movement

This morning I awoke to a "public flogging of Patrick Ruffini" from Ralph Benko, an enthusiastic proponent of new media in the conservative movement in D.C. He was responding to my recent piece on the "Obama Disconnect" -- the lively debate surrounding Organizing for America and Obama's loss of grassroots mojo from the campaign.

Ralph attempts to connect my skeptical view of Organizing for America (and indeed the Obama campaign) to disdain for the tea party movement. It's a pretty big leap, and one superseded by my numerous posts on the actual tea party movement (here, here, and here). 

Erick Erickson has come out in my defense but highlights this quote he says is "rubbing people the wrong way:" 

Now, what happens when the campaign goes away? What happens when the enthusiasm inevitably ebbs and the hard work of governing begins? The immediate benefits of a bottom-up strategy become less clear. You revert to traditional instincts, where powerful obstacles stand in the way of getting things done — even amongst your base, and the wielding of massive political machinery cannot be left to amateurs.

This would be damning if it were actually about the conservative movement, but it's not. It's about Obama, and the shift from the faux-bottom up ethos of the campaign to the top-down work of governance. Actively throughout the post, I was putting myself in the shoes of a David Axelrod, first (some might say cynically) embracing the "bottom-up" energy of supporters in the campaign because of their financial and organizational strength, then jettisoning them when that enthusiasm invariably ebbed when they came into power. Isn't the story of Massachusetts right now the extremely fired up Republican base versus the listless, moribund Democratic base? The quote is a commentary on the reality of Democratic politics right now, not the very opposite phenomenon that is the dominant reality in the Republican party. 

There is a legitimate question of what happens when a party comes to power, and the role of the grassroots in that shift.

There is no question that grassroots politics is harder when you are in power. That is just a fact that I think requires no further explanation. The MoveOn.org / OFA base is not in the room when Obama horsetrades on health care with Harry Reid, the unions, or the Blue Dogs. This invariably leads to compromises the left doesn't like. But, news flash: there were lots of things the right didn't like about the Bush Administration, from Medicare Part D to the bailouts. And I would remind Ralph that I advised a party-line Republican vote against the bailout.

Does the base tend to get sold down the river more when one is actually in power? Yes. Do I like that, as Ralph suggests I do? No. But I am also realistic enough to recognize that it's a distasteful reality and the price of actually being in office. And that's ultimately why you have a movement: to minimize deviation from principle as much as possible and to set standards for those pesky professional power-wielders. 

Right now, the right is in a different moment. The role of the movement is not to serve as a check on the elected officials because the elected officials are largely irrelevant. The role of the movement is to expand the opportunities for capturing ground as much as possible. Massachusetts would not have been possible without the grassroots deciding to make this the cause it did. If we win, it will be their victory. And the fact that a victory will have a profound and lasting effect on the policy of the United States is the ultimate testament to things the grassroots can do that the establishment can't. 

It’s been a while since I’ve heard chatter on the blogosphere about building a Rightroots movement (I last commented on it at the end of October). However, over the past few weeks, I’ve seen a number of major developments that suggest we might be on the verge of establishing a true and effective Rightroots movement.

When John Hawkins wrote about this topic, he noted that (emphasis added):

One of the biggest problems online — and this extends outside of the blogosphere — is that there are far more liberals online than conservatives and they’re much more enthusiastic.

Because of that, huge websites that can drive a lot of traffic like Digg, Fark, and YouTube have come to be dominated by liberals, even though they aren’t liberal per se.

Over the past few months, some great minds on the Right – people like Patrick Ruffini, Mindy Finn, Eric Odom, and Michael P. Leahy – have taken the lead in organizing conservatives online. As a result, I believe we’re witnessing a substantial increase in both online participation and enthusiasm among the Rightosphere. Although we haven’t fully established ourselves on Digg or YouTube (yet), we have taken Twitter by storm – and establishing a significant conservative presence on other websites may be coming very soon.

And so without further ado, I wanted to take a highlight a few fantastic websites/projects that have come to fruition since the election that are helping to organize a Rightroots movement. If you’re not already active with them, you should definitely check them out and consider getting involved.

