It's an honor to be invited by David All to TechRepublican. Following is a piece originally posted at joshua.trevino.at.

Preface: left and right online.

The challenge of building the right wing, conservative, and/or libertarian movement online is in many ways less daunting than that faced by its opposites on the left. This is paradoxical on its face, as the left has done a vastly better job of taking advantage of the possibilities and potential of online activism. It bears repeating that the most popular online community in the world is the left-wing Democratic Party organ, DailyKos. With estimated advertising revenues of at least $800,000 annually, to say nothing of informal and unreported income, the site is a powerhouse of fundraising and activism that, with the rest of the left-wing blogosphere, exerts an increasing influence on the ideology and tactics of the Democratic apparatus. There is nothing remotely like this community of online activism on the right: whereas the left-wing blogs hector and pressure their party to come into line with them, the relationship between the right-wing blogs and the Republican Party is far more one of dominance by the latter over the former. Online communities of the right are simply smaller, less organized, and less willing to alienate the party.

This will change in time. See Erick Erickson's recent actions at RedState for a bellwether; and more important, see the precipitous decline of the GOP itself. The right wing's independence online was hindered to an extent by the fact of a party in power, and the consequences that could be brought to bear as a result of that power. Partly this meant that supporters of that party felt a responsibility to support it as such, but mostly it meant that bloggers, who are largely like Kissinger's “frustrated principles” of speechwriting, did not want to sacrifice their access and influence for something so unrewarding as principle. (With respect to my blogging colleagues who may protest that they opposed the Administration on multiple occasions, I can only respond that this is a different thing from the party; and that I join them in responsibility for our collective lapses.) The collapse of Republican fortunes may be a bad thing for the country, but it will probably prove a paradoxical boon for its online proponents. As with the left-wing “netroots” of 2002-2006, a window now opens for Republicans to reshape their internal politics and relationships in a fashion not restricted by the interests of power-holders, of whom there will be few. Renewal in defeat, and hope at the nadir, is an old theme: “And the remnant that is escaped ... shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward.” As we look toward the grim landscape of the near term, we, that remnant, must build and plan for the long term.

I. The foundries of intellectual capital.

How do we begin? Specifically, how do we marshal the resources and capacity of the online sphere to support our efforts and colleagues in the political and policy sphere? I noted that the challenge for the right is less daunting than that for the left, and this is because we have one key operational advantage that they do not: a generation's worth of centers for intellectual production and capital. I refer here to the network of think tanks and academic institutions that have arisen across America since the last comparably dark period, the 1970s. These are known by varying degrees to most participants in the public square; but less well known is are the facts that there are a lot of them, their numbers are expanding, and their measurable impact lags dramatically behind their potential. I am a direct participant in the think-tank world, so my perspective is predictably prejudiced in this respect: but, I think, as a rare crossover figure between that milieu and the online-activist set, I also have some worthwhile perspective on how each may reinforce the other.

There is no definitive count of how many think tanks there are in America, and there is no hard definition of what constitutes a “think tank.” On the latter, we can say that a think tank is a scholarly institution established for the advancement of a particular policy or ideological goal, or one that conducts its work from a declared policy or ideological preference. On the former, it is sufficient to say that beyond the big names of Cato, Heritage, Brookings, Hoover, et al., there are 263 members and allied institutions listed by the State Policy Network alone -- and these are merely the subset of entities that fit within SPN's purview of “state-based, free market think tanks.” Beyond that purview are even more excellent institutions -- the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System comes to mind -- that seek the advancement of broadly conservative ends through their own scholarly efforts. The point here is that there is a constellation of several hundred of these entities; they largely produce excellent work; and they are dramatically underutilized by their ideological fellow-travelers online. If the old conservative cliché is that “ideas have consequences,” then why aren't we, the first-movers of the online right, advancing our ideas and ideamakers to the hilt?

Right-wing bloggers in particular must grasp that this is not merely a source of content for content's sake: the work of the think tank community is profoundly threatening to the agenda of the left. An illustrative example is the Tennessee Center for Policy Research's exposé on Al Gore's electric bills several weeks back; the left-wing hate mail received by TCPR (PDF) in response is a wonderful reflection of the anger and desperation of our opponents when faced with those efforts. And that is mere tactical scalp-hunting, amplified not by right-wing bloggers, but by traditional media: how much greater would the lasting policy impact be if the substantive counter-documentary to the former Vice President's film received wide blogospheric play? (Full disclosure: as the NYT reveals, the documentary is the work of my own colleague Steve Hayward.) We already know that online activism moves and shapes opinion -- so it is up to the movers and shapers to make sure those opinions are informed. We owe the country we seek to direct no less.

