The question before us will determine the future of the GOP, and our future role in the party.  What, if any, true impact will the grassroots movement growing across this nation have in electoral politics, and in the Republican Party?

If this movement is to have a serious and long-term positive impact on the GOP, we have to first consider a few honest problems that will need to be addressed. The fact is that a segment of the growing protest movement is infiltrated by Ron Paul supporters, people who adhere to concepts and theories that most of us find distasteful if not outright bizarre.  The extent to which these individuals continue to spread into the movement has serious implications for any hope of making this a viable, long-term movement capable of playing a defining role in rebuilding the Republican Party.  If a pseudo-libertarian ideology that embraces certain of the more extreme conspiracy theories (including their concepts regarding the Federal Reserve, the IRS, Jews, and other paranoid concepts) while clinging also to extremist isolationism in military policy and actual beliefs in some sort of literal imminent invasion of the southern U.S. by Mexico, our movement will lose any credibility and any potential to do more than field third-party candidates similar to Ron Paul himself.

We have the opportunity to return our party to its roots, to represent small government, low taxes, less regulation, state's rights, and respect for community morals.  In recent years, the GOP has become as bloated as the federal budget, has seemed at times as interested in expansion of the federal government as any liberal Democrat, and has held at arm's-length the grassroots supporters who are proud of their strong faith.  Yet every time our party turns its back on its roots, it falters and fails, and our nation pays a heavy price. When our leadership lacks the will or the way to reign itself in and to put our party -- and our nation -- back on track, it has always been we, the people, who rose up to do the heavy lifting.  We are at such a crossroads again, and we must take up this challenge seriously and with more energy than ever before.  If the party leadership will not recognize us and welcome us in to help remake the party, we must do it ourselves. Step by step, community by community, local party by local party. Because we have done it before, and we can do it again.

But we must not be disorganized or splintered in our cause.  We must not accept and ignore those among us who have ulterior motives.  Not every person at a rally who lends their voice against taxation or against the Democrats' socialist remaking of America is also an ally in party-building.  Some will be from among that segment of Ron Paul soldiers mentioned above. Yes, welcome them to our marches. Yes, welcome them to our rallies.  And yes, welcome them if and when they support our causes in the streets, at the ballot, and in donations.  But it's a mistake to welcome them into organizing and policy-making, because how they would reshape and rebuild our party is quite different from how we wish to do that work.

We must begin locally.  Join your local Republican Party.  Attend meetings. Nominate. Vote. In primaries, look at the candidates closely -- some will rise from our ranks and represent the changes we seek, some will be the preference of the more moderate party leadership, and others will use rhetoric similar to what you've heard at our rallies and marches but they are in fact linked to Ron Paul and his plethora of favored organizations. Choose wisely.

And there needs to be a serious sit-down among segments of our movement as well.  The animosity between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives -- as if being one disqualifies someone from also being in the other group as well -- got to very heated levels during the last election, and it's time to mend fences and become true allies again.  Neither side should view the other as a burden or an embarrassment, and neither side should try to diminish the influence of the other. Now is not the time for division and wedges within our own movement, it is the time to mend and end those differences and define a new way forward for our party.  Both groups must join together to craft not just short-term tactics and long-term strategy, but to seriously reimagine our party for the 21st Century.

I hope we will all work together in this way, and revive our party and return it to the ideals that make our nation so great.