1. Rebuild the Party – When Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn initially started Rebuild the Party, it was simply a forward-looking plan for the Republican Party (albeit a phenomenal plan that I have enthusiastically endorsed). However, it has since blossomed into a substantial movement. Over 7,000 people, mostly ordinary citizens, have endorsed the plan. All but one of the candidates for RNC Chair has publicly announced their support for it. And over 2,100 folks have jointed the Rebuild the Party Action Network. This is a very strong showing of the Rightroots who are clearly looking to rebuild after the devastating results of the 2008 election.
2. News Platoon and DiggCons – A number of folks, led by Eric Odom, launched the #dontgo Movement in response to the Congress’ unwillingness to pass offshore drilling legislation in August. And although #dontgo remains the umbrella organization, Eric has recently released a number of notable new spin-off projects. One of them, News Platoon, is building a state-by-state grassroots network that offers “REAL news stories across” a given state. New Platoon’s first state, Tennessee, is in beta. The other project that Eric just today released, Diggcons, is aiming to even the conservative hand on Digg, where for the most part the Right is held to a whisper.
3. Top Conservatives on Twitter – Michael P. Leahy started Top Conservatives on Twitter as “a rallying point for conservatives on Twitter.” The #tcot hash tag has been one of the top 10 trending topics on Twitter for weeks now. The list started out with no more than a few hundred names; it has since ballooned to nearly 2,000 users, and 15 RNC members have signed up on Twitter.

With websites and projects like these springing up across the nation, I truly believe that we are witnessing a new conservative online movement. We may not yet have established a true Rightroots movement, but I am starting to think that we are getting very close. A critical next step will be using peer production and mass collaboration to our advantage.

Erick Erickson says we need to do more than rebuild the party. We need to fix the movement.

One of the greatest failures of the conservative movement in the past decade was to join itself to the Republican hip. By necessity, conservatives and Republicans are linked, but they are not nor must they be the same thing.

Politicians are about politicians. Conservatives are about the advancement of freedom. There are too few politicians out there who would, when faced with the choice, put the advancement of the movement ahead of their personal advancement. Those that do put the movement ahead of themselves are often marginalized or ignored inside the party. And too often, the movement latches on to those who talk the talk, but do not walk the walk.

Being out of power will give conservatives to emerge from under the shadow of the Republican Party. A big reason why the right has stagnated online is that being in power has given the right little of substance to do. All the decisions were being made for us in Washington -- everything from where the GOP should stand on immigration to campaign strategy. When everything you need to know about candidate recruitment and how the GOP targets races is written down in a binder at the RNC, there's little for volunteers to do other than follow orders. That's not very inspiring to grassroots activists. To appropriate something Soren told me over email once, more stuff for volunteers to do equals more volunteers.

This top-down approach is the curse of the party in power -- though Obama is smart enough to try and at least pretend otherwise. Yes, people will still help. And yes, we need everyone marching in basically the same direction. But with no sense that conservative activists own the party (or the movement) or have room to create their own parallel recruitment and fundraising apparatus to augment or even challenge the party, there is little incentive for smart and creative people to get involved except in official roles.

The conservative movement does not need to be the party, but it needs to influence and drive it. This is essentially the argument I've had with Rick Moran and others who don't think activism is worth it until the Beltway GOP reforms itself from within. To presuppose a Chinese wall between party and movement and wait for the party to fix itself is a mistake. The movement needs to take an active role in reforming the party. Party and movement need to be equal partners, with a free flow of people and ideas between them. When the party is moving in the right direction, the movement needs to have its hand on the steering wheel. When it's gone off the cliff, the movement needs to step back and offer a vigorous challenge to the current direction of the party.

Whether the movement as currently constituted is capable of playing this role is a question up for debate. Erick's point about the danger of organizations being known for their leaders rather than their work product is spot on. I also think we've descended into the single issue interest group mentality that plauged the left up to the '80s and '90s. Don't get me wrong -- we need single issue groups to focus on the niche issues no one else will. Only groups like National Right to Work are going to go out and file suit against real life examples of labor union abuse and intimidation. But if I could wave a magic wand, I'd call a moratorium on new single issue groups and think tanks (let's keep the great ones we have) and focus on building movement-wide activist infrastructure.

