"The Left owns the Internet"
And other observations about building activists and
organizers
A number of interesting observations have percolated throughout
the Interweb in the aftermath of the 2008 election - arguments
about the “youth vote”, the “center-right versus center-left,”
pushing aside social conservative issues, etc. But one of the most
thought-provoking topics receiving attention is the issue of the
presence (or lack thereof) of the Right in the online “Web 2.0″
universe. As a technology geek by trade, this topic is near and
dear to my heart.
Much has been made of the aforementioned “youth vote” in the
post-election analysis, and within that discussion are implications
that the youth were energized by the online presence of the Obama
campaign. Tools such as YouTube, Twitter, Friendfeed, numerous blog
sites, SMS, etc. were used to not only educate, but to “activate.”
A huge portion of Obama’s fundraising was done via the web - small
donations that eventually added up to huge numbers (please, let’s
not get into the issue of overseas donations, etc. - that’s really
not the point). These tools were used to empower activism, through
GOTV-type projects, state-by-state campaign events, as well as
fundraising. I am not 100% convinced that there is an obvious
correlation between the high percentage of the 18-29 crowd that
voted for BHO and his online presence…since youth are already
steeped in online culture, and youth seem to lean left to start
with, it is difficult to assign a direct cause/effect relationship
proving that Obama’s leverage of technology led to his success with
that demographic. But it certainly didn’t hurt.
This week the Washington Post
ran an article by Jose Antonio Vargas titled “Republicans Seek
to Fix Short-Sitedness”. It focused on the efforts of Patrick
Ruffini and others, including RedState.com’s own Erick Erickson, to
move forward with efforts to ignite the GOP and conservatives in
leveraging the resources of the Internet. The WaPo article is one
of the best overviews of the situation to surface in the
post-election mop-up.
The problem we have is illustrated by Vargas:
The right owns talk radio; the left owns the
Internet.For years, that’s been the simplest way to explain the online gap
between the two parties. “Of course Republicans are behind online,”
says Newt Gingrich, arguably the Webbiest of the party’s elder
statesmen. American Solutions for Winning the Future, a group
Gingrich founded, uses the Internet to harness grass-roots energy
on issues such as oil drilling. “When one of Obama’s senior online
advisers is the co-founder of Facebook, when Gore sits on the board
of Google and Apple — well, let’s just say the Republicans are not
in the same century yet, okay?” (Actually, Gore is a senior adviser
to Google, but Gingrich’s point stands.)
“The right owns talk radio; the left owns the Internet“.
Interesting observation, and mostly accurate. There are many
conservative/GOP blogs and related sites on the ‘net, but few are
aimed at the kind of “grass-roots energy” to which Gingrich
alludes. “Talk radio” is, and will (hopefully) remain as part of
our strategy, but more must be done…on the Internet, in
particular.
What needs to be done?
Without question, the GOP/conservative world must become more
active in the online “activist” universe, much like the Left did in
the 2008 election season. Last week, Erick Erickson, RedState’s
Editor-in-Chief and face to the world, posted a
call-to-action for the RedState community. Please go back and
read his posting again (and again) to get a feel for where we must
go to succeed in future elections. I believe the most significant
recommendation was that we must become “an army of
activists“. Ruffini echoes this sentiment in the WaPo article:
Examples of the gap abound. State-by-state online
activism was an integral part of the Democratic National
Committee’s 50-state strategy, something the Republican National
Committee does not have. A handful of congressional districts could
have easily gone Republican, Ruffini says, if more conservative
bloggers had helped to raise money and to get boots on the ground.
“But as it stands, most bloggers in the right see blogging as a
communications medium,” Ruffini says. “Bloggers in the right
need to look at what the bloggers in the left have been doing and
learn to be activists, too.”
Ruffini is kind enough to recognize the efforts that RedState (and
others) have made already:
Some of the bloggers Ruffini is targeting write on such
sites as RedState.com and TheNextRight.com, which he co-founded.
They understand where he’s coming from. Many even signed up on
Rebuild the Party, including Erick Erickson, RedState’s managing
editor. Erickson says conservative bloggers are more concerned with
debating policies and ideologies than with how close “a particular
race is shaping up in this or that congressional district.” In the
past three years, however — especially in the six months leading
up to the election — that mindset has started to change. “There’s
been a real shift to not just focus on national races but local
races, too,” Erickson says. “But it takes awhile for the ship to
turn.”
But we must move even more in this direction. Shortly after the
election, Moe Lane called
us out to produce more state- and local-focused diaries, and
our readership responded brilliantly. That must continue.
This is not to say that we must cease discussing the issues and
exploring the policy positions of our candidates. In fact, in the
wake of the 2008 loss, it is all the more important for
conservatives and the GOP to identify where we stand on the issues
- and ensure that we (as many as possible) are singing from the
same hymnal. Are we a three-legged stool conservative party? Should
we jettison certain policy planks of the GOP platform? But let’s
not get lost in this discussion and forget that we must also “go
offline” and act outside our online debates.
We can rebuild it. We have the technology.
One of our goals must be to become more adept at using the
technology at our disposal to get our message heard, understood,
and accepted. I will cover some of this in future diaries, but for
now, RebuildTheParty.com has a
great summary of what must be done:
The Internet: Our #1 Priority in the Next Four
YearsWinning the technology war with the Democrats must be the RNC’s
number one priority in the next four years.The challenge is daunting, but if we adopt a strongly
anti-Washington message and charge hard against Obama and the
Democrats, we will energize our grassroots base. Among other
benefits, this will create real demand for new ways to organize and
route around existing power structures that favor the Democrats.
And, you will soon discover, online organizing is by far the most
efficient way to transform our party structures to be able to
compete against what is likely to be a $1 billion Obama re-election
campaign in 2012.
RedState.com and our brother and sister GOP/conservative sites will
be key participants in this effort. Soren Dayton
illustrates how we can do this:
You can make the fundraisers a little more efficient.
You can make the GOTV more efficient. You can have a better message
and get it out better. These are linear improvements. But political
organizations grow exponentially when you improve the organizers.
That’s what the Obama campaign did. Everything was focused on
making the organizer better. Ultimately, the GOP will have to learn
this message. We will have to learn to empower our activists by
incentivizing recruiters. The person who recruits 100 volunteers
will have to be as important as the person who raises $100,000.
When the GOP organizes itself around these principles and deploys
technology to make these people better, then the center-right
electorate will translate into winning electoral
majorities.
RedState and the rest of the conservative/GOP online universe needs
to be building better organizers. This can be done with blogs, as
well as other e-tools that are out there at our disposal. More on
that later.
Better organizing through technology.
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