The Online Right

But it seems the very nature of conservatives indicates a resistance to change. In the late 90s, early part of this century, Free Republic was a big dog of onlien activism. The left took over when their grievances increased, along with their time out of power. Without pain, there won't be change. Until Conservatives see a need to go further and deeper online most won't.

The Rightosphere would be the biggest beneficiary of an Obama Presidency and unless that happens (or until another Democrat wins), I fully expect people to remain somewhat unsure in cyberspace.

Look at the stupid things that Czarmangis wrote above.  We can't expect intelligent people to take us seriously if we use terms like "moonbats" to describe our friends to the left, and if we condescendingly call them things like "unemployable scum, know-nothing college students, suzy homemakers, paranoid shut-ins, bitter misguided ethnics, and retired and/or disabled govt. employees."

Take these people for granted if you want to, Czar.  I guarantee you you'll regret it the day Obama gets sworn in to office.

Why does the Right side of the blogoshere have less traffic, a smaller audience, than the Left side of the blogosphere?

Our people are a lot more likely to be listening to talk radio while driving their truck or otherwise working than to be browsing the internet. How did AirAmerica work out? The most likely role for the on-line right is to dig up information that Rush and Laura and the rest can spread to their millions of listeners.

Seems like talk radio activism, where the internet is just a means for the activism to take form. Bear in mind that Rush and others have both a radio and internet presence.

I'm of the opinion that a lot of the problem is that the "right wing" blogs are not actually very right wing. It's no coindence that Malkin is the top of the heap - she's the most conservative of the big players on the right. Perhaps if the other right wings blogs took more interest in the things conservatives are interested in, they'd do better.

Daily Kos is a better site.

It's more visually appealing, and it draws people in better then most right wing sites.

As a web professional, even though McCain had the best website of any of the other candidates, its still a far cry from what it should be. McCain could leverage his strength in Town Hall settings to revolutionize campaigning in this country, and then take that to the White House and revolutionize democracy. 

I could easily bring home this election for McCain if I was running he e-campaign.

Oh well, back to work.  

I am amazed almost daily when I comment on Lucianne.com and put a blog link in the comment that subsequent commenters seem amazed that such a thing as blog sites even exist. And this is a pretty sophisticated commenting group.

I was an enthusiastic Freeper for many years.  Free Republic has Web 1.0 style discussion software, but it was (and probably still is) very effective in getting people to talk.  And their posting of full text news articles + comments was a great way to read the news.

Unfortunately, Free Republic changed over the years to a site that was viciously anti illegal alien. I happen to be neutral to positive on the impacts illegals have in our country, and many of the comments started looking like outright racism and bigotry.  The more reasonable voices, like me, were basically driven off the site.

I visit Instapundit many times a day and it reflects my pro war + libertarian on economic and social issues very well.  But Instapundit is certainly not a place where members can communicate with each other or participate in activism.

I think Czarmangis has a good point when it comes to conservatives not having as much time as leftists to blog and participate in online communities.  If you strip off the negativity of his post, he's right.  But I think it would be a good idea to try and not think of the "enemy" with such loathing and contempt.  Many leftists are good people who simply have different perspectives on society from us.  Our task, should we choose to accept it, is to try and change those views by indicating the advantages ours have.  It's not easy work but it's worthwhile.

It looks like this site is going to be quite interesting and I look forward to contributing to it.

D

I seem to recall some of the righty blogs surprise at the lack of traffic from dKos links, when such links occur.

Might they be churning up fictitious traffic?

...however, I'd add also that conservatives must see some sort of dividend/payout/benefit for their efforts.  Look at our efforts over the past several years!   Whats it got us?   John McCain and BarryO.  Blogging, visiting blogs and commenting on blogs can be time consuming and even darn'd hard work.  All this work and we're seeing the conservative movement going back to the center or even left of center!  Sc__w that!  We want to go rightward.  One thing you won't see a true, independent conservative do and that's to continue to throw our precious capital  down a dry hole.  That dry hole being the Republican Party and even the conservative movement which is in stagnation. Putrid stagnation.   

No. True independent "nationalistic" conservatives are looking elsewhere for a positive place to expend our energies.   Possibly towards a serious 3rd party?  No? Ok, then where?  Darvin Dowdy

I really do think the main point is that the right is not yet, quite been cast into the wilderness far enough for more of them to get incensed enough to GET inviolved.

If McCain wins, it may even be longer before the right gets on the boat with the Internet the way the left has.

Some valid points have been made here. That conservative websites need upgrades, that we didn't exploit the web as well as liberals and that our base, for the most part, just isn't located here.

I'd like to touch on the last part abit.

Our base really isn't web orientated. Or rather, it's not on the same level as the liberal base. The liberal base are indeed younger and tend to be more tech savy, these are the same people who are likely to have more time to waste on the internet compared to conservatives. And this base grows stronger because of the lack over younger conservatives along with the fact that around the world, most people with internet access are more liberal as well. The chatting and exchanging of ideas, regardless of whether they are right or wrong, is not in the conservative favor.

Lastly, IdahoConservative brought up a good point. self described conservatives are, or were, in power. We might not like the answer, but it's likely that we will have to feel the hurt from most liberal ideas before the young, always have been liberal crowd, feel the conservative agenda is actually a valid one they should look into.

davidfarrar: "Message boards and forums have been around for a few presidential elections, but are far for the "collective" action stage because both political parties actually fear the Internet and it's communicative power."

They only fear it because they aren't even at the Web 1.0 stage.  Emails are just another form of mailers/postcards for them.  Interaction isn't the name of the game, it's getting people to agree to what you want to do anyway.

Let's say the Republicans did have online polling.  How do you prevent the people who oppose you anyway from voting in it?  How do you prevent the Paulites from skewing a poll?

I'd love to see this sort of interactivity.  I don't think forums and messageboards at the national level would work.  Now, start local,  city, county, or statewide, and having that feed the national level might be possible.

I'm here because of a silly salute from a guy touting four months as two tours with how many decorations?   Monitoring the dailies of blog agretators left or right or Drudge wastes my time but an issue site or ralley point like the Swifties could draw me in and put me to work. Agreed; the right is mostly on the AM dial,  the left features adolescents.  I'm as IT as my ink pen and thumb-eared "The True Believer". Radio direction to a People's Cube type compilation of  "Sonny Liston Takes a Dive" or "Calypso Louis Disses Malcolm".  Some such thing or "Affirmitive Action at Harvard" will focus the right like last year's 'immigration' against Obama.  Later they might heard on other issues to keep McCain kosher.

Sacred Cow Burgers,  and Gary Larsen RIP.