Right now, the balance of power in the conservative movement when it comes to grassroots muscle rests with the economic (AFP, FreedomWorks, Club for Growth, etc.) and social (AFA, Focus, etc.) wings. You also have the NRA.

The balance of power in the progressive movement rests with MoveOn and the netroots that are consistently liberal on all issues weighted equally. Lots of energy has been expended on coordinating all the moving parts of the conservative movement, and that's good, but progressives solved their own interest group paralysis by creating a movement with just one moving part.

We need new institutions that help us rally around the unifying issues, not more coordination and meetings.

Save the GOP alerted this Kos nugget on Our Conservative Movement Leaders retreating to a country estate in Virginia to plan the future for us:

I attended one of these for our side in early 2005, and the experience was so miserable that it ended up being a major inspiration for Crashing the Gate. It was full of the same progressive "leaders" who had gotten us into our predicament, and their solutions were the same bullshit that had gotten us in the mess in the first place. So I left that retreat even more motivated to wage war against our party's political and issue-group establishment. Our victories in recent years have come, in large part, from our ability to bypass that crowd.

Those early tensions are mostly erased, as a new balance has been struck by issue groups more and more aware of the need to be part of a holistic progressive movement, rather than focus obsessively and divisively on their own single pet cause. It really is night and day. But that didn't come out of that conference. And it certainly wasn't billed as a way to generate a new grassroots movement. The notion of having a bunch of top-down movement leaders create a new "national grassroots" operation by fiat from up and above, by the same jokers who created the mess the GOP is currently in, is pretty laughable.

I believe we have fallen prey to the same problem that befell the left in its years in the wilderness. You had environmental groups, abortion rights groups, womens groups, unions, minority groups --  but no progressive movement.

Today on the right we have social conservative groups, economic groups -- subdivided into tax cutters and spending hawks, national security groups, gun groups, etc. but no truly mass-based conservative movement. Perhaps the best exponent of across-the-board conservatism is Rush, but he has no lists and no way to mobilize his audience directly to donate and volunteer.

When conservatism was a minority we may have needed single issue groups to pick off, say, pro-gun union members. But since Reagan, an entire generation has grown up thinking of themselves as nothing but conservatives. And they have no representation among the 1980s-era groups.

Whatever happened at that country estate will be irrelevant to the future of the movement. I'll bet not a single person under 40 was even at the table. The future will be shaped digitally, Here Comes Everybody-like, on blogs like this one, RedState, Save the GOP, the American Scene, and the dozens I have a feeling will be created in the wake of Tuesday's wake up call.

Keying off Jon Henke, John Hawkins has sparked an enormously provocative and healthy discussion about punditry vs. activism in the conservative blogosphere. Here he hits the nub of the problem:

Well, I've found that conservatives are willing to pony up the money, but it's extremely difficult to get people in the new media to ask their readers/listeners for money. Why that is, I don't know, but I find that as a general rule, if bloggers and talk radio hosts on the Right have a choice between seeing their favorite candidates lose and asking their readers to donate money, they'd rather see those candidates lose.

I'm unsure whether that's a cultural thing that will change over time or just some characteristic of conservatives, but it makes it extremely difficult to organize any sort of fundraising effort. As a general rule, it's like pulling teeth to get the bloggers who explicitly agree to help to actually ask their readers for money and most of the rest of them bend over backwards not to link a fundraising effort.

Put more succinctly, I've had people tell me conservative bloggers feel "dirty" asking for money. This sense of modesty and restraint is not felt by the likes of Daily Kos, MyDD, and Open Left. Note the huge blue fundraising graphics that are the first thing you see when you visit their sites. And I'm sure you're probably thinking: "Well, we don't want to be like Kos." Well, if not being like Kos means not winning, then I certainly can appreciate the intellectual rectitude at play here. But for those of you who want to move the Republican Party in a different direction, you might want to try something else.

