Internet Strategy for the GOP

Barack Obama's Internet strategy was at the heart of his successful presidential campaign. Now, conservative strategists are debating what needs to be done to get Republican candidates and organizers to the level of online fundraising, outreach and activism that helped Democrats prevail in the 2008 elections.

Mindy Finn and Patrick Ruffini, founders of RebuildTheParty.com, were online Tuesday, November 15 at noon ET to discuss the current state and possible future of Republicans' Internet efforts. Their site was featured in the Washington Post Style Section.

The transcript follows.

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Patrick Ruffini: Hello everyone! Looking forward to answering your questions about RebuildtheParty.com and GOP online efforts.

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Mindy Finn: Hi there. Looking forward to taking your questions here, especially the tough ones ...

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New York, N.Y.: Granted, Obama used the Internet far better than did the McCain campaign. Yet, how much of this is, not the age issue, but the candidate issue? Obama appealed to younger voters, who use the Internet more, by a wider margin. If Republicans nominate candidates who disagree with the majority of young voters, how do you expect these young Internet users to become more active with Republican Internet sites? Do you think the Internet can help sway young voters into changing their opinions?

Patrick Ruffini: We agree. Whether you're successful online has little to do with your tactics and more to do with what kind of candidate you are. Do you engage the grassroots or have a more standoffish establishment approach. And age and charisma play a huge role too no doubt.

That's why we're not JUST about technology. Probably the biggest response to the Rebuild the Party plan has come in response to the suggestion for a "40 under 40" plan -- 40% of GOP House and Senate challenger candidates under 40. We can't just communicate with young voters with new talking points. We need to put up candidates they can identify with.

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Savannah, Georgia: What's the dollar amount of the 10 point "Internet is the first priority" plan? What's a reasonable time frame of when most of it can be implemented?

Patrick Ruffini: That's a great question. When campaigns are spending 1% or maybe 2% of their budgets on the Internet, there's no doubt that number has plenty of room to grow.

But money is not our first concern. What needs to change first is a top-down mentality that says you can control the Internet like you control your image on television or radio. We need to be measuring by results -- how many e-mail addresses we collect, how much money we raise online -- not just by how much we spend.

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New York, N.Y.: Mindy and Patrick. I'll admit that I'm a lefty (and I visit mostly left-leaning blogs), but one difference I've seen is that conservative blogs -- by and large -- don't accept comments. And with those that do, it's more of a top-down structure (i.e., heavily moderated, etc.). Do you think the mindset of conservatives (more authoritarian in nature) versus liberals (more freewheeling) necessarily affects the way the medium is used? Or is there something else I might be missing?

Patrick Ruffini: I think that's definitely a valid point though it's been changing -- and it definitely affects an audience's willingness to engage in an active way and not just be passively reading.

There are blogs that didn't accept comments that now do. Many are also moving to a community blog model, like RedState and The Next Right where readers can post their own blogs and not just comment on others.

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Washington, D.C.: In the Post article, it is stated that you think more conservative bloggers should learn to become activists. Yet, rebuildtheparty.com, is a very passive site at this point. Any plans to expand the website and include specific ways that conservative bloggers can make the shift to conservative activists?

Patrick Ruffini: When the site first went live we launched an ideas section at Feedback Forum that allowed anyone to submit their idea for the future of the GOP. Over 1,300 people submitted ideas.

Yesterday we launched an action network at Ning that lets anyone organize their own groups or events to provide a platform for just the kind of activism you describe.

We're constantly adding new stuff and hope you'll check out these features!

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Minneapolis: 40 under 40? Is it wise to commit such a significant size of the delegation to youth? Y'all might consider a '10 over 10' policy instead -- only 10% of candidates with more than 10 years of seniority. Keep the rotation strong, with new ideas coming in, rather than a bunch of old-timers trying to recreate and/or hold on to the past.

Patrick Ruffini: That's an interesting suggestion as well -- and a reminder of the term limits debate we had in the '90s.

Lots of people say don't keep it to people under 40. We'd rather have people who are older and think young rather than people who are younger and think old. When we first started out, everyone who endorsed the plan was under 40, then we opened it up in response to that feedback.

The key point I think is that the GOP needs stronger candidate recruiting at all levels. We need people with fresh ideas. We need candidates who can inspire the grassroots first. Younger candidates is one way to show this, but NOT the only way. What I think that Obama shows is that the Internet tilts the playing field to those types of candidates who can aggregate large amounts of grassroots support online, and not to the establishment.

In 2007, who thought Hillary Clinton could lose? Going forward, I think anyone who adopts the Clinton model -- high-dollar bundlers first, at the expense of serious Internet outreach -- is at a disadvantage.

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Fort Worth, Texas: What's the single most practical things right-leaning bloggers can do now to help achieve the overall vision surrounding Rebuild the Party?

