Conservative Tweeters Show Remarkable Cohesion

Last night on Twitter, many of us were privileged to participate in a nearly unprecedented event: Conservatives showing remarkable cohesion and single-mindedness of purpose. I personally had never seen anything like it in my many years of being a user of social media going back to the chat rooms of America Online in 1991.

Someone started a hashtag thread of #2wordsliberalshate. It was trickling along with a few tweets here and there. The entries being tweeted were both funny and very telling of the liberal mindset. Entries such as “real jobs,” “free enterprise,” “logical debate,” “The Bible,” etc., came through.

Suddenly, several tweeters with large follower counts joined in almost simultaneously. Within just a few minutes, a massive, cathartic release of frustration and anger was taking place. The tweets to the thread #2wordsliberalshate were coming in so fast that it was nearly impossible to read them all. The entries became more profound and included such things as “personal responsibility,” “personal freedom.” The thread soon became so active that it reached the position of third highest trending topic on Twitter.

As a keen student and observer of human nature, I have some thoughts on why this remarkable solidarity occurred.

First, the sting of the recent passage of HR 3962, Health Care Bill, was still fresh and smarting. Despite a majority of Americans clearly opposing the bill’s passage, the bill was approved by a razor thin margin in the heavily Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. Disenfranchised conservatives were hungry for a way to show their anger that a minority of the electorate had prevailed on an issue with such far reaching impact.

Second, the #2wordsliberalshate concept boiled an issue down to  the simplest of terms: how the right sees the left’s actions and philosophies. It was simple, and it was direct. There were no complications of other issues that often divide the right into factions. Each person was free to voice their pet peeve, quickly and directly. While there was a great diversity of topics covered in the tweets, the central theme of what’s wrong with the left remained the uniting theme.

Third, the tweets were short, and easily retweetable without the need to read a link, shorten to fit the 140-character Twitter limit. Many tweeters, myself included, often use up most of the 140-character limit in initial thought. Many times, this just cannot be avoided, even though it is a good practice to leave room for retweet headers.

Right now, the conservative movement in this country is a groundswell of revulsion against recent government actions from the bottom up. In large part, even though some potential leaders are beginning to reach prominence, the right is essentially leaderless with no clear person around whom to rally. As a result, although we represent the largest group in the nation, we are having a difficult time mounting the opposition that is demanded to put down the well-organized minority on the left. Last night’s #2wordsliberalshate phenomenon did not require a leader. It allowed everyone to participate.

Uniting and organizing conservatives will be the holy grail of the 2010 election. Conservatives by nature are, in fact, rugged individualists who generally have an automatic avoidance of “group think.” On the contrary, the emotionally immature left is easily enticed by the lure of an “easy” life, devoid of personal responsibility and individual thought.

But just imagine how quickly we can turn this nation around if we conservatives can take the lesson of this simple exercise and convert it into a lasting cohesion. We must put aside all the side issues that divide us internally, whether they be issues of faith or of the secular world, and distill our message to a single, uniting concept.

After all, if the left could achieve victory with simplistic, vacuous promises of “Hope” and “Change We Can Believe In,” what success could we achieve on something more substantial with the same single-mindedness of purpose?