Has the Baltimore Townhall Meetup been hijacked?

A while ago on townhall.com I stumbled on their Meetup group and signed up. I don't usually read Townhall, except when someone else links to it. I've just never found any columnists there who really grabbed me, and their site design isn't exactly the greatest (not like I can talk). Still, the idea of meeting other conservatives in Baltimore seemed appealing. I signed up for the email list, but I never got around to going to any of the meetings - at first because they were at night when I worked the night shift, and after that because my time was being taken up doing homework and going to class.

I've gotten two emails from the list recently that have puzzled me. They show up under announcements on the Baltimore Townhall Meetup Group.

The firs was talking about a campaigning for paper ballots and audits of DIBOLD voting machines. That was traditionally a Democrat complaint - the idea that, because the Diebold CEO was a vocal Republican, he would rig all the machines. But while I don't think there is a conspiracy regarding voting machines, you could argue that fair voting benefits everyone.

But the second email was even stranger - it talked about a Democracy For America grassroots workshop. The word "grassroots" usually means "smelly hippie", so this seemed odd. It seemed even odder when I visited the Democracy for America website and learned the following:

Inspired by the presidential campaign of Howard Dean, Democracy for America (DFA) is a political action committee dedicated to supporting fiscally responsible, socially progressive candidates at all levels of government—from school board to the presidency. DFA fights against the influence of the far right-wing and their radical, divisive policies and the selfish special interests that for too long have dominated our politics. DFA has a long-term goal that looks past November 2004. This organization will rebuild the Democratic Party from the bottom up—it will take time, but we must start building a base now for the future.

Fight the far right and their radical policies? I thought the point of Townhall was to promote the "far right" and our "radical" policies.

I can't figure out what's going on. Did the group leader figure that if he infiltrated and moved leftward a conservative meetup that he would eliminate a means of conservatives to work together? Did he have no idea what Townhall was? Or does he consider himself a conservative while embracing far-left causes? Or is that what passes for a conservative in Baltimore?

I should have known that Baltimore wouldn't house a whole lot of Republicans, but it's pretty strange when the members of a right-wing's website's meetup group turns out to be, as far as I can gather, filled with Deaniacs.