Ace encapsulates the right's reluctance to engage electorally, and what I suspect is going to be the rude awakening that comes as a result of that approach:

I never was all that big into this idea. I think it's now necessary if we're ever going to start winning like we used to.

The GOP needs to do its part, too. It shouldn't be up to John Hawkins to compile a list of House GOP challengers. The GOP needs a permanent online liaison, not just charged with sending out press releases and that sort of thing, but with providing information about candidates -- who's vulnerable, who's a solid challenger, etc.

What will it take to turn this around? If you're a conservative blogger, the question you need to ask yourself is this. Is the main purpose of your blog to express your personal opinion? Or is its primary purpose to build political power for a cause? If you cannot answer yes to the latter, you're probably not going to be comfortable with making the changes necessary to make online conservatism a political force to be reckoned with. 

This is not a criticism, but an observation. Most conservative blogs are still stuck in 2003 -- both in terms of the overwhelming focus on media criticism and punditry, and the tendency to outsource electoral politics to the Republican Party. This was in some ways legitimate response to what was happening in 2003-4, when media surrender-monkeys were undermining the War on Terror, Republicans had a kick-butt political operation, and Kos was going 0 for 16.

Aaron Shaw at Fringe Thoughts responds to some things Patrick Ruffini and I have written recently.

Actually, I don't think it's ironic at all that the analysis of problems on the Right is similar to the arguments made by the Netroots Left.   For one thing, the "claims made by Markos Moulitsas" are in many ways intentional recycling of the movement on the Right.

The underlying systemic inputs are very similar.  The political/electoral culture and incentives, and the emergence of the internet as an important social and technological phenomenon impacted both the Left and Right at approximately the same time. 

The difference in uptake and evolution is predominantly due to the political cycle.  Democrats went through the wilderness from 1995 to 2003; they found their way from 2003 to 2008.  Republicans entered their wilderness in 2007, though I would argue that the Right has been in the wilderness for longer.  How long the Right wanders in the wilderness depends, in large part, on how seriously they take the lessons they can learn from the Left.

The question I have for Ruffini and Henke is whether a netroots of the right would (or even could) look like the netroots of the left? There’s a great case to be made (and some of us here at The Berkman Center are planning to publish some research in the near future that provides empirical support for this case) that technology usage patterns on the left and right of the blogosphere are significantly different.

Will the Right's netroots movement look like that of the Left?  To the extent that the tools, and the social/political dynamics, are similar, I'd say the Right's netroots movement will look a great deal like that of the Left.  The question is not what tools are available, but how they are relevant to the surrounding environment.  The components will not be identica, but the basic concepts they represent should be very much the same.  Or rather, they will be when the Right regains its footing.

However, the surrounding political environment does have to change in very important ways before that happens.  What Shaw notes here is absolutely correct...

There’s a great case to be made (and some of us here at The Berkman Center are planning to publish some research in the near future that provides empirical support for this case) that technology usage patterns on the left and right of the blogosphere are significantly different.

To some extent, this is a chicken/egg problem.  Does the Rightosphere not organize as well because of the nature of the online Republicans?   Or do the online Republicans not organize as well because of problems with the Republican Party?   I think it's mostly the latter - something that can be fixed - but it will not be changed until a number of other changes happen within the Right and the Republican Party.

Unfortunately, there are powerful, entrenched interests maintaining the Republican status quo.

The title of this post is provocative and it's meant to be. But it's not a knock on Sarah Palin. I'm still firmly a Palinista, and I hope this post shows you why. Everyone remembers Howard Dean for the "scream" but I think his example provides a context in which Sarah Palin could lose the election, but ultimately win the party and pave the way for a conservative victory in the future more meaningful than McCain-Palin '08 would be.

I'm rooting for Sarah Palin, and in temperament she is nothing like Dean. But she is situated similarly politically, and this is worth exploring further. 

Howard Dean emerged when the Demcoratic Party was in full capitulation mode. Dean was the only semi-sorta-mainsteam candidate who said "no" on Iraq. This in-your-face style galvanized the Democratic base, but party mandarins gasped. Dean couldn't have been more different in style than the "seven dwarves" running against him.

