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.
*I* watched the saga unfold, and watched who was banned and why.
You, quite obviously, did not.
Many of these “oldtimers” purposely set up a new website and then came over here DEMANDING to be banned, or opused out, or asked Jim to ban them privately, or were absolutely vile to Jim. They had a plan, and it worked beautifully-for FR.
I pinged Jim because I mentioned him. That’s standard etiquette around here. But since you obviously are here only to whine and pick a fight, you might not care about that.
I’ve plowed through this entire thread looking for a historical perspective, selfanalysis, and introspection from fellow freepers. Your posts have been uniformly nasty and unenlightening.”
And of course you didn’t find the following comment, that started my comments, nasty because it is an “intelligent dissenting viewpoint”
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.
You’re kidding, right?
You know this how?
Have you, say, hit the search poster button by any chance?
*I* watched the saga unfold just as much as you or anyone else did, and I assure you the mass purge had little if any connection to the reasons you stated.
First you stated that people were banned because they “disregard[ed] warnings, advocate[d] abortion and infanticide, unfairly bash[ed] President Reagan, and [swore] at Jim.”
I asked you for your evidence for your claim, especially your claim that freepers had “advocated” abortion and infanticide.
Instead of answering my question, and supporting your conclusion, you have now offered a different story: people were banned because (gasp) they “purposely set up a new website and then came over here DEMANDING to be banned or opused out or asked Jim to ban them.”
Huh?
Which is it?
And are you claiming not one freeper was purged who didn’t ask to be?
I doubt those involved had any private conversations with you, so I’m pretty sure you haven’t heard their side of the story.
As for the JR thing, thank you, I am well aware of the etiquette requirements. (I am wondering why you are so enamored with adding insult to your points. It really doesn’t make your points seem brighter.) And I can see how you misunderstood my question, so let me rephrase it.
I was not actually asking you why you pinged JR. My question was this: why did you feel compelled to mention him in the first place? How was that necessary to your points?
I ask because it certainly seems wierd that some people trot out a JR mention whenever they really want to try to pour on the (in their mind) gravitas. Please. It’s way too much like wailing “Daddy, make him stop!!” Or was it a try for brownie points by highlighting how good you done by defending Jim Rob-—who, by the way, takes care of himself rather well, I’d say.
I seriously doubt JR is sitting around bawling because someone “swore” at him. But anyway.
My point is this: in all that went on, you found it representative of the animus for the purge to claim that someone “swore at” Jim? In your mind, that (if it happened-—I would also ask that you kindly provide substantiation for that claim) was one of the major factors in the mass purge?
Wow. I suggest you search JR’s posts and see who told whom to engage in a vulgar act in a way that some might find awfully close to “swearing.”
Be that as it may, I would like you to answer my question. Please name one freeper who “advocated” abortion and infanticide. Please tell me if you believe that every freeper who was banned asked to be banned or opused out.
Thank you.
There is no way in the world I am going to search a 2000(?) post thread to find proof for YOU. Many of the Giuliani supporters thought that abortion was acceptable, and there was one wacko who was banned for saying that the parents of handicapped kids should be allowed to kill them.
And I didn’t say that everyone who was banned asked or opused. Those were among the myriad of reasons. Each one was a bit different.
Given (see below) that Patrick Ruffini is the chief e-campaign guru for the RNC (or at least among the chief RNC e-gurus), his complaints about FR may amount to nothing more than that he wants a loyal army of e-bots to follow the RNC line at all times and work on behalf of the party. Since so many in Republican leadership have failed so egregiously to uphold conservative principles at least some of the time (and some of them fail ALL of the time), Ruffini’s remarks on FR amount to simply a demand that Freepers should be party hacks rather than conservatives. I would take everything he says with buckets of grains of salt and his background clearly in mind......
