Weigel

That didn't take long: a Saturday rally in support of Gov. Scott Walker's "budget repair" bill, countering the days of union protests, featuring conservative stars Andrew Breitbart, Jim "Gateway Pundit" Hoft, and Herman Cain. (Cain, now a presidential candidate, hired former state Americans for Prosperity director Mark Block last month.) The main organizer is the Virginia-based conservative training group American Majority , funded in large part by the Sam Adams Alliance. That's a conservative 501(c)3 that seeds this kind of activism, and has succeeded since 2006 in building activist infrastructure in several states.

The event's also being put on by unsuccessful 2010 U.S. Senate candidate Dave Westlake, who had one of my favorite gimmicks of the cycle.

[T]here was Westlake, on the other side of the yellow policetape, almost glowing in a blaze orange button-up shirt. It's becomethe signature color of his unusual campaign, which is staffed byvolunteers and funded in part by sales of his blaze orange T-shirtsdeclaring, "I am Dave Westlake."

The Republican Senate hopeful says he chose the classic huntingcolor as part of a pledge to be visible to the people ofWisconsin.

"If politicians who are in Washington voting for things that wedon't want them to vote for had to wear blaze orange when they cameback here, they couldn't hide," Westlake said. "We could find themand hold them accountable."

None of this really matters for passage of the bill -- the Democrats need to be found, or they need to give in. But if this drags on, conservatives need to show that they have the public support to win out. So far, around 1,200 people have RSVP'd for this event on Facebook, which is a fraction of the number of people who've protested against the bill.