(A crosspost from eyeon08.com)

An important discussion is emerging on the role of social conservatives in the righty-blogosphere. Joe Carter, who organized the blogger row at FRC's Values Voters summit, had this to say about the experience:

Anyone who wonders why the audience for the right-side of the blogosphere is stagnant at an estimated 200,000 readers should look at the supply and demand curve. The right side of the blogosphere continuously focuses on secondary issues and ignores the primary concerns of American conservatives.

I talked to the bloggers on the panel, many of whom are the same bloggers I read daily and interact with here in DC. Then I talked to the people from the audience, most of whom are not political junkies. The differences in the discussions was eye-opening. The top four issues that voters said were important to them are "life" (e.g., abortion, euthanasia, embryo destructive research, etc.), marriage, tax cuts, and permanent tax relief for families. Aside from tax cuts, these issues are rarely talked about by the bloggers on the Right. Three out of four issues are ignored--and this is just the top of the list.

The stark contrast between the heartland conservatives and the DC-centric bloggers became apparent in the panel discussion I moderated on Political Blogging. Although most of the panel members could be classified as moderately social conservative, few of them focus primarily on social conservative issues.

Several things strike me here. First, and in my own experience, I started blogging to impact politics, not discuss the issues of the day. The metric that I have used in doing that has not been "readers" it has been the more amorphous concept of "quality readers". And I am quite pleased with my results. In the same way, Redstate has an objective: to discuss the right side of Capitol Hill. Let's be clear. These are elite projects. They try to move members of Congress and the media.

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Crossposted from Eyeon08.

So I went to accept a LinkedIn invitation. You’ll never guess from who. But, in any case, I get to the screen, and there is Barack Obama asking a question.

This strikes me as a pretty clever way to use LinkedIn. This is a crowd that, if you engage, can probably turn donor. And they are probably pretty well connected to other people. They are relatively wealthy. And, if someone responds, Obama can highlight answers. By answering, people take some ownership. Wiki-politics plus social networks. Very impressive.

A little discussion of why this is so clever. When you ask a question on LinkedIn, it appears to 3 degrees of seperation. There are 1.4m people within 3 degrees for me. That’s a lot of people. And they are relatively well targeted. After all, if someone responds, they are, by definition, a friend of a friend of a supporter. (and probably wealthy) If someone responds, you know which of your supporters to have work the guy over.

Rudy Giuliani, via Katie Harbath, also has a LinkedIn account, but so far they just offer "friendship"

I am consistently impressed by the way Obama uses social networks and technology

Crossposted from Eyeon08.com.

I thought this was an encouraging sign. The College Republican National Committee is encouraging members to engage on YouTube. I don't recall the College Dems doing this:

The CRNC has started a YouTube group, College Republican Debate Questions, to encourage College Republicans across the country to submit questions for the Republican YouTube debate in November.

Charlie Smith leads by example with the first video question.

H/T to CRNation.

Promoted by E.M.--Fred's campaign takes it one step further...

So, I went to sign in to Fred Thompson’s new website so see what was going on. And I was struck by this:

They want my cell phone provider. With my phone number and my provider, they can send me free, (for them) text messages. And they asked for my IM username. They want to talk to me. The Thompson campaign is the first campaign to ask me for that information. They can send me targeted messages.

That is very cool. And very, very important. This is the first glimpse of how they will use technology differently.

It is just outrageous how easy some things are. ActBlue offers a way for county parties to raise money online. Read this and weep:

One of the areas that ActBlue can help in is with your local County Democratic Party.

If your local county party or committee is in one of the 22 states where ActBlue is already active (minus some clean-elections states like Arizona), you can have all the ActBlue fundraising tools utilized by top tier House and Senate campaigns at the disposal of your county party. Several county parties are already using those tools to achieve success!

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This should blow your mind. The Dems at MyDD are blogging about the Farm Bill. What on earth could this be about and why should you care?

First of all, the Farm Bill will be a major piece of legislation that will have a tremendous impact on rural areas which tend to vote Republican. Politically, if the Dems deliver with a bill that really helps rural areas but is consistent with lefty values, then it will help people like Nancy Boyda and Ben Nelson keep their seats.

So, by blogging about this and educating their urban liberal readers, MyDD is preparing their readers to be activated on these issues. I repeat: they are educating urban liberals to help lobby on a bill with rural interests. Is that happening on our side? No. When the bills come up, they will be able to attract greater media attention to their side of the issue. They will be able to generate more phone calls and emails to Senators and Congressmen on these issues.

Crossposted from Eye on 08.

Patrick Ruffini wrote an interesting post about, what he called, different modes of activism. I thought that he was arguing that the online left was unfocused, and that it was hard to convert to GOTV, which was where the rubber really meets the road. I responded and argued that there was a real disconnect on the left between the "movement," which the netroots are pushing, and the party, which is much more static.