Of course, conservatives aren’t totally absent in the online world. They have their own blogs—InstaPundit, Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs—that are as strident and nearly as widely read as the liberal DailyKos. And they also get their message out through news sites like The Drudge Report and NewsMax. But there’s no Right-wing version of MoveOn. org, the non-profi t advocacy group with the clout and coffers to shape the debate (as it did last summer with its controversial “General Betray Us” ad). And there’s no successful conservative ActBlue, the Web site through which Democratic activists have donated more than $32 million to their candidates across the country.
So what’s the plan for pushing conservative political action into the Internet age? One approach is to do what the Left does, but do it better. In press releases, All says his site is more innovative than ActBlue, since it gives candidates and supporters more control over its pages. And like MoveOn, Erickson’s RedState has started sending out “action e-mails,” urging conservative activists to phone their congressional representatives about particular votes. The first, sent out last October, called on members to oppose the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Of course, MoveOn’s e-mail list is 3.5 million strong; RedState’s has only about 2,000 addresses. Still, Erickson says even small innovations like these are happening because the party is hurting now, just as the challenging environment of the early 1990s led to GOP innovations. In fact, Web activism tools that Democrats use now—blast e-mails, blogs, online fundraising— came of age when Republicans were trying to undermine President Bill Clinton. Erickson recalls how protests against the Clinton administration often grew out of posts on the conservative site Free Republic, which was cutting edge back then.
“When the Left needed to get organized, they had, number one, the anger from 2000 and, number two, the tools that the Right did not have when they got organized.” If the Right was out of power six years ago, they would have been the ones to develop the Web tools most effective today, just as they developed talk radio in the 1990s and direct mail in the 1970s, according to Erickson’s logic.Human Events, The Weekly Standard and the American Conservative Union, along with some Republican Senate staffers—to listen to members of Congress tell them about the Republican message du jour and how they, too, believe in the power of the Internet.
The worry for conservatives like All and Erickson is that their candidates will soon lose elections and congressional floor fights because of a reliance on old techniques and because progressives have become more effective at Internet activism.
There’s a common lesson to be learned from both Republicans’ direct mail successes in 1980 and today’s liberal netroots, says Richard Viguerie, the 74-year-old conservative direct mail guru: both movements came from outside their party’s establishment, and thus had a greater willingness to take risks.
“One of the weaknesses on the Republican side is that Republicans are royalists—the king is the king, long live the king,” says Viguerie. To jar Republicans from sticking to leaders who aren’t willing to try new things, Viguerie wants to create a “third force,” a group that works outside the party structure. That way, it won’t be tethered to the Republican Party when its tactics become stale or when it strays from conservative principles, such as fi scal restraint.
Viguerie stepped down from his daily role as president of a Virginia direct mail firm last year so he could focus on a new Internet venture, ConservativeHQ.com. Calling the Internet the fi fth great mass communication vehicle—after the printing press, moveable type, radio and television—he says his new site will exploit the opportunities to connect with voters, just as MoveOn has done, in the hope of pushing the debate rightward. “We have an agenda, and the agenda is to relaunch the conservative movement,” he says. Robert Bluey sees a different path. Every week at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank blocks from the Capitol, the 28-year-old Bluey gathers about thirty people—bloggers from
Deposed House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was a guest one week, speaking about a topic that surfaces often. To counter the new Democratic majority, DeLay started a non-profit with a shiny new Web site that will organize grassroots groups in eight cities. “We [conservatives] do a very good job of think tanks, of working inside the Beltway, putting on events,” DeLay told bloggers on a conference call, from his office in Texas. “But what I’ve seen in my 25 years in Washington is that there’s not enough communication and there’s not enough action.” While DeLay spoke, Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio Secretary of State and DeLay’s partner in this venture, showed off the Web site, which they hope to use to draw more activists.
Bluey hopes to foster that action through the very think tanks that DeLay praises. Just because Republicans know they have to use the Internet doesn’t mean they’re going to do it the same way liberals have, relying on outsiders to come up with innovations. He says that Heritage’s role is to bring the conservative movement together. Now that conservatives are blogging, that means bringing bloggers together. The better the network, the stronger the movement becomes, he figures.
When asked whether he thinks he and the other young turks are the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy 2.0, Bluey says, “Well, I never thought about it that way, but ... yeah!”
He points to the immigration debate as an example. Last spring, when Bluey learned that a group of moderate Senate Republicans were about to join Democrats in backing a comprehensive immigration reform bill, he and other bloggers, particularly those on RedState, started calling on their readers to oppose it. Meanwhile, Bluey and other Heritage fellows reached out to let Senate conservatives know it was okay to fi ght the bill. Several bloggers then posted digital, searchable versions of the bill online. As Bluey tells it, the opposition on the Right snowballed from just a handful of bloggers and senators to talk radio hosts and the rest of the conservative movement.
One advantage of Bluey’s approach, with its emphasis on overseeing conservative Internet efforts through a group like Heritage, is that it lessens the risk of having to cede power to newcomers. An aide to a top Senate Republican, who asked not to be named because he isn’t authorized to speak to the press, pointed to how Web donations fueled Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential bid and helped vault several Democratic Senate and House candidates, like Montana’s Jon Tester, into office in 2006.
“People on the Right saw that and decided we should be able to have this sort of effect, too,” the aide says. “At the same time, people look at the Left, the netroots, and say we don’t want to be exactly like them: a constituent block that demands fealty.”
But ask the Left netroots about this, and they’ll argue that conservatives are the ones who aren’t small-d democratic enough to thrive on the Internet.
The Undiscovered Country
More than Democrats, Republicans like to run a tight, disciplined ship. So, as the conservative movement figures out its online future, there’s bound to be some tension. The kerfuffle on RedState over posts from Ron Paul supporters is a prime example. Paul enjoys massive support online, but is still polling in the single digits and his views hardly mesh with the rest of the Republican Party. So after seeing enough comments from Paul supporters that had gratuitous exclamation points and references to the North American Union, NAFTA Superhighway and Zionists, RedState banned comments about Paul from users who had been registered to the site for less than six months.
“Now, I could offer a long-winded explanation for *why* this new policy is being instituted,” wrote RedState’s Leon Wolf in explaining the decision, “but I’m guessing that most of you can probably guess. Unless you lack the self-awareness to understand just how annoying, time-consuming, and bandwidthwasting responding to the same idiotic arguments from a bunch of liberals pretending to be Republicans can be.”
Put another way: The folks over at RedState weren’t willing to relinquish control over its blog posts to a group of people they weren’t sure would help the party. But All and a handful of other conservative bloggers disagreed, arguing that they would need Republicans of all stripes next year.
All even called Paul the Howard Dean of 2008, the candidate who represents a much needed “revolution,” prompting Erickson to snap back: “I really don’t want David being the tech strategist on the Right the media goes to for comment if he’s more dazzled by the bells and whistles than by the cause.”
Despite the infighting and doubts over the Web, All remains sanguine about the future of his party and the technology. To drive his point home, he offers another analogy.
“Many people are modern ostriches,” All says. “They want to stick their head in the sand and think that the Internet is not making the biggest impact in politics since TV commercials. It’s even bigger than that. It’s the most important thing ever.”