II. Online activism and the void in the states.

It is not enough to say that the online right and the think tanks should talk to one another. There are a series of discrete prescriptive steps for each, as they seek to mold the Republican and conservative resurgence of the next decade. The online activists, first and foremost, should begin concentrating on local and measurable action. There is a surfeit of people wishing to create national-level weblogs, and a surplus of amateur pundits wishing to write at length on war, peace, and Washington, D.C. The proportion of that pool who will do any of those things well is quite small; and the market space for it is even smaller. RedState exists, and you won't get another RedState. (Nor another DailyKos, for that matter.) The dramatically underserved market niche in political blogging and online activism is at the state level and below. There are good local weblogs, but not many, and not for most locales. If, as reader surveys suggest, RedState is the blog of choice for Capitol Hill Republicans, where do GOP state legislators in Austin, Atlanta, Sacramento, Tallahassee, et al., turn? The “blog of record” does not exist at this level, and this is a distressing absence for a party that historically grooms its national leadership at the state-executive level. There are several reasons for this absence: advertising revenue on weblogs are naturally more substantive with a national audience; self-promotion for bloggers wishing to transition into policy or journalism work is less available at the state level and below; and there is a comparative lack of glamor in state policy versus national and international issues.

III. Supporting the online activists: funders.

All this signifies more than a need for online activists to refocus on the states: it also means that the funding and intellectual-production apparatus of the American conservative movement must support that refocusing. Funding is self-explanatory, if knotty: foundational and individual donors move slowly, and rightly seek metrics and assurances that online activists are ill-prepared to deliver. (Sitemeter is a poor substitute for a competent marketing person.) I don't have the answers here, and I'm not sure that anyone does: but I do know that bloggers need to begin thinking about measurable impacts beyond mere hit counts; and I know that funders need more education on just what bloggers and the online sphere can do to advance the cause. The bottom line is that if and when someone emerges as a definitive locus of pro-conservative online activism, there needs to be an institution or mechanism that identifies that person, and subsidizes his or her endeavors. The bloggers need that hope, to spur their efforts, and the movement at the state level and below needs their work.

IV. Supporting the online activists: think tanks.

Beyond funding, the provision of intellectual capital is itself a major missing piece for the online right. Think tank efforts to reach out to right-wing and libertarian bloggers have been erratic, and their efforts to participate as bloggers have been largely unsuccessful. The cultivation of relationships online is not simply a matter of en masse e-mails and ad hoc relationships: instead, deliberation and purposeful outreach is required for a successful engagement of online allies. There are several components of this outreach. First among them is the identification of online activists who may be helpful -- or who may benefit from the think tank's work. (Note, please, that the think tank needs to assess the landscape in terms of potential benefit to the blogger, and not just potential benefit to it; both will redound to the think tank's credit in time.) This identification is easier demanded than done, and the nebulous nature of assessing online actors is further impetus for the creation of the identification mechanism described above with respect to funders.

Having identified the relevant actors, think tanks must cultivate them as a cross between media and donors. Online activists and bloggers are a unique mixture of both, in that they perform a communicative function similar to media, and may deliver de facto pro bono work in publicizing the think tank's product. A targeted blogger should be invited to think tank events and receive the usual mailings and e-mails -- but he or she should also get regular calls from the marketing chief and relevant scholars, and have special access for interviews and interaction. This may strike the small think tank as somewhat tedious, and indeed it is -- until that think tank's scholar goes to the statehouse to testify on a bill, and every legislator present is deluged with e-mails from a friendly blogger's readership. When one considers that politics are about half a decade or more behind commerce in terms of technology's inroads, this is a sound investment for the think tank. The provision of intellectual product should be targeted and coherent. Some think tanks, like my own, have an explicit policy of not producing works in “academese” or unreadable scholarly jargon; all adult Americans should be able to read our work and comprehend our policy recommendations. The think tank wishing to engage bloggers would do well to adopt a similar practice. Beyond this provision, the think tank can offer the online activist or blogger one final, key thing: material support in the form of an adjunct fellowship. This does more than lend the recipient a stipend -- it also legitimizes him or her with a professional title, that itself legitimizes his or her advancement of the think tank's work and aims.

As an addendum, one course of action for the think tanks that is not addressed here is the establishment of a think tank's own online efforts. This is a closely related but also fundamentally different matter that will be addressed elsewhere.

V. Conclusion.

What is the desired endstate here? Of course it is the victory of Constitutional governance in the conservative conception. This will not happen whole, nor soon. As one of the key vehicles of the movement -- the Republican Party -- enters a probable sustained low period in its history, an emerging vehicle of the movement, the online activists, and an established vehicle of that movement, the think tank complex, have an opportunity to join forces and propel one another to mutual leadership of that movement. When the Republicans recover, as they eventually will, they ought to recover as a party of principle and action. The think tanks and the bloggers lend themselves, by their very nature, to both. It therefore befits them to seize this moment, and move forward to reclaim the ground that the politicians have lost. This short piece is neither the beginning nor the end of this effort, nor the final prescription for action. It is, though, a starting-point for formulation. We have the tools to remake the movement: the question is whether we take them in hand with purpose and deliberation, or strike forward with mere formless hope.

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