Republicans Seek to Fix Short-Sitedness

The Democrats, meanwhile, are the party of the Web: decentralized, chaotic, bottom-up. The bloggers at DailyKos.com, for example, argue about policy and ideology, too. But all that blogging leads to raising money, which leads to organizing, which leads to having a say in the party. When Howard Dean, whose presidential primary campaign was largely funded by online donors, was elected DNC chairman in 2005, there was no doubt that a new Democratic era had arrived.

But clout didn't come overnight for the Democratic "netroots." In a way, its influence was predicated on being independent of the party. Says Jerome Armstrong, who created the liberal blog MyDD in 2001: "The netroots is not the DNC. The netroots challenges the DNC."

A similar dynamic needs to occur between the rightroots and the RNC, bloggers such as Ruffini and Finn say. The rightroots should push their party's leadership and entrenched consulting class the same way the netroots lashed the Democratic leadership years ago.

Ruffini is happy to start the process. Shortly after the election, some prominent conservative activists -- including Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council -- gathered to talk strategy at a weekend home in rural Virginia. The Old Dominion, once solidly Republican, will soon have two Democratic senators and has voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in 44 years. Ruffini dismisses the value of the meeting.

"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," Ruffini wrote on his blog. "The future will be shaped digitally . . . 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."

Saved by Obama?

The netroots' ongoing advantage over the rightroots can be summed up in one word: Bush.

Whatever their differences -- and a quick trip to Firedoglake, Open Left and Jack & Jill Politics, some of the more influential liberal blogs, prove there are differences -- the netroots bloggers have rallied around their opposition to President Bush and the war in Iraq. Their annual blogapalooza, first called YearlyKos and now known as Netroots Nation, is basically one big let's-get-together-help-stop-the-war-and-tell-Bush-to-go-back-to-Crawford rally.

The rightroots bloggers, in contrast, haven't united over a common enemy. They've been too busy arguing among themselves.

On the right, you have blogs that focus on taxes and national security, antiabortion blogs and gun-rights blogs, blogs for social conservatives that rarely overlap with blogs for fiscal conservatives. Some of these blogs didn't know what to make of the Paulites, Ron Paul's fervent online followers. Not everyone was happily blogging about McCain during the general election, though his selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as running mate galvanized hubs such as ProLifeBlogs.com. They might all call themselves Republicans, but the GOP comes in many links.

Post-Nov. 4, there's been a lot of internecine soul-searching about the state of the party.

Just visit The Next Right, which was created last May and quickly became a must-read for political junkies and Republican strategists. Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who might run again in 2012, posted his thoughts on election night -- "We will be back in strength," his blog read -- while an estimated 240,000 gathered at Grant Park in Chicago to celebrate Obama's win.

The day after the GOP drubbing, Jon Henke, one of the blog's co-founders, posted a bitter tirade. It was headlined "Republicans deserved to lose."