Patrick Ruffini: Find a niche and own it. There are actually extremely effective local bloggers on the right who focus on little more than their local town board and have actually been successful in getting policy changed because no one else is focusing on the nitty gritty like they are. There are thousands of opportunities for this type of blogger/activism all across the country.

As much as we talk about blogs being something new, they've actually been a fixture of our politics for 4 or 5 years now. As far as new media goes they aren't very new. That means the market leaders are hard to dislodge in terms of straight commentary on national issues. You need to bring a unique perspective -- and this means focusing on a specific beat no one else is covering, be it local politics or a specific issue.

The Next Right, the blog community I co-founded last year, was born with that in mind. We knew that starting a blog in 2008 we wouldn't get anywhere by doing straight commentary on the news of the day because so many others were doing this well, so we decided to focus on activism and taking a hard look at the future of the right, not just the present. We've been very successful because of it.

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Philadelphia, Pa. At the GOP Governors Conference, Frank Lunz held up a Blackberry and stated, "The Democratic nominee has one of these; our candidate didn't even know how to work one." This leads me into a demographics question: Shouldn't the GOP not only be alarmed at how many under-40s voted for Barack Obama, but how many voters with 4-year college educations (or above) voted for the Democrats?

Mindy Finn: Short answer: yes.

Long answer: The GOP won't be viable long-term if they focus their efforts on the over 65 population, the only population that John McCain won by the way, according to exit polls. This means that even though some of the biggest donors and fundraisers might be over 65, the Party must listen to the feedback of younger Americans, what their concerns are, their priorities, and their opinions of the Republican Party today.

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Chandler, Ariz.: It looks like lots of people are beginning to understand that a top-down structure simply doesn't work with the political right, and the new organizations are setting up to influence the parties from the bottom up -- but at the end of the day, isn't there still a necessity for boots-on-the-ground activism -- even if it's not "directed" by the parties?

Mindy Finn: Thanks for the question. It's a common misunderstanding that by advocating for bottom-up campaigning, we are advocating for unorganized campaigning. Not true. In fact, the best campaigns are those that grow exponentially from real, organic grassroots support, and then organize that support in the most effective way.

The difference between organizations who embrace bottom-up campaigning is that they welcome grassroots support, leverage it, relinquish some control, while those who are top-down won't tolerate any veering off-message, off-brand, off-tactic. In order to have the greatest number of people acting on an organization's behalf, you have to truly welcome them as members of the team and not just bots who need you for power and who will act on your command.

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Gaithersburg, Md.: Interesting article. I wasn't aware of the breadth of the on-line movement to win back the country, and I hope to be a part of it. But in the discussion of would-be RNC Chairmen, why no mention of Michael Steele? There is a fairly large grass-roots effort towards this.

Mindy Finn: Thanks. I encourage you to be a part of it. On RebuildtheParty.com, we list all the candidates who have thus far announced they are running for RNC Chairman and whether or not they have endorsed the 10-point plan. So far, two candidates have endorsed. If you like what you read, one way you could make a difference is to encourage the candidate of your choice to endorse, or even provide feedback on the plan.

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wonkette reader: OK, so how come it took you guys so long to take down the Truck Nutz suggestion? It was up all night.

Mindy Finn: What, you thought that was a bad idea.

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New York, N.Y.: How are Republicans dealing with the fact that the president they spent years glorifying as the standard-bearer of their movement has become the most detested and failed president in modern American history? Is that why we don't see much (any?) discussion of Bush on rebuildtheparty.com? Wouldn't it be more useful to dissect what has gone wrong in the past eight years and learn from that, rather than "disappearing" Bush, however nice that sounds?

Mindy Finn: There's no denying the fact that public opinion about President Bush is directly related to the Republican Party's decline. And I hear you about dissecting history to create a better future.

While you don't see finger-pointing and blame-throwing on RebuildtheParty.com, the plan is crafted based on experience and understanding of what has not worked in the past from a tactical, strategic standpoint. We don't see our role as analyzing "what went wrong," but rather taking action now to avoid further decline.

Rebuild the Party is not the whole answer. We'll leave the analyzing to others.

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Fort Worth, Texas: Howdy. I've got to say that while I'm a die hard fiscal conservative, it'll be a long time before I can vote for any Republican that was around during the past eight years. The Republican party left me, not the other way around. You can have a slick online campaign if you like but that doesn't change the fact that the Republican party crippled the youth of this nation (and that includes me) with a massive deficit.

Mindy Finn: Howdy in Fort Worth. I don't think you're alone, which is why Republicans have lost seats in both the House and Senate the last two campaign cycles. We don't pretend that tactics and tools online are going to improve the Republican Party's standing in America. Ideas and solutions are key. To win over conservatives, you must act conservatively. Yet, the more people who are participating in politics -- which is made possible by the democratizing force of the Internet -- the more able we are to pressure our lawmakers to act conservatively. Thus, the tools give the people more power. And when stronger leadership comes around, the tools help their supporters network and act in unstoppable ways.

