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The conservative tea party groups that helped elect dozens of new candidates to Congress on Nov. 2 are now delivering a warning to them: We're watching you.

Now, we have a compelling blueprint of just how to do that. A new book -- "The DeMarco Factor: Transforming Public Will Into Political Power" -- shows that that kind of organizing is no pipe dream. Written by Michael Pertschuk, former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and co-founder of the Advocacy Institute, the book focuses on the strategies and leadership of organizer Vincent DeMarco, who has waged successful advocacy campaigns in Maryland and Congress for 20 years.

Over the last six months, at least 15 of the group’s 30 state chapters have disbanded and have no plans of re-forming, Acorn officials said. The California and New York chapters, two of the largest, have severed their ties to the national group and have independently reconstituted themselves with new names. Several other state groups are also re-forming outside the Acorn umbrella, and will not be affected if the national organization files for bankruptcy.

This weekend, as Tea Party members observe the anniversary of the first mass protests nationwide, Ms. Carender’s path to activism offers a lens into how the movement has grown, taking many people who were not politically active — it is not uncommon to meet Tea Party advocates who say they have never voted — and turning them into a force that is rattling both parties as they look toward the midterm elections in the fall.

A new group called the National Precinct Alliance says it has a coordinator in nearly every state to recruit Tea Party activists to fill the positions and has already swelled the number of like-minded members in Republican Party committees in Arizona and Nevada. Its mantra is this: take the precinct, take the state, take the party — and force it to nominate conservatives rather than people they see as liberals in Republican clothing.

“This is a city that not long ago seemed ungovernable, so a very top-down style of government has taken shape, epitomized by the current administration,” Mr. de Blasio said. “But you have to engage the grass roots, and my office will be the leading edge of that.”

The volunteers pulled up folding chairs next to boxes of leftover Vanel T-shirts and described how the campaign had changed their lives. Dymitra Etienne, 37, a nurse who met Mr. Vanel when he campaigned at a supermarket, was applying for a master’s program in health policy; Ruthie Campbell, 23, said she once planned to get rich, move away and send back money, but now believed in helping her neighborhood through politics.

“I’ve never been so passionate about anything outside of fashion,” declared Ms. Vick, a school transportation supervisor.

The idea that political activism makes people happier actually has longer roots than that, though. It long predates the birth of psychology - or, for that mater, the birth of modern political activism. In Kasser’s paper, cowritten with Malte Klar of the University of Gottingen, the authors quotes Aristotle, who held that true happiness was only attained through engaging with the political affairs of one’s community.

“I don’t want to say the conflict is fun, because it isn’t,” said Mr. Brewer, 40, an easygoing state pool champion with an earring high in his left ear. “But the interaction is fun, to be able to talk to people who take the time to listen to what you have to say.”

If the idiocy of a few ACORN workers can lead Congress to defund that organization, surely lawmakers will move to rescind the bailout cash given to the banks whose employees seemed ready to go along with our depraved schemes, and whose reckless gambling with other people's money helped create the foreclosure crisis -- precisely the crisis that ACORN and other agencies are trying to help poor and working-class Americans cope with.