The party elite seemed vindicated when Dean self-destructed. But a little over a year later, Dean was elected DNC Chairman with surprisingly little fuss.

How was this comeback even possible? Whatever Dean's faults, there was a sense that the party elite had bankrupted itself by running a series of poll-tested me-too triangulators. Dean's easy victory at the DNC was the precursor of the grassroots' long-term victory over the elite, culminating in the evisceration of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Does any of this sound familiar?

And who seems to be the flashpoint in this elite-grassroots war currently raging in the GOP? Like Dean, it's Sarah Palin.

Yet, there is a big risk coming up in 15 days. If McCain-Palin loses, and the conventional wisdom hardens that Palin was a big part of the reason for it, the GOP could will learn the wrong lessons from 2008. It will be said that McCain should have picked an uninspiring establishment VP. If we listen to Brooks, Noonan, and Frum, the next time out, the establishment will be emboldened in its natural distrust of happy warrior populists like Palin who bring their own political base to the table. And if the establishment wins this argument, get ready for a 2012 candidate who will be even more incentivized to engage in elite-pleasing, base-enraging behavior on spending, immigration, and stuff like the bailout.

Never mind that many people believe this was precisely the problem with the top of the ticket in 2008. (And the top of the ticket is kind of more relevant to what happens than the bottom half.)

Sarah Palin's legacy as the VP nominee will matter inordinately in defining the Next Right. If the experience is seen as a constructive one (much like Dean), reminding us that it's possible to get regular activists excited about being Republicans again, that Barack Obama ain't the only one who can pack the arenas, and injecting a positive vibe into the GOP at the grassroots level, then I am optimistic about the GOP bouncing back. If instead the lesson of Palin is that we need to pick safe, uninspiring candidates (who will get utterly clobbered by Obama's $1 billion+ re-election campaign, btw) who don't offend Christopher Buckley, then I fear we are in for a long winter indeed. 

Right now, with the small donor and grassroots eruption for Obama, and vibrant progressive institutions that depend on the creativity of an energized base, the Right needs a broad-based movement more than it needs the approval of elites. That means making Palin's brand of politics -- even if she isn't the one who ultimately gets us there -- a permanent fixture in the conservative ecosystem.

Ross Douthat smartly reviews the unfolding civil war in the conservative pundit-sphere over Sarah Palin, and tries to call a truce of sorts:

In such circumstances, what's the best course of action - denouncing the rats, or trying to figure out why the hell the ship is sinking? Even if Brooks and Noonan and Buckley and Dreher and Kathleen Parker and David Frum and Heather Mac Donald and Bruce Bartlett and George Will and on and on - note the ideological diversity in the ranks of conservatives who aren't Helping The Team these days - are all just snobs and careerists who quit or cavil or cover their asses when the going gets tough and their "seat at the table" is threatened, an American conservative movement that consists entirely of those pundits with the rock-hard testicular fortitude required to never take sides against the family seems like a pretty small tent at this point. And if I were Hanson or Levin or Steyn I'd be devoting a little less time to ritual denunciations of heretics and RINOs, and at least a little more time to figuring out how to build the sort of ship that will make the rats of the DC/NY corridor want to scramble back on board, however much it makes you sick to have them back. Who knows? It might just be the sort of ship that swing-state voters will want to climb on board as well.

I'm with Ross on the fact that we have bigger fish to fry than pundit-on-pundit action right now. But once the post-election recriminations begin, and when someone starts to bury Palin with blind NYT quotes, I'll stand firmly in the Palin camp. And here's why.

Ross underestimates the deep way in which movement conservatives have felt betrayed by their own establishment -- with which the likes of Brooks, Kristol (Update: a reader reminds me that Kristol is solidly in the Palin camp), Will et al are aligned -- and  never more so than in the last four weeks.

We have seen a situation yesterday in which the Republican Secretary of the Treasury acted as a handmaiden to socialism. I am not given to hyperbolic language, and I use the phrase not to pass judgment on the necessity of what happened, but the forced nationalization of banks is socialism by any grade school definition.