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Metro Center: Hi Mindy and Patrick! I joined Rebuild the Party on Nov. 6, and I am ready to right our sinking ship. Do either of you have preferences for our next RNC chair?

Mindy Finn: At this point, no. We have not endorsed a candidate for RNC Chairman. Our intent with RebuildtheParty.com is to make the process more open, to invoke grassroots involvement and input into who is the next RNC Chairman. Only 168 RNC members vote on the next Chairman, but who that person is affects the entire Party.

Each of us may not have a vote, but we do have a voice, or a mouse. Hopefully, by more people paying attention to the process, the candidates will be compelled to open up about their specific ideas and plans for the future of the Party. There will be real debate over the direction of the Party, rather than a handful of individuals dictating where the Party will go.

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Laurel, Md.: McCain's electoral map looks like fundamentalists and wheat farmers. Ex-Red states that have built knowledge economies -- Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico and Colorado -- voted for Obama.

Since that's a field in which governmental partnerships are part of economic development, how do you get away from the idea that government is always the problem, not the solution?

Patrick Ruffini: I think liberals walk a fine line when they try to condescend to voters in red states by implying they are somehow uneducated or not part of the knowledge economy.

A mature and educated society doesn't need government intervention at every step. If blue state voters are indeed more educated, they should know best how to run their lives and not need government intervention in the economy, right?

What has happened in the last few years is that Republicans have gotten away from a small government message. In 1993, when Bill Clinton introduced a stimulus package, it was $16 billion. President Obama's could be upwards of $500 billion. This is by and large because -- for better or worse -- Republicans bought into big government solutions like the $400 billion Medicare prescription drug bill or the $700 billion bailout.

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Biggest Problem (to me): What happened to the big-tent party? If you're not a conservative, Christian, straight, white, natural-born American it seems that the party has no place for you these days.

Mindy Finn: Well since I'm not at least one of those things, and also a woman, I can assure that the Party does consist of people beyond the stereotype. However, that doesn't discount your perception. "Perception is reality" is a powerful concept. To be a majority coalition, the Party clearly needs to appeal to the majority, and who makes up the majority in America has changed greatly in the last decade.

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Newtown, Conn.: A major component of the rise of the netroots was a belief in progressivism, not the Democratic party. Are you concerned at all that the centralized, party-first nature of RebuildTheParty.com could hinder the rise of conservative blogging by the virtue of (perhaps only perceived) too much control?

Patrick Ruffini: Great question.

It's true that liberal blogs rose because they organized AGAINST the party establishment, but also knew that they had to take control of the party establishment for their ideas to work.

In my experience, conservative bloggers actually feel much more disconnected from their party structure than liberal bloggers do. Liberal bloggers understand the importance of exercising influence over the party structure. To many in the right-blogosphere, speaking up for a faction opposed to the party elites is considered "shilling."

We're trying to correct that mentality. We're trying to get more people engaged in the future of the party. Whether they organize for or against specific people in the party is not our primary concern. We just want more people active, period, because that will lead to a more vibrant conservative movement and Republican Party.

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College Park, Md.: Mindy and Patrick,

One of Obama's prime selling points was his ability to connect with the younger population through new media such as the Internet, text messaging, etc. What lessons do you feel have been learned through this election cycle and which of the up and comers in the Republican party do you feel are most interested in embracing these campaigning techniques?

Mindy Finn: We hope many lessons will be gleaned from Obama's impressive campaign. That's how politics works. One party learns from the other party's successes.

There are candidates most people have not even heard of on the local level who have truly embraced a bottom-up approach, which is why we emphasize on the plan the need to support and help local candidates. Remember: Barack Obama was a state senator only 4 years ago.

On the national level, several of the candidates for RNC Chairman have embraced these techniques. Also, elected officials such as Tim Pawlenty and Bobby Jindal have expressed the need to be conservative in philosophy but modern in our approach to solving problems.

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Savannah, Ga.: RNC Internet strategy in 2008. Success or failure? (It is one or the other. Political-speak at the door)

Patrick Ruffini: Here's a "non-political answer" for you. I think you would have to say Barack Obama won the battle for the web and won decisively.

The why can be debated endlessly. The GOP got some specific tactics right but they weren't elevated to the level of overall strategy.

I think the key lesson moving forward is that Internet could/should be used as a feedback loop to improve our core policy and message and not just as a broadcast medium to communicate our *existing* policy and message. And it's not about the technology, but about the people you can reach online and how they can help you refine the message.

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Mindy Finn: I enjoyed the thoughtful discussion. Have a Happy Thanksgiving full of much political debate. Debate does not equal arguments. Please keep all arguments from the Thanksgiving table. See ya.

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