But party leaders eager to win the middle on other issues such as immigration have failed in recent years to appease the conservative base. Complicating matters now is that some activists have mounted their anti-health care overhaul effort largely outside the party machinery. Instead, they are relying on Internet social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to recruit volunteers for town hall meetings and spread YouTube videos of encounters with lawmakers.
One new group, Smart Girl Politics, has drawn about 10,000 participants using the networking site Ning.
"I don't know that anybody would want to be associated with either party at this point," said Michelle Moore, a suburban St. Louis business owner and mother of two who joined Smart Girl Politics and has helped drive activists to four town hall meetings hosted by Missouri's Democratic senators.
Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, who for years has served as a moderator of sorts between factions of the conservative movement, called the new insurgency a "series of ganglia and nodes" that are all "fed up" with Obama but not unified around a particular leader.
"I think the Republicans need a year to put themselves in front of this parade," said Norquist.
There is some organization to the conservative agitation.
About a dozen groups, including the large and well-financed FreedomWorks, led by former GOP Rep. Dick Armey, are sponsoring a march on Washington on Sept. 12.
Another longtime conservative group, the 60 Plus Association, purchased a nearly $2 million cable TV ad buy alleging that the Obama plan would put seniors' well being in jeopardy.
Republican officials hope those efforts will dovetail with signs of a GOP resurgence. Their candidates are ahead in two closely watched governor's races this year in states won by Obama - Virginia and New Jersey. GOP fundraising, which suffered badly during the past few years, has also improved: The National Republican Senatorial Committee said its donor list has grown by 66,000.
Leaders are trying to rebrand the GOP as the party of fiscal discipline, fighting Obama on his economic stimulus plan, attacking his proposed global warming legislation as a massive tax increase and, now, portraying his health care agenda as a socialist takeover of the private sector - messages that GOP strategists had hoped might appeal nicely to the base and the middle.
