The Ballanis became their galvanizing cause.
Engaging seemingly opposed forces to further their agenda, the Indigo Girls have survived as political artists without need for a single galvanizing cause.
Opposition to his nomination, which has drawn the Obama administration into an uncomfortable fight with Senate Republicans as it tries to negotiate several other major issues with Congress, has become a galvanizing cause among many conservatives.
The book also seeks to draw attention to the influence that businesses have over elected officials, which has become a galvanizing cause for conservatives like Mr. Schweizer and Tea Party activists, whose brand of politics thrives on the tension of outsiders working against a system they believe is corrupted by insider interests.
Intelligence officials fear that for a new generation of disaffected European Muslims, Iraq could become what Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya were for European Islamic militants in past decades: a galvanizing cause that sends idealistic young men abroad, trains them and puts them in touch with a more radical global network of terrorists.
The emperor, assailed by enemies on his frontiers and by rivals within his family, was desperate for military aid, just as the pope was comparably eager for a galvanizing cause that would confirm his primacy as the leader of the Christian world.
A single-payer healthcare system in California — a galvanizing cause among the state's progressive flank — would cost $400 billion annually, according to a legislative analysis released on Monday.
"These elements of support do exist, but I don't think the caliphate announcement was as galvanizing or caused the huge shift that ISIS hoped it would," said Aymenn Jawad Tamimi, a fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Israel, using a common acronym for Islamic State.
Stahl, whose total income consists of Social Security and her deceased husband's pension of $51.74 a month, counts herself among the many Midwestern widows, ex-stockbrokers, retired schoolteachers -- people with time on their hands and dwindling savings -- who have found a galvanizing political cause in the high cost of prescription drugs.
