RE :”The grass roots should be organizing themselves. They finally are. But it took a crisis to do it.”
No if they organized when Bush was president they would be called Democrat enablers and Bush haters, as anyone questioning McCain last fall was called. So independents bolted to Obama who used conservative phrases.
They can organize now because all types of conservatives and even republicans (RINOs) are united against democrats. With Bush or McCain as president it was hopeless.
We will see how successful liberals are at organizing against Obama for liberal principles on health reform.
If they had gotten out on the streets to protest for SS reform when Bush was pushing it it would have been construed as "Bush hate"?
Don't think so. Rather, it would have helped Congress to pass reform while the grass roots helped to move the message out to independents, etc.
But there was no "crisis" then so the grassroots couldn't have been bothered.
NOTE: Bush stood strong against fed funding of embryonic stem cell research w/o the Tea Party, for example. But an overhaul to an institutionally entrenched system such as SS couldn't be done without a large and very vocal number of the populace backing it to counteract the MSM juggernaut that would have fought reform.