In this charged environment, there is almost irressistible movement-conservative temptation to raise the figurative middle finger to anyone or anything associated with establishment Republicanism -- one which gave us runaway spending, a $700 billion bailout that preceeded an 18% stock market swoon, and bank nationalization. And not entirely without cause.

Now, zoom back in on the Palin situation. In the midst of the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, conservative establishment pundits appear to blame John McCain's inability to seal the deal not on the misfortune of being the candidate of the in-party of his thin track record on economic matters or his jarring response to the crisis, but on a hockey mom from Alaska. Who just happens to be part of the grassroots conservative / outsider / Mark Levin circle. Who, from a conservative point of view, happens to be the one bit of relief we've gotten from this crap sandwich of a political environment that's been going on for three years now. Who, in a movement and a party bereft of fresh faces, seemed to represent a rising new guard.

Can you see why they we are angry?

Never mind that the political case for Palin decisively hurting the ticket is thin at best.

Never mind that when Palin actually mattered, McCain was ahead.

Never mind that Palin seems to be the only one willing to go on the attack (and I'm not one who believes slash and burn is called for right now, btw).

Then there is the media.

In what universe do Sarah Palin's gaffes matter, and Joe Biden's 20 years of gaffes get ignored? In what universe does Sarah Palin get called unqualified, and this prompts absolutely zero scrutiny and commentary on Barack Obama's resume, especially amongst conservative pundits bashing Palin. Is it because Obama shares their alma mater? (As an Ivy League grad, I'm not one to launch anti-elitist cracks, but this one happens to be true.)

Even if one concedes that these are not entirely apples-to-apples comparisons, it's willful blindness to suggest that Sarah Palin hasn't been given the short end of the stick in entirely relevant experience comparisons with Obama and in temperament comparisons with Biden. Biden has a longstanding reputation as a less-than-Presidential hothead who's used racially-tinged code language to describe his running mate -- and not a peep from the media and our conservative emissaries to the Times editorial board. 

Now can you understand the frustration?

Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham aren't defending the campaign to the hilt because they are McCain people, or even McCain/Palin people. It is because they are Palin people. They believe Palin is the only smart move McCain has made. And events since since Palin faded from the spotlight haven't exactly disproven their point.

#dontgo is officially a movement. MoveOn is mobilizing against the House Republicans and the rightosphere this afternoon. I don't think they've ever done this in response to a grassroots conservative protest. Something has changed. 

There has been nothing worthwhile to speak of in recent years that's emanated solely from the base like this has. It's worth our time to take a step back and understand what made this success possible.

First, while Reps. Mike Pence and Tom Price provided the spark by starting the House floor revolt, it was the rightosphere (and crucially, the Twitterverse) that poured the gasoline.

Elected officials cannot start movements on their own. They need a willing audience to activate. The audience was primed by John Culberson leading the revolt against the ridiculous House franking rules. (On the issue side, it was primed by Newt's "Drill Now" movement.) That solidified Culberson, and by extension minority Republicans, as the troublemakers storming the gates with technology, and Democrats as the lame defenders of an old order. That is the natural role of any political minority, but one House Republicans, accustomed to the majority, have been uncomfortable embracing. Until now.

One of the more intriguing concepts making the rounds of late is Clay Shirky's notion of the "cognitive surplus." The cognitive surplus represents what we do in all the time we don't spend fully immersed in work. During the industrial revolution, as people moved from backbreaking agricultural labor to 8-hour days in factories, they turned to drink. Today's answer is television, and increasingly, the Internet.

More and more, the cognitive surplus no longer means sitting back and getting sloshed (though there's that too), and television's hold on an Internet generation is gradually waning. The cognitive surplus is now coming to be defined by the time we spend creating content and interacting online. When asked by a TV person "where do people find the time?" to edit Wikipedia, Shirky's answer was pretty direct. With a fellow academic, he did back-of-the-envelope math revealed that all the edits to Wikipedia to date represented 100 million hours of human effort -- as compared to the 200 billion hours a year Americans spend watching television. The Internet is stealing from the hide for TV -- and not soon enough.

Over the last few days, it's dawned on me that the cognitive surplus can also explain part of the divide in left-right online activity, at least at an institutional and leadership level.