Blogging

United States Representative and conservative firebrand Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) addressed conference attendees after lunch today - he made some pretty broad tactical appeals to online activists that have been uncommon to date on the Right, and to that extent, I was pretty impressed with his speech. He also stuck mainly to economic issues, which is what conservative sweethearts will need to do on their end to help coaxing centrist and libertarian voters out of their strongholds, back into the political and policy spheres. I'm not a cameraman, but you can view (well, hear really) Pence's speech in its entirety at my Qik profile. Cross-posted at Liberty Pundits and Intelligence, Please...

Today in Pittsburgh, some of the most committed members of conservatism are getting together to discuss the importance of, and also strategize increasing a conservative presence via the internet....

The decline in newspaper sales, and decrease of legitimacy in the mainstream media are no doubt an example of the average American taking to turning on their computer for their news...

Thus, let's see what happens and stay informed on this year's, RightOnline National Conference...

Rick Moran poses some valid questions for the Rebuild enterprise. Namely aren't we focusing too much on tactics when what we really need is an ideological revival or a new Reagan?

That's a good question, but ultimately a straw man. I would break down the three things the GOP needs to do as follows:

• Rebuild our infrastructure. There is no question that the left has us beat online and in the new forms of alternative media. We need a strategy for addressing that. This is a main focus of Rebuild the Party but not the only one.
• Find our message. In the absence of a new Reagan or better infrastructure, we need to find a compelling message that resonates. We need to be more centrist / more conservative. We need to focus more on social issues / fiscal issues. Etc. etc.  We hear a lot of this lately. Henke has a framing for this that I like: the unifying narrative.
• Find new leaders. Only when people have a leader they can rally behind will the movement be activated. This was certainly true of Obama.

The right answer is that we need all of the above. None of these can happen without the other. Perhaps the largest failings of the Bush years can be attributed to the fact that we had a new leader without an ideological revival at the same time.

Rick is right that new technology will be for naught if we keep spending like drunken sailors. Tactics cannot overcome structural deficits or crappy, uninspiring messaging. Good marketing cannot dress up a bad product.

I am arguing for good marketing and good product. Because the bad marketing of a good product can be almost as criminally negligent as the reverse. Elections are never won on the force of ideas alone; ideas are a prerequisite for a meaningful victory, but they are not enough. Anyone who tells you that voters "will see the light" if only we adopt the right ideas is a huckster and a fool. There are powerful headwinds flying in the face of anyone who vies for power in the most advanced democracy in the world. We could find our next Reagan and see that person dismantled by a systematic character assassination campaign from the left. Just look at what happened to Sarah Palin. Leaving aside the question of whether she's the one, I was a bit startled by the efficiency with which the combination of new media and old media successfully attacked her public image out of the gate, while little such skepticism was expressed of an equally inexperienced Illinois Senator. These are powerful infrastructural questions we can't just ignore just because we recognize that the fundamental nature of our candidates and our ideas matter more than the tactics we use to sell those candidates and ideas.

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.

I saw this video on YouTube. As far as I know, it is authentic. My apologies to Mr. Colmes if it's not:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thmueS0ngAs

The credentialing process by the RNC-COA and the DNCC couldn't be a starker reminder of the differences between the right and left-blogospheres. While the Republicans are making a big deal about the blogosphere being on par with mainstream media, the Democrats are treating their bloggers like activists, seating many of them on the floor with their respective delegations.

In Minneapolis, the biggest hiccup is the eye-popping prices Qwest is charging for media/blogger hard wire access inside the hall (53 grand for gigabit ethernet anyone?). In Denver, it's handing out credentials as if they were patronage positions.

The stereotype is almost perfect. Conservative bloggers are content to act like pundits, while liberal bloggers are activists.

I think everyone should know where I come down on this debate. I am a (proud) partisan political operative first, and a blogger second. For someone with the day job that I have, it would be problematic to claim journalist status, so I steer clear of it.

But I also think that these distinctions are starting to become meaningless.

There have been times, when I, as a Blogger, have wanted to bang my head on the desk. There are times, when I have become so frustrated at the level of stupidity being served by both sides of this political discourse, that I have seriously thought about just shutting this Blog down and disappearing into the mists of ether and finding something else to do. There are times, when I, as a Blogger, have shook my fist in righteous indignation at some of the things written by both sides of this political divide, that is called Politics.

However, this, my friends, is scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel. It seems that the Liberal Blogging world, with it’s lack of substantive accusations against John McCain, has, in fact, began publishing stories about a topic, that normally would not even receive the light of day in a legitimate publication; His Shoes.

That is right ladies and Gentleman; the liberal bloggers are now publishing stories about John McCain’s shoes. This female blogger at the Huffington Post by the name of Isabel Wilkinson, whose political credentials are that of a Dallas cowboy cheerleader, wrote a rather vain piece about the kind of shoes that John McCain wears. I have to honestly wonder aloud, who in the Huffington Post was the recipient of this woman’s oral sex, for her to get that job as a writer. Because whoever they were, they hired a real winner here.

I am not a John McCain cheerleader, not by a long shot. However, this sort of lame attempt by the left to paint John McCain as some sort of out of touch, rich, elitist is about the lamest thing I have ever read, in a good long while. This ranks up there with the New York Times piece on the supposed affair that McCain was having with a lobbyist.

