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Bandwidth EnvyCan the right create its own netroots?

By Christopher BeamPosted Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2009, at 4:21 PM ET

When Air America Radio launched in 2004, the American left was ailing: Republicans controlled all three branches of government, protests against the Iraq war were going unheeded, and George W. Bush was on his way to re-election. What the left needed, the logic went, was its own Rush Limbaugh—someone to spend all day, every day, kicking the GOP down the stairs. Thus was born Air America. Two years later, it filed for bankruptcy.

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In retrospect, the lesson is simple: You can't just copy the other team—you have to come up with your own strategy.

The Republican Party now faces a similar quandary. Its outgoing president is among the most unpopular ever. The race for party chairman is a sideshow. And, worst of all, the Democrats' online infrastructure—from blogging to e-mail lists to fundraising—makes its Republican counterpart look like a cup-and-string apparatus. Part of the blame falls on John McCain and the RNC, who failed to build an online empire when they had the chance. But there's also a hole at the grass-roots level. Where the left has Daily Kos, MyDD, ActBlue, MoveOn, the Huffington Post, and an army of local and state blogs, the right has Pajamas Media, RedState, the Weekly Standard, and the National Review Online. Whereas the Dems have the largest e-list of donors and volunteers ever assembled, the Republicans have, well, a smaller one.

A few new sites have stepped into the void. Rebuild the Party has outlined a 10-point plan that emphasizes online organizing and technology and persuaded all but one RNC candidate to sign on. The Next Right launched in May 2008 as an open-door forum for "wired activists" to share ideas, recruit candidates, and plot strategy—not unlike Daily Kos, although the Next Right rejects that comparison. (This week, the Next Right announced "Project Battleground," a loose network of state blogs.) Conservative writer and former Bush speechwriter David Frum helms the New Majority, a group blog dedicated to ginning up fresh ideas. As far as fundraising, Slatecard, which raised $650,000 for Republicans during the 2008 election cycle, will relaunch next summer. Even Tucker Carlson has a new site in the works, although it's more news-based than "Whither conservatism?"

Some Republicans figure that now that the power dynamic has flipped, so will the innovation. "The left did so well online because they were storming the castle, and the right had trouble because they were governing the castle," says Web strategist and Next Right co-founder Jon Henke. "Governing the castle is difficult and not really as much fun. It's not conducive to the online environment." The genius of the netroots was to take the three Ms—"messaging, mobilization, and money"—outside the traditional party channels, thereby accruing power. There's no reason the Republicans can't do that too, Henke argues.

But the Air America question remains: Can the right simply imitate the left's success? Or does it need to follow Karl Rove's advice—to concede Web 2.0 to the Dems and focus on Web 3.0—and reinvent the game once again?

"I think one big mistake in politics is to look at something that succeeded and say, Let's do it again," says David Frum. To repeat the success of the netroots, per Frum, would be to create a massive network of blogs whose collective shrieks generate enough volume—and cash—to get noticed.

But that formula is outdated, Frum says. "For the last 16 years, we've had presidents who have been pretty centrist in their politics but highly divisive and provocative in their political tactics." In that climate, whoever yells the loudest wins. But Obama is "someone we haven't seen since Reagan," says Frum. "Someone with a strong ideological message but delivered in a less inflammatory way." Obama's critics need to match his tone. "It would be a big mistake to raise the decibel level," Frum says. "I think in politics as in television, whoever loses his temper first loses."