“From 2005 to 2007, Ruffini served as eCampaign Director at the Republican National Committee, overseeing the Party’s online strategy for the 2006 election cycle. His tenure saw unprecedented outreach to the online community, breakthroughs in online fundraising, and successful initiatives in the emerging worlds of social media, online video, and text messaging. Even during a difficult election cycle, the RNC’s relationship with the blogosphere grew closer and stronger than ever. Beyond these successes, the RNC’s eCampaign serves as the Republican Party’s R&D arm for innovation on the Internet, where no major development online goes unnoticed or is left untapped. In this role, Ruffini advised Republican candidates and organizations at all levels on best practices for winning online.
In the 2004 election cycle, Ruffini served as webmaster for Bush-Cheney ‘04....
http://www.patrickruffini.com/about/
That's because liberal mouth-breathers are dumb as rocks and need useless eye-candy rather than actual content to hold their attention.
Backtracking again, I see.
While I dispute your statement that “many” Giuliani supporters thought “that abortion was acceptable,” nevertheless it is clear that even if your statement were true, you cannot possible equate that with “advocating” abortion and infanticide, as you clearly posed in your first post to me.
And was the “wacko” who was banned a “wacko” or a long-time, formerly respected poster who got under someone’s skin because he supported the “wrong” candidate? Do you know?
I hope you’ll take me up on my suggestion to surf through some of my posts and some of JR’s on “those” threads. Instead of claiming you somehow know I wasn’t even there, you might learn something.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1821435/posts?q=1&;page=51
Do you think this is an appropriate post? Was the post to which the poster responded even especially provocative or personal? If the founder responds thusly, should someone be banned for---oh, boo hoo---swearing at him, if that even occurred?
Click on the link to the NY Observer story in the article on this very thread and read the comments. Just for. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: quidnunc Up yours asswipe. 56 posted on 04/21/2007 6:57:07 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
LOL. Explains a lot.
Hey Mr. Ruffini, when the Republican party gets back to its roots, the grassroots conservatives will be more than happy to support them. Meanwhile, we are the dissent, baby.
Run, FRed, Run!!
Looks prudent to me. And well deserved.
Ummmm....No.
If the thread consists ONLY of your opinion, that is a vanity.
The opinions of the poster of a thread are posted on Post 1 and everybody else's opinion follows.
As a matter of fact, we often skip reading the posted article and go straight to our opinions. :-)
I hope you get over your sadness soon. I'll clue you in. I have absolutely zero interest in running a "powerhouse" for liberalism. Those who wish to support abortion, gay rights, gun control, sanctuary cities for illegal aliens, etc, are free to create a powerhouse somewhere else. FR will fight on for God, country, family, Life and Liberty. Thankyouverymuch.
By the way, had the Republican party remained a conservative party, it could've been a powerhouse.
Cuban cigars.
The good stuff, just like Thompson.
And you?
Cuban cigars.
The good stuff, just like Thompson.
And you?
placemark
Excellent point! That explains why the establishment GOP and the beltway crowd are trying to marginalize us.
But we ain't buying it and if those lily livered b@astards try and shove one more shamnesty bill down our throats they'll regret it to their dying day.(just ask dan rather and bj clintoon)
LONG LIVE the USA!
LONG LIVE FREEREPUBLIC!!
Big surprise. Not.
What I’m actually interested in is PoliticalMom’s opinion. I’m sure she will tell me she teaches her little ones to respond in the same manner whenever they get involved in a twiddle political difference of opinion.
Oh, I’m not sad. Things have a way of working out.
As for your “clue,” it’s nothing more than more strawmen.
No one, and especially not me, ever wanted FR to become a “powerhouse” for liberalism.
But here’s a clue that is helpful: if FR wants to “fight on for God, country, family, Life and Liberty [sic],” petty purges to shut up FR’s most loyal members is not the way to go.
I would think one would have learned by now that it is the process of civil debate (argument) that actually helps each person clarify how they want to “fight on” and what they want to fight for. It even causes some people to change their political positions, as you did when you went from calling George W. Bush a “cokehead” and wondering if his family was involved in CIA-sponsored drug-running to being a major supporter of Bush’s candidacy.
It happens. Or do you think the power of ideas only changes your mind?
Don’t smoke, thanks.
And I sure hope those cuban cigars of yours “catch fire” better than Thompson has.
Well, Rudy's cigar has been going out lately.
Bummer.
Not.
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