Top 100 Conservative Political Websites of 2007

Intellectual Conservative ^ | July 30, 2007 | Rachel Alexander

[az4vlad]

The most popular 100 conservative political websites and blogs for 2007 are listed here. Read who made the list and who surprisingly didn't.

Here is a ranking of the top 100 conservative political websites and blogs. Other than sifting and sorting through directories like alexa’s, there’s no easy to determine what are the most popular conservative websites. John Hawkins of rightwingnews has ranked all political websites in order of popularity in the past, but hasn’t put out an updated list since 2004. I have attempted to create an updated list of the conservative websites for 2007, using alexa’s directory and rankings. There are other sites like trafficranking.comwhich use different methodology to rank the popularity of websites, however, alexa’s system, which is based on the web surfing habits of those using its browser helper software remains the most popular. 

Conservative websites fall under various categories in the alexa directory, so I may not have found everyone. If you have been inadvertently left off, please email meso I can adjust the list, even if it means lengthening it to the top 125 or so. In some cases, it wasn’t easy to determine whether or not a site really belonged in this list. I am still open to changing some of the methodology, if you would like to dispute how I included or excluded sites I would like to hear from you. 

Blogs without their own domain name, such as blogs run off of blogspot.com, were not included, since with few exceptions, alexa does not separate them out. Some conservative leaning or more mainstream libertarian sites like the Cato Institute, Reason, and Radley Balko I thought should be included, whereas others that were more traditionally libertarian I left out (those included Neil Boortz’s site, ranked 35,416, samizdata, ranked 90,209, and the Libertarian Party site, ranked 116,978). I left out the Christian Science Monitor(ranked 12,583) because it is not reliably conservative, but I included U.S. News & World Report, since I believe it is still generally right leaning. 

I included think tanks and organizations like the legal American Center for Law and Justice, individual personalities like Michelle Malkin, and newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal. I may have left off some right of center regional newspapers, although I included the biggest ones. I included non-American sites, although there were few, and one German-language site I left off (think tank Konrad Adenhauer Foundation– ranked 176,951) 

I excluded one issue sites, for example sites that deal only with abortion or gun issues. I left off campaign sites since those sites come and go quickly. I left off sites like Politically Correct, which runs political cartoons (ranked 62,714), and conservative libraries like Online Library of Liberty(ranked 320,732). 

Now for the interesting findings. There were some big disappointments. The Republican National Committee barely made the list at 405,641. Scrappleface, which most of us remember as one of the early popular satire sites, also barely made the list at 433,108. The following sites didn’t even make the list: 

Hugh Hewitt – 5,633,009

Federalist Society – 1,245,004

Christian Coalition – 1,002,811

American Conservative Union – 950,055

Independent Women’s Forum – 930,362

Ifeminists.com – 828,382

And here is the list. Intellectual Conservative rounds out the end of the top 100.

1. Drudge Report – 951
2. Fox News - 599
3. Wall Street Journal – 1,043
4. New York Post – 1,778
5. WorldNetDaily – 4,605
6. NewsMax – 5,334
7. Boston Herald – 6,684
8. Free Republic – 7,114
9. Town Hall – 7,915
10. U.S. News and World Report - 8,694
11. National Review Online – 10,502
12. Politico – 11,359
13. Lew Rockwell – 13,174
14. Washington Times – 13,621
15. Rush Limbaugh – 14,117
16. Real Clear Politics – 17,027
17. The Post Chronicle – 19,203
18. Reason Online – 19,942
19. Little Green Footballs – 21,079
20. Michelle Malkin – 23,570
21. Instapundit – 25,661
22. Ludwig von Mises Institute – 28,169
23. Human Events – 28,937
24. Weekly Standard – 43,327
25. Powerlineblog – 41,288
26. Heritage Foundation – 48,044
27. FrontPageMag – 48,461
28. Red State – 49,599
29. Free Market News – 54,314
30. Jewish World Review – 55,733
31. Lucianne – 56,585
32. Ann Coulter – 57,910
33. Cato Institute – 58,391
34. Volokh Conspiracy – 61,682
35. Vdare – 76,539
36. American Thinker – 81,917
37. Michael Savage – 82,673
38. Bill O’Reilly – 83,723
39. Sean Hannity – 87,305
40. RightWingNews – 106,285
41. American Enterprise Institute – 108,262
42. American Spectator – 118,709
43. Mens News Daily – 126,426
44. Laura Ingraham – 145,994
45. Ilana Mercer – 162,520
46. Adam Smith Institute (U.K.) – 162,584
47. Radley Balko – The Agitator – 165,128
48. Snapped Shot – 166,275
49. American Conservative – 181,314
50. GOPUSA – 186,477
51. Acton Institute – 187,367
52. Renew America – 190,345
53. Christopher Hitchens – 194,067
54. Hoover Institution – 200,268
55. Political Crossfire – 200,941
56. Commentary Magazine – 211,054
57. Liberty Forum – 211,445
58. An Englishman’s Castle (U.K.) – 228,967
59. World and I (Washington Times) – 236,083
60. Accuracy in Media – 232,120
61. American Daily – 251,092
62. Media Research Center – 253,620
63. Etherzone – 257,691
64. Heartland Institute – 257,924
65. Café Hayek – 265,888
66. John Birch Society – 273,956
67. Concerned Women for America – 277,015
68. Independent Institute – 281,097
69. National Center for Policy Analysis – 290,051
70. La Shawn Barber’s Corner – 300,533
71. View from the Right – 301,593
72. Becker-Posner Blog – 305,780
73. Fraser Institute (Canadian) – 307,688
74. World Magazine – 307,978
75. Tom G. Palmer – 310,087
76. Talk Show America – 318,999
77. Tom Rants – 346,982
78. MichNews – 361,642
79. RealityCheck – 325,321
80. Family Research Council – 332,263
81. National Center for Public Policy Research – 334,388
82. Insight Magazine – 334,429
83. American Center for Law & Justice – 341,008
84. Club for Growth – 341,118
85. Tammy Bruce – 353,769
86. Sierra Times – 359,115
87. John Locke Foundation – 359,971
88. Enter Stage Right – 361,598
89. Judicial Watch – 367,970
90. Eagle Forum – 381,771
91. Sweetness and Light – 390,593
92. Discovery Institute – 398,031
93. Conservative Underground – 406,018
94. Hudson Institute – 419,364
95. Reason Foundation – 426,451
96. Young America’s Foundation – 450,076
97. Republican National Committee – 405,641
98. Scrappleface – 433,108
99. Claremont Institute – 456,349

100. Intellectual Conservative – 458,064

[Constantine XIII]

And you were right!

[Constantine XIII]

That WND thing kinda shocked me. I mean, whaaaat? :p

It just goes to show that lots of people don’t feel complete unless they’re scared witless about something or other, especially if that something isn’t obvious to “normal” folks.

[Do Be]

Great post. Thanks for the work.

[krunkygirl]

save for later ref.

[devolve]

Reply to ping of interest

[George W. Bush]

Doesn't surprise me. Some of their readers have been there as long or longer than many of us have been here.

They're still holding their numbers well. We're slipping, at least if measured by size of main threads and candidate threads and time-to-completion for fundraisers.

[ChessExpert]

1 to 100 I understand. What does the number on the right signify?

[dangus]

The BOSTON HERALD???

The legendary headline reporting the dubious poll of Bush beating Dukakis aside, the Herald is nothing but left-wing trash, a cheap, mafia-friendly, corrupt knock off the Daily News. I lived in Boston. If the Boston Globe wasn’t among the worst newspapers in America, the Herald would be infmaous itself for DailyKOS-style trash.

Who assembled this list? The Republican-party outreach wing of Murdoch’s, News Inc.?

[VOA]

There were some big disappointments. The Republican National
Committee barely made the list at 405,641.

A disappointment, yes.
A suprise, no.
Bad things happen when you diss your long-term base.

[liliesgrandpa]

Thanks for the list

[expatguy]

Exactly!

An American Expat in Southeast Asia

[ModelBreaker]

O’Reilly is a good guy, a little bit blowhard, who loves attention.

O'Reilly is not a conservative. He's a populist. So sometimes he sides with conservative causes and to his credit, he doesn't take BS answers from the left. That's what makes folks think he's conservative. Anyone in media who doesn't always read the latest DNC talking points as fact is regarded as a conservative.

But he clearly failed Econ 101 (actually, he must surely have failed middle school econ). He constantly gets sucked into silly conspiracy ideas about things like high prices that are just stupid--he's a moon is made of green cheese type guy in economics. So he constantly misses the boat as a conservative on economic issues. I don't think it's malicious. He just doesn't know what he's talking about and doesn't realize that he's ignorant on these topics. But that describes 3/4ths of Americans. So he has a good audience for his economic schtick.

And, it's too bad he jumped to conclusions about FR. With 100,000 members posting, if you are looking for inappropriate posts, it's not too hard to find them. But overwhelmingly, the discourse here is measured and appropriate.

But he was great after 911 when he jumped United Way and NLG about funding terrorist organizations with US Government money. NLG and United Way are two of the left's darlings and a huge source of free money from the rubes for left-wing causes--untouchable by all except Bill. The left will never forgive him for that.

[ModelBreaker]

Did you know that Ronald Reagan called libertarianism the "heart and soul of conservatism"?

It's pretty clear from his positions that he was not talking about drug-legalizing, marry-your-dog-if-you-want style libertarianism. He was talking about Madisonian style libertarianism--keep government small and under constant checks from other branches, devolve as much power to states and localities as possible style libertarianism.

The real issue is that people are very imprecise using the "l" word. What I call "social libertarians" would affect a constitutional revolution--removing from States the power they had under the original constitutional scheme to regulate morality (any argument they did not have that power under the scheme is just silly and I won't get into that argument even if 9th amendment fanatics respond).

More traditional libertarians focus on rescuing the Constitutional scheme of limited government run mostly from the State level from it's current disarry. I count myself amongst that group of libertarians, even though I am a social conservative. But because of the dope-smoking baggage the term has acquired from a small group of loud adherents, I don't use it to describe myself very often.

The extreme social libertarians have very little in common with conservatives--conservatism is based on an understanding of the fallen nature of man. Conservatives know that humans need to be told that some things are bad and they will be punished or they will do a lot of really bad stuff and the cultural center will not hold. Period. OTOH, social libertarianism is based on a view of human nature that is as unrealistic as the communist/Rousseauian view--that is, that we are perfectable if only the systems around us were better and more utopian (different utopias, same naive view of human nature). Both social libertarianism and communism are based on perfectly understandable urges about how we wish humans were. But both will always fail because that's not how humans work.

[saraforestb]

I think that the publication of this information is critical to understand all these issues that are related to each other. Thanks for the input.