishment a conservative backbone. 

In a certain sense, it’s easy to see why liberals must attempt to manufacture a movement instead of nurturing one of their own.  In poll after poll, the number of Americans who self-identify as liberals never reaches above 30% of the population.  Most of the time, the number is in the low 20s.  (Self-identifying conservatives range from the mid-30s to low 40s.) 

And because liberals believe that activism and state action are synonymous, anyone who identifies as a liberal is probably already demanding favors from government through the Sierra Club, PETA, NOW or a local union.  Thus, there is no untapped liberal grassroots ready to catch fire. 

The biggest obstacle to creating a liberal majority of the kind One Nation envisions is the presence of all the other non-liberal Americans.  When self-identified conservatives and independents are grouped together – a linkage justified because of shared commitments to American Exceptionalism, national defense and spending limits – liberals are left staring at an opposition that starts at 60% of the country. 

No wonder liberals support open borders and mandatory union dues: It’s the only way they can keep up the façade that Americans want to buy what the Left is selling.