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They were inspired by Obama's promise to upend Washington by governing from the bottom up. "The change we need doesn't come from Washington," Obama told them. "It comes to Washington."

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.

Has Obama indeed reinvented the art and science of winning elections, or will 2008 turn out to have been a unique moment that suited the particular gifts of one politician? The Democrats are about to lay down $50 million to find out.

He blames the government for his unemployment. “Government is absolutely responsible, not because of what they did recently with the car companies, but what they’ve done since the 1980s,” he said. “The government has allowed free trade and never set up any rules.”

He and others do not see any contradictions in their arguments for smaller government even as they argue that it should do more to prevent job loss or cuts to Medicare. After a year of angry debate, emotion outweighs fact.

“If you don’t trust the mindset or the value system of the people running the system, you can’t even look at the facts anymore,” Mr. Grimes said.

“It’s very encouraging, but it’s also confusing,’’ Varley told me of the movement’s rapid growth. “Everybody has their own ideas or they have no idea. They’re like, ‘I just need something to do.’ ’’

In the past year, the number of active Republican town and city committees has jumped from 300 to 400, said Tarah Donoghue, communications director for the state Republican Party. “I think the groundswell will continue and there’s tremendous momentum . . . people are ready to hold the party in power accountable’’ she said.

Susan and Gil Harper from Cushing, Me. — she a lawyer who telecommutes to New York, he a furniture maker — said they had limited their political involvement to voting. But the bank bailout outraged them, they said, and pushed him to attend his first Tea Party rally.

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.”