blue=freerepublic.com
maroon=dailykos.com
green=democraticunderground.com
Posted on 08/05/2007 4:54:00 AM PDT by Tree of Liberty
The netroots is reveling in Chicago, and the natural reaction is to ask, “Where’s our YearlyKos?”
It’s a good question, but ultimately a short-sighted one from an historical perspective. Go back and re-read the TNR piece on the netroots from May. Especially this part:
The Democratic leadership and the liberal intelligentsia seemed pathetic and exhausted, wedded to musty ideals of bipartisanship and decorousness. Meanwhile, what the netroots saw in the Republican Party, they largely admired. They saw a genuine mass movement built up over several decades. They saw a powerful message machine. And they saw a political elite bound together with ironclad party discipline.
This, they decided, is what the Democratic Party needed. And, when they saw that the party leadership was incapable of creating it, they decided to do it themselves. “We are at the beginning of a comprehensive reformation of the Democratic Party,” write Moulitsas and Armstrong.
Who is jealous of who here? YearlyKos, and also the Take Back America Conference, were almost certainly borne of the question “Where is our CPAC?” Some of those covering this act as though the idea of a conference with thousands of grassroots activists and Presidential candidates falling all over themselves to speak is totally unheard of on the right. Um, no. The netroots was built on Xeroxing the Goldwater-Reagan Revolution in the Republican Party. Almost always, it was conservatives who were the initial innovators.
When covering the netroots vs. the rightroots, reporters look at things through a particular frame that by definition excludes the vast majority of grassroots activity on the right. For something to be newsworthy in this space, it must be blog-based, it must have emerged in the last five years, and it must be focused on elections over legislative or policy outcomes.
The problem with this angle is that most of the conservative institutions online emerged in the late Clinton Administration or immediately after 9/11. At their peak, they were larger than Daily Kos, and arguably some still are. And they rarely receive any scrutiny because they don’t fit the frame. From a macro movement-building perspective, the left catching us to us is being covered as a need for us to catch up with something the left has invented anew.
And despite how unfair that narrative is, there’s something to it. The conservative analog to YearlyKos is 30 years old. The 800lb. gorillas of the conservative Web initially went online in the 1995-97 timeframe. And many have failed to innovate. They are still Web 1.0, where the Left jumped directly into Web 2.0 in the Bush years. Consider:
But Free Republic simply could not succeed in the world of the blogosphere, social media, and Web 2.0. The founders made the decision that they were going to hoard as much traffic on their servers as possible, by posting full-text articles (that eventually got them slapped with high-profile lawsuits from WaPo and the LAT). Early on, links to blogs were verboten. If you expressed your own opinion when starting a thread, that was a “vanity” and it was frowned upon. And fundraising for candidates was strictly forbidden, except for those pet causes approved by Jim Robinson. Their culture was very anti-blog and anti-original content.
Today, Free Republic increasingly finds itself marginalized. If you support Rudy Giuliani, who still has a decent shot at being our nominee, you’ve probably been purged. Free Republic’s walled garden approach worked in the days before blogs and broadband, but they actively resisted changing with the times. What we now have is a resource with more unique eyeballs than Kos but one that won’t work with others or push the envelope technologically. What a waste. Imagine how the history of the rightroots could have been different if Free Republic wasn’t still stuck in 1996?
What lessons did our activists learn from this? Freepers, who were our best online activists, never learned how to swarm to other sites, to take different kinds of actions, and to raise money for conservative candidates.
Unfortunately, that poses structural challenges that has starved the center-right of tech-savvy volunteers. Of all the issues to choose to make an impact on, the $400 billion-a-year defense apparatus is probably the most impenetrable. (Personally, I would hope that the Pentagon is not reading the blogs to decide their battleplan.) So on the war, we are pretty much limited to punditry, with the obvious exceptions of the milbloggers in the field.
And the media focus also fits the frame of conservative bloggers as pundits rather than activists. If we act as pseudo-journalists and commentators, it stands to reason that we’d think actually getting involved on a campaign is dirty business.
My co-blogger Hugh Hewitt refers to the “lead pipes” of the left-wing blogosphere that are slowly but surely contaminating the groundwater in the Democratic Party. But if their pipes are dirty, ours are leaky and badly in need of an overhaul. (At least if one wants to do more than just pass along positive information about the war.)
It would be one thing if we didn’t have any of these institutions, and could start from scratch just as the netroots did. My fear is that we have a bunch of institutions that still function somewhat well, but are long past their prime. With that, there is the danger we will slowly die without knowing it, as our techniques gradually lose effectiveness year after year. Just like newspaper circulation numbers. And there are a number of people on the right who are still complacent about this.
