Romney camp is about to meet its match

COMMENTARY
Yesterday I received an e-mail from Erin Ryan of the Redding Tea Party titled "What Are You Doing?" She was sending to those in her address book a message from someone named Tom -- presumably a tea party guy who had signed on to help President Obama just to see what the opposing camp was up to. (For those of you saying to yourselves, "Hmmmm, I see, Hearden's on the tea party's mailing list," I get e-mails from Craig Tucker and Glen Spain, too.)

Tom had this to say to his fellow activists:

As many of you know I have signed up as a Obama Supporter. Well, guess what just happened. A young lady 25-35 just called me to find out if she could count on my support for Obama. I told her my income has dropped over the last 3 years and I was not sure. She continued with her script which was to get me to make phone calls for Obama. As a last resort she asked if I wanted to meet for coffee at Starbucks and discuss the job Obama is doing. Well we are meeting Wednesday at 2:30pm. Anyone want to join me.

The bottom line is that I was getting ready to go watch a lame show on TV and today I passed on calling on my neighbors because I thought I had something more important to do. The Obama supporters are not watching TV, they are making calls and setting up appointments with strangers, so they can convince them to vote for Obama.

We are going to lose big time if we don’t realize we are in a battle for the future of our country.

First of all, Romney should be heartened that tea party folks are rallying one another to get busy on his behalf this early in the general election campaign, considering all the talk that the former Massachusetts governor would have a tough time getting tea partiers excited on his behalf.

But the letter also serves as a warning to those in the Romney camp who've been lulled into complacency by the candidate's fund-raising and organization superiority over two badly disorganized primary opponents, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. To Romney supporters, the message is clear: Obama will have as much or more organization as you and as much or more money as you. If you're going to win this election, it's going to be on message.