It is not that I am against criticizing John McCain, not at all. There are legitimate concerns that I have with McCain as well, his closeness to Bush, his ties to lobbyists, his wanting to bomb Iran, but to write an article about his shoes? How absurd. The left can much better than this, and they know it. The quicker they start doing that, the better, because right about now, they look like total idiots in my eyes, and I would imagine in the eyes many other people as well.

(H/T Memeorandum)

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Conservative, Democrat, Democrats, Editorial, Election ‘08, Election 2008, Freedom of Speech, John McCain, Liberal, Liberals, Libertarian, McCain, Netroots, Opinion, Politics, Republican, Republicans, Stupidity, White House, blogging

Cross Posted @ Political Byline

Is guilt by association fair? Many blogs and websites, including APRPEH ( http://aprpeh.blogspot.com/)   have made an argument that Barry Obama's true feelings towards Jews and Israel can be measured by his associations. Undeniable facts about Obama, many of them posed as questions left unanswered or not answered in a credible or believeable fashion have formed the core of the No-Bama effort. These questions remain legitimate campaign issues and concerns. Obama DID indeed maintain a 20+ year relationship as a member of TUCC in the Jeremiah Wright flock, listening to what is undeniably anti-US and antiJew rhetoric only distancing himself when his crusade for the Presidency was jeopardized.  

[Promoted - In BlogNetNews Elections, David Mastio has built a very interesting, useful tool for tracking online conversations about specific races around the country.  I can see this being valuable not just to the campaign watchers, but also to the people actively involved in campaigns.   Please check it out - and make sure you submit additional races you want them to follow.  The "counsel" that Mastio kindly attributes to me was merely a couple thoughts about the user experience; the credit goes entirely to him and his team.

David Mastio has been a leader on the Right in developing good online products and services.  We need more people doing this. - Jon Henke]

Following local and state elections through the eyes of local bloggers is about to get a lot easier. For the last two years, my partner and I have been been building BlogNetNews.com to be the first bipartisan aggregator of public affairs and news blogs that covers all 50 states.  A typical page  gives readers links to the latest posts, the most popular posts , a local blog search engine and a bunch of other features.

But now that we have all 50 states built and the matchups for the Fall elections are starting to firm up, we've launched something I think is even more powerful. BlogNetNews.com/Elections

Click on the map and go to the state you want, then click on the race you want to read about. Two clicks simple.

Instead of relying on the MSM to be the filter of election news, BNN/Elections lets readers and bloggers use the blogosphere as a filter, gathering links and excerpts of all the latest posts in one place and constantly updating them.

All we need now is for the experts on the ground to help us find the most important elections to cover. We've already loaded in the governors races, the U.S. Senate races and many of the most competitive U.S. House races. At the bottom of each state page is a link to a form where you can suggest races for us to cover. We'll try to be updating every day this week within hours of your suggestions.

Thanks to Jon Henke's counsel, we've already started to add features that should make BNN/Elections more useful. Every state now has a permalink so you can skip the map once you know where you want to go and there is an RSS feed from the left and right for each race so you can subscribe to the posts you want to follow.

We're looking for your ideas on how to improve the site too, so send any ideas to me at editor@blognetnews.com or if you want to submit your blog to become part of BNN, all you have to do is shoot me your URL with the state you are in and if your blog is focused on state and local issues we'll add it to BlogNetNews.com and if you focus on national issues, we'll add you to RightyBlogs.com .

Why am I, along with many other Americans, against unbridled, illegal immigration?

To hear the pro-illegal pro-undocumented almost-citizen crowd tell it, I'm against those black brown  people of color who make up the majority of illegals.

Well, that's a flaming lie not quite correct.  I come from a long line of native Americans (by that term, I mean someone whose parents were born here).  But, as I was born in 1951, I knew many recently arrived immigrants.

And those were actual immigrants - people who filled out the paperwork, waited their turn, and, finally, arrived - ready to work.  The overwhelming majority of them became citizens, as soon as they qualified.  Even before that, they started learning the language - it was considered essential to being able to manage in the new country.  Most of them still used the former languages, in their homes.  With me, and others who were not able to speak that language, they switched to English - heavy accents, broken syntax, and all.  They did that, knowing their acceptance was enhanced by adopting the language and culture of their new land.

Their children were, like the rest of my friends, gung-ho (yes, I realize that's a Japanese phrase) Americans.  They seldom spoke the old tongue, except with grandparents.  They resisted dressing in the native costumes of their parents, rolled their eyes when parents started talking about "the old days" (not unlike American kids - we don't "get" that ancient history), and worked hard to fit into the new culture.

Parents were torn - on one hand, they wanted to pass on traditions.  On the other hand, they took pride in how well their children fit into the mainstream.

In general, immigrants brought a little of the Old World, and blended it into the New.  They liked to keep the same religion and foods, but added on new tastes, a little at a time.  By the time the 3rd generation came along, they had become just another American.

Not so today - too many immigrants feel that Americans are the ones who need to make the changes.  They expect that they will be able to keep their language intact, and pass it along, unchanged, to the next generation.  They want to keep ALL their heritage in place - including that part that directly contradicts the laws of America.  Hence, Americans are being called "narrow-minded" for not recognizing multiple marriages.  It must be racism to not celebrate the wonderful, women-friendly practices of polygamy, clitorectomy, and "honor" killings.

Further, immigrants too often feel that all government services should be theirs, by right.  They seem not to understand the concept of rights that are limited to citizens.  Funny, that - in their home countries, if I were the immigrant, I would have NO rights.