Conservative groups are not celebrating the election of Barack Obama, with perhaps one exception: right-wing bloggers, who see a ripe opportunity to catch up with the left.
A Washington in the hands of Democrats offers online pundits on the right a fresh political target and a chance to vent against their ideological opponents. The reverse scenario allowed their liberal counterparts to blossom during the blogosphere’s infancy, when the GOP controlled the Congress and the Bush administration held power between 2003 and 2006.
{mosads}But the aptly named “rightosphere,” much like its liberal counterpart, “the netroots,” doesn’t simply want to criticize the other team. It sees this as its time to reshape the Republican Party.
“The rightosphere will be much better when the right has something to oppose,” said Jon Henke, who writes at The Next Right.
Obama and Democrats will eventually provide conservatives with a “unifying grievance” that they can seize on. On the Democratic agenda could be universal healthcare proposals that would expand government programs, union-backed card-check legislation that would allow workers to bypass secret-ballot elections when unionizing, and calls to reverse momentum to expand offshore drilling, Henke said.
Being in the opposition is also a natural posture for conservatives, who want smaller government but have seen GOP lawmakers in the last few years create more federal programs, expand the deficit and spend greater sums of taxpayer dollars.
“It’s hard to be anti-state when you are state,” Henke said.
But this group of pundits is not content just to sit on the sidelines, like traditional media. Bloggers see themselves as advocates who want to take their party in a certain direction.
While conservative bloggers talk about making a difference for their party, they have yet to back up their talk with action, said Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the liberal Daily Kos blog. Moulitsas, also a columnist for The Hill, boasts about how the liberal netroots got Howard Dean elected as Democratic Party chairman, raised millions of dollars for victorious candidates and created a “partisan message machine” to push back against conservative media on talk radio and cable television. That made the Democratic Party’s establishment take them seriously, Moulitsas said.
“The conservative bloggers’ efforts might grow into something more meaningful over time, but as of right now, all I see is a lot of chatter,” he said. “And if there’s one thing the right doesn’t lack, it’s punditry. They can talk up a storm.”
One concrete way conservative bloggers hope to increase their influence is by forcing party leaders to embrace new technologies. Rebuild the Party, a coalition of bloggers and top Republican Web strategists, aims to press the Republican Party to make the Internet its top priority for the next four years.
Conservatives best known for blogging make up the group, including Erick Erickson, managing editor of RedState.com, and others who have worked in the field, such as Patrick Ruffini, President Bush’s 2004 campaign Web master, and Mindy Finn, the director of online strategies for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R) 2008 White House bid.
The group is specifically calling for the party to get the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of 5 million activists into its online database, raise at least $100,000 online for candidates in each of the GOP’s targeted House races in 2010, and field credible candidates in all 435 congressional districts.
The bloggers also hope to influence the selection of the next Republican National Committee chairman. The group is not working for any particular candidate yet, but Finn said it could get involved as next month’s vote on the chairman approaches.
“If it comes down to old guard versus new guard, then we’ll go for the new guard,” Finn said.
Their goals are reminiscent of what Democrats have already accomplished, and suggest Republicans have a ways to go. Obama’s presidential campaign signed up more than 3 million people to its text message service. Since 2004, Democratic candidates have raised nearly $82 million on ActBlue.com.
The Democratic National Committee poured resources into red states under its 50-state strategy, now credited for helping Obama and congressional candidates win in North Carolina, Indiana and elsewhere.
But before Republicans get to where they want to go, they could suffer from post-election infighting. Bloggers have attacked old-school conservative pundits, including newspaper columnists Peggy Noonan and David Brooks, for dismissing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as unprepared for the vice presidency.
In one instance, Matt Lewis, a blogger at Townhall.com and a Rebuild the Party member, wrote that Palin’s conservative critics cost Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) votes. In another, Erickson wrote that the party should oppose any GOP candidates with staffers who had leaked damaging information about Palin, such as the thousands of dollars she spent on clothes.
Still, the infighting is almost certain to be overshadowed by a common opponent: the Democratic-controlled government.
That should bring the bloggers together, Erickson said.
“I suspect within the next four years … the left is going to be surprised at how well the right progresses and develops online,” he said.