EDITORIALS THANKS TO YOU!(Editorial)

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."

"The purpose of the study was not just to discover whose reputations for influence are the strongest but also to explain why that is. Money plays an enormous role in explaining political influence, whether it is spent on lobbying, campaign contributions or television advertising. That said, money is not all that matters. The results show that interest groups boost their reputations through reliable lobbying, grassroots organization and strategic coalition building."

One of the most humbling experiences someone who works at the national level can experience is to deliver a speech to grassroots pro-lifers and then be inundated with lavish praise about how "great" you are, how "we couldn't do it without you," or "thanks for all you are doing." It is exceptionally kind but this really does put the cart before the horse!

Whenever I try to make the crucial point that NRLC--while blessed with enormously dedicated people here in the Washington, D.C. office--is nothing ,zero, nada without the support of hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers around the nation, people see this as reason to compliment me on one more thing: "modesty." But it is nothing other than the simple, unvarnished, always-been, always-will-be truth. NRLC is listened to because of your voices, not ours!

Even I have trouble sometimes grasping how much influence NRLC is able to exert. If you take a moment out to compare number of staff, budget, and the like, you'll see that NRLC is competing against some real high rollers - - the kind whose outlays for tips are probably larger than our entire budget.

But year in and year out, people on the Hill understand that when NRLC presents its case, it is speaking for thousands and thousands of local pro-lifers spread out all over the country. This translates into real influence on behalf of unborn babies and the medically dependent elderly.

But don't take my word for it. Consider the perceptive analysis of Michael T. Heaney, a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago, who investigated the comparable "pull" of 171 "interest groups" on congressional health care policy. His article in the newspaper The Hill is a thoughtful distillation of a paper he delivered last August to the American Political Science Association.