What is this “#dontgo Movement” all about?

As the Republican Party goes about deciding what it’s going to do in order to regain the influence it once had, there’s a subterranean movement afoot among free market, low-tax, low-regulation, pro-personal freedom activists seeking to reassert the influence their ideals once held in the GOP. Some elements are explicitly party-centered, while others have abandoned the notion that the Republicans can be changed from within and are seeking ways in which they can promote their beliefs among the voting public in order to force office seekers to come their way.

The #dontgo movement is one of the latter stripe, which started as a relatively small number of activists using the social media service Twitter to broadcast updates on the floor protest among House members opposed to the leadership’s decision to go into summer recess before passing an energy bill. The name comes from the tag, #dontgo, which was inserted into each update to enable supporters of the protest to more easily follow the debate’s progress. By entering the #dontgo identifier into Twitter’s search function, activists could easily follow minute-by-minute updates from people on the ground at the site of the protest, which in many cases included House members and their staffs.

Also, by using the #dontgo tag, activists from across the country were able to communicate with the people on the scene and provide feedback from the grassroots. As interest grew, a web site was constructed which provided an opportunity for activists to opt-in to email updates. The number of email subscribers now stands at over 30,000 – a movement in its nascent stages, set to grow as it mobilizes to set up a 50-state organization on the Web to facilitate action at the grassroots level.

With the recent decline in oil prices easing the energy issue out of the national spotlight, one might expect a similar decline in relevance of the #dontgo movement. That would be a mistake, however. The rationale behind #dontgo has far less to do with oil and energy issues themselves than it does with a general belief that regulation and government interference in free markets exacerbates problems more often than it alleviates them. In the particular case of the energy bill, #dontgo fought to have government restrictions on drilling lifted which contribute to high fuel prices by constricting oil supplies.

Seeing an opportunity to broadly promote free market principles, #dontgo has expanded its focus to include other areas where government intrusion has a negative effect on freedom. In resisting alignment with a particular political party, #dontgo has chosen to promote its ideas among the voters themselves at the grassroots level. The underlying rationale is that entrenched powers among the political elite long ago ceased to be concerned about ideas and voter concerns and, instead, have put establishing their own entrenchment at the top of their priority lists. This desire to grab and hold onto power at the expense of basic principles became all-too-apparent to many free market advocates during the massive bailout of financial institutions this fall, and is becoming more so as corporations like General Motors increasingly turn to the federal government to remedy their self-inflicted woes.

Noting the effectiveness with which Democrats utilized social media and Web 2.0 to spread the message of the Obama campaign, the #dontgo movement is currently engaged in a push to replicate that success in promoting free markets, lower taxes, less regulation, and government transparency. At its web site, along with signing up for the movement’s email newsletter, users can view the ongoing Twitter stream that launched the movement, as well as join the #dontgo Facebook group, which currently has just over 1,800 members.

This is just the beginning of an overall strategy to use the latest online technology to reach voters and bring them into the process of forming an anti-tax, pro-growth, pro-individual liberty agenda. The ultimate goal is to completely reform the way agendas are shaped. The need for this was perfectly captured in the days following the GOP’s defeat at the polls on November 4, when a small group of conservative leaders gathered for a closed-door meeting to decide what direction the conservative movement should take going forward. This stirred considerable angst among the conservative online community because it showed a complete misunderstanding of what brought about the recent string of Republican failures.

By not including any of the emerging talent from the conservative online community, the establishment demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of political activism in the digital age. This, of course, is nothing new among failed establishments. Having been successful in the past, and earning the deference of the rank and file over time, they become complacent and arrogant. The current conservative leadership serves as an object lesson in that phenomenon.

Rather than struggle with the powers that be within the existing structure, the #dontgo movement has chosen create its own structure and set its own priorities. Operating independently of the current regime, it will be able to allocate its resources where they will have the most impact rather than in ways that will placate those who cling to the old order of things. As an independent entity working directly and in constant communication with its rank and file, this new movement will be able to impose the will of the people on the current leadership, rather than perpetuating the status quo wherein the leadership makes promises in exchange for support, and then does as it sees fit and then counts on a short public attention span.

One of the integral parts of this movement – and one that has been woefully neglected by the conservative movement in recent years – will be the establishment of a citizens’ corps of investigative journalists, set to begin in January 2009. As currently conceived, each state will be a bureau unto itself, with state-wide coordinators and editors monitoring and managing contributors, potentially down to the precinct level. State editors will be responsible for aggregating and promoting content to highlight reporting that is most likely to have an impact on advancing #dontgo’s pro-freedom agenda. By exposing corruption, mobilizing public sentiment against initiatives that limit individual liberties, combating government intrusion into free markets, and working as an advocate for taxpayers, the #dontgo movement will send a message to the political establishment, regardless of party affiliation, that the American people have had enough.

More than anything, this movement provides an opportunity for all advocates of personal liberty, government accountability and free markets – after an election that can only be seen as a major setback – to rally around ideals rather than the same political parties that have failed them time and time again over the years. By promoting pro-freedom principles among the populace rather than engaging in a futile attempt to entice the establishment into promoting those principles in the corridors of power, the #dontgo movement is sending the message that the lip service that inevitably gets paid to the precepts enshrined in our Constitution by the Founding Fathers as Election Day draws near will no longer suffice.

Notice has been served: the #dontgo movement is underway.