I fall into the percentage of people who made up their minds on who they were voting for a long time ago. When it became exceedingly clear that John McCain was the Republican nominee for President I threw my full support behind him. Not because I’ve grown up a Conservative Republican or a knee jerk reaction to tow the party line but because as the clear winner of the nomination, McCain is better equipped and experienced to lead this greatest nation through seemingly insurmountable odds than Barack Obama [and Hilary Clinton at the time] could. Insurmountable odds ranging from terrorism, to war, to rogue nations, to the economy, to energy independence and in turn allowing America to continue in freedom, liberty, and prosperity.

It will take nothing less than a miracle for me to change my vote. It is set in stone, inscribed in steel. After me and others like me, there is a percentage of people who make up their mind of who they are going to vote for between the nomination on up through to the end of the party convention. This makes up the majority of voters and I presume it is hard to change the minds of these voters to switch candidates. Now is the time when the campaigns are not trying to sway us so much as they are trying to sway those that are undecided. According to the ANES, American National Elections Studies, since 1948 to 2004 an average of 19.4% decide post convention, an average of 12.3% decide in the final two weeks, and an average of 4.8% decide on election day. In general, ’04 was even below the average.

Both campaigns are trying to reach these undecided voters through different means, one of which is asking help from us in volunteering to fill phone banks and talk to friends and strangers telling them why we are voting for [in our case] McCain.

How do we go about telling others why we support and are voting for McCain? I’ve spent the last several days poring over articles written by or linked from primarily Patrick Ruffini and David All [found in various locations]. It has been a confirmation of what I and others in the Republican party have noticed and have been frustrated about for some time and that is Democrats have been more adept at spreading their message across utilizing new mainstream/cutting edge technology. Using technology to get our message across is something we Republicans need to start tapping in to.

I think I’ve found a way that we can tell our personal reasons why we are supporting and voting for McCain/Palin that can far outreach our neighborhoods and cities, reaching the nation and trickling past our borders. A grassroots ad campaign starring regular Americans like us saying why we are for McCain/Palin. It would be through a little service called 12seconds.tv. What is 12seconds? Think twitter with video, where you upload a video but are limited to 12 seconds.

How would this work? Details can be found at the 12sec.R.ads website but as a quick run through: Record a 12 second video saying why you support the McCain/Palin ticket, e-mail to 12sec.R.ads, follow the 12sec.R.ads channel, and add @12secRads on twitter. Record and send in as many as you would like. If you can say why you are voting for McCain/Palin in 12 seconds, you can have your own ad in support.

You can always try requesting an invite from 12seconds.tv to create your own channel. Any videos that you upload that you would like to be an ad in support for McCain/Palin be sure to include in the tag or description “12secRad”.

I’d like to thank techRepublican for providing the exposure for this endeavor because as described in “How to Get On-Air, All the Time” by Patrick Gavin in Politics Magazine, techRepublican is “…a site dedicated to helping conservatives utilize Internet technology and opportunities…”.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Game Platforms as Politcal Platforms, TechPresident

John McCain's campaign release of the online game "Pork Invaders,"
as a Facebook application, wasn't a game changer but a prelude of
future message strategy. Video games will be added to the multitude of
political channels that a political campaign must have a presence on.
Microsoft has now announced what could become the "YouTube" of video
games -- Xbox LIVE Community Games.

...

In the 2008 presidential election campaign season, more channels of
communication than ever before have been used to reach us. It is not
unfathomable that a future political message strategy incorporates an
addictive arcade game to their arsenal.

Barack Obama Still Leads the Online Buzz Race, but McCain is Gaining Some Ground, LA Times

The place where McCain really gained ground was website video streams. Possibly because of McCain's controversial ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears,
total streams viewed on JohnMcCain.com more than doubled in July to
1.01 million, Nielsen said. (The ad was immensely popular online,
although it didn't appear on the site until July 31). Videos viewed on
Obama's site dropped to 502,000 in July from 967,000 in June.

...

While Obama's website prominently touts the VP announcement messages on
its home page ("Who will be Barack's VP? Be the first to know"),
McCain's site offers no similar feature. A McCain spokesman said today
he was unaware of any plans to reveal his vice presidential choice via
e-mail and texting.

The House adjourned this morning without considering energy legislation. Nancy Pelosi and company were quick to make an exit, turning off the lights and the microphones in their wake. But some House Republicans stayed on the floor. At 3:30pm, they're still on the floor staging what's being called an "uprising" and a "revolt."

The lights are off. The microphones are off. CSpan isn't taping it. Nancy Pelosi "sent Capitol Police to clear the press gallery [and] lock the doors" according to news on RedState, but "Reps. Bunt, Shadegg, and Hoekstra have been taking turns remaining with media in the gallery in order to keep it open."

This revolution is not being televised. But thanks to online communication we know about it. It's on blogs like RedState, it's on the Twitter feeds of Reps. Culberson, Boehner, and Hoekstra. And now it's spreading as one person brings it up to another. I just mentioned it to a non-political friend in Texas. Her response? "Wow. This is like old school politics. This is amazing!"

This revolution is not being televised, but who the hell cares? To borrow from Rep. Culberson's tweet this morning: "Here is a powerful use of social media - when they turn off the mike we can still communicate."

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.

There have been a gambit of political websites launching over the last few months but this one, IMHO, takes the prize.

Launched by former CNET founder Shelby Bonnie, "Political Base" boasts a bunch of interactive features to help you through the political season.

Many political sites offer interactive money maps but I think that the PB app is tops. It allows for instant hover-over look at money and a county-level drill down. They also do a good job calling out specific money centers... take a look at their Leonard Nimoy page.

They also provide detailed bios, not just on the candidates themselves, but also on political consultants, media gurus, academics and more...

Beyond that I really like the issue matrix and the clean forums they provide.

TechCrunch is to technology what the Drudge Report is to politics... one of the most influential news rags that can make and break a man, a company or a country.

The TechCrunch40 is a list of top 40 start-ups that are making waves across the world. TC recently hosted the TC40 conference and featured these start-ups.

Here are some of the relevant start-ups you will want to follow and even try out if you part of the blog revolution.

Multimedia
Viewdle - Imagine if you could hone the google links around all of your blog assets to make sure that users would be even more inclined to click on them. For example, imagine if you could change the links dynamically based on who was in a 30-second clip playing on your blog. Say you plug an interview between Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn, and the links spanning back and forth between Hugh's Romney book and Steyns indispensible America Alone. Cool. Enter Viewdle.

StoryBlender - I bet the folks at HotAir will love this one. Online collaborative video building. Good stuff!

MusicShake - Koean-based company to help the non-Mozarts among us. Interesting story and approach to this one.

Social Networking
TruTