It all started while sitting in my office in Boston staring at the US Congressional red/blue map.  I was not looking for anything in specific, just admiring the differences around the country.  I then thought how cool it would be to drive from the Atlantic to the Pacific and remain entirely in Republican Congressional Districts.  I ran my eyes across the map and bumped into a few blue road blocks, but soon enough, I found a red route.  I then tried the same thing with blue congressional districts and thankfully failed at each attempt.  I think this red route says something about the broad demographic that endorses the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

As a former College Republican, I always loved the excitement of traveling to help out a Republican campaign.   Considering this is an election year, I saw a fantastic opportunity  for the CR's to travel from coast to coast, campaigning for GOP incumbents while never leaving a red district.

I had the pleasure of meeting Charlie Smith and Ethan Elion from the College Republican National Committee (CRNC) and we began to discuss this concept.  They loved the idea and they came up with some brilliant concepts.  Charlie and Ethan immediately saw the big picture - get CR's to travel in each congressional district to show the real world of campaigning.  Politics is not all about cocktail parties; it's about making phone calls, stuffing the envelopes, and knocking on the doors.  This is a unique opportunity to show how the CR's are the "unions of the right."

The CR's teamed up with David All and they have produced WhereIsTheRed.com which has perfectly executed this concept.  As I type, Kentucky is getting support from the WhereIsTheRed crew.  I love that each campaign stop concludes with placing the bumper sticker of that particular candidate on the back of the vehicle.  The road crew has a mission to end the campaigning portion of the trip in California, then visit the DNC convention in Denver and then finally concluding in Minnesota at the GOP convention.  You should follow WhereIsTheRed and then hopefully meet them in Minnesota if you plan on attending the convention.  Congrats to Charlie and Ethan for doing an amazing job and keep these CR's on the road in your prayers.

Writing in the Boston Globe recently Dan Gillmor states in a lenghtly piece. about using technology to save the Presenditial debates.....

"A second approach would be even more ambitious: A debate that would unfold online over the course of days, or even weeks and months. Imagine that one candidate takes a position and poses a question. The opponent would answer with a written response of some predetermined length, but with the help of staff, experts, and the general public. Then the first candidate, again with the help of anyone who wants to join the process, would dissect the response and reply with (we'd hope) a truly nuanced update. Continue this process at length - and repeat it with many other topics.

What would the site look like? What technologies would we use? I have my own ideas, and have posted them on my blog (citmedia.org/blog), but I'm just one person; we need a collective effort to figure this out, using much the same iterative process. The specific tools are less important than the willingness to deploy them."

His follow up suggestions at his blog are posted here.

It's never a good idea to give away too much, but I'm going to present the basic outlines of a blog strategy for an underfunded challenger (running against an incumbent) over the next few posts. The premise is simple - the gerrymandering of the districts, like in my home state of Missouri, creates landslide elections for House members of over 60%. When you're a challenger, you get no hope of money from the national party if you're not in striking distance, and the internet is pretty much your only hope of leveling the playing field.

Your Blog Strategy will consist of three blogs, started 18 months before the election, with specific purposes for each.