It seems to me that the numbers are there to do something great around the 2008 elections, and that all we need to do is effectively tap into the conservative blogosphere. I looked at N.Z. Bear’s traffic stats for political blogs with over 20,000 visits a day. And the visitor gap between left and right was lower than I could remember in some time: 1.2 million to 870,000 for the left (half of the left’s total was Kos).
Looking beyond the blogosphere, a place the MSM isn’t as familiar with, and you’ll see that the conservative Web is larger than the liberal Web. Sites like Townhall, WorldNetDaily, and Free Republic have monthly audiences that regularly beat Daily Kos and the Huffington Post, to say nothing of Drudge, which still reigns supreme.
So the people are there, just as they’ve always been. My concern with some of the sites I discussed above is that for ten long years, they haven’t been giving our people Web experiences that teach them how to be more than simple readers.
Freepers are keeping the powder dry...for the moment.
Bush has betrayed and abandoned the base, and the feeling is mutual.
Fred Thompson is most likely to catch fire, and Freepers will be the kindling to light the torch of freedom.
Holding a YearlyKos is easy when most of the Kos Kids don't have real jobs.
“Past performance may not be indicative of future results.” Whatever benefit the RNC has provided previously, its current incarnation is not responsive to the cause of conservatism. By its corporate actions, their goal, at present, is garnering power. Philosophy be damned.
Whether FR is marginalized can be determined by site visits and membership today vs 200-2004. Anyone have that info?
What you said!
Would the RNC lawyers have had a chance in the court during the 2000 elections if it weren’t for the few (relative to what the DNC can bus in) but voriciously dedicated FReepers and like minded protestors who got in the face of the Palm Beach vote “counters.”
And what of the recent immigration bill failure? FR rallied the troops along with talk radio like Mark Levin. The bill died over the consternation of President Bush and RINOs like Trent Lott.
Of course we’re unappreciated by the powers that be. I don’t want FR to be loved by the RNC and RINOs. I want it to be feared!
Having Free Republic on the right is like a humans need for food.
Having DippyK on the left is like a humans need for a toilet (after bad food).
By...?
Elitist republicans and their media lackeys who attack FR, denegrate us and conservatism, downplay the role of many activist FReepers who are out carrying the water for candidates who don't deserve the support, and doing the legwork for many beltway "republican" reporters who look here to find out what the story is before spinning things their way?
Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Patrick Ruffini and others, who continue to attack and bad mouth FR in an effort to placate the left and demonstrate how "fair and balanced" they are?
BS, why does the right have to bend over and genuflect to the left while the major media has to make no such gestures. We get attacked from the left and the right while only feeble attempts are made to shine the light on the roaches like DU and KOS. By attacking us they weaken their attack on the left by making the uninformed masses think "well that's just something that happens in politics, see they do it too". Neglecting the fact checking and truth that supports most every post and point that appears here.
Marginalized? Whatever.
The great crime that the Free Republic has committed, is that it has demonstrated and reminded the Republican Party of what it has lost, namely a-———— BACKBONE!
We’re simply in the middle of a natural cycle. Groups tend to unite when they’re in the minority, and fracture when in the majority. At some point the Dems will own the White House, and everything will come full circle.
Rudy is not my candidate, but this line is hitting a nerve because it's true in spirit, if not in fact. (I have spoken kindly of Giuliani in some ways, and I'm still here.) But the writer is trying too hard to fit FR into a framework that it isn't meant for--this isn't a Republican site, it's a Conservative site. While I would be interested in a more open and accepting forum, one that has room for equal discussion of where the party is headed and who is "kosher" as a representative of it, FR is what it is. Moaning that it isn't Kos is kinda weird, actually, since Kos is emblematic of the take-no-prisoners approach of the Democrat party, which is liberal through and through. Kos is a Democrat site, AS WELL AS a liberal site--the two are inextricably melded together now. I don't think the Republican party is so overwhelmingly conservative as the dems are so completely liberal.
All yours, use with abandon.
Would you please remind me how I can find out what # I am? I used to know, but it’s been so long that I’ve forgotten.
Courtesy Comment:
AMEN and bares repeating.
We conservatives do not have competent leadership.
Hi, Clara!
You are number 51,722.
Go to your freeper page and click on “In Forum.”
Your number will show in the address bar.
My concern with some of the sites I discussed above is that for ten long years, they haven’t been giving our people Web experiences that teach them how to be more than simple readers.
Complacency kills.
This forum ain't what it used to be. The IQ level here has dropped precipitiously since I joined. Lots of highly intelligent, articulate, engaging Freepers don't come here much any more. They have moved on. The simple readers don't miss them.
While you're patting your own back with one hand and tapping away at your keyboard to flame me, be thinking of ways to make FR a force multiplier in the War of Ideas.
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