The reason this worked out right (still crossing fingers) in my opinion, was because much of the tech community were on the same side in this one. But there are other occasions where this would have been a mess. So, the message would not have been clear. The congress and media would have thought "some people say yes, some people say no... nothing new".
No, I think congress and the media don't normally think about the tech community's opinion at all.
[editted to add]
You are right that division makes the message harder to put across. But it's not as simple as that. Take software patents: some people think software patents should be banned altogether, some people think they should be limited to five years, some people think 'obvious' patents are the problem. But most people think that the system is broken. As engineers, our automatic response is to start figuring out what the solution would look like. But the roadblock is not a lack of a solution, but lack of political influence. We can't agree on a solution to the software patent problem, because we won't find out which one works until we get to try one of them out. And the roadblock to doing that is lack of political influence.
I agree. Sadly, political influence costs lots of money. And thats the hardest part to overcome. So, we should first settle our differences (in your sample, how to solve the broken system) to avoid wasting time and money.
Buying political influence is generally a high ROI activity. In absolute terms, it may appear expensive, but in terms of "value" its quite cheap.
More importantly, there are other ways to gain political influence outside the DC money flow. The fight against SOPA and PIPA are an example of that.
As for the idea that differences need to be hashed out so a united front can be presented before trying to influence US politics. Even if such an outcome were desirable or possible (I'm not convinced of either), it would be a mistake to wait.
I think, underneath it all, part of the strategy is to create a legislative and regulatory environment that imposes disproportionate costs on upstarts and small players. In such environments, entrenched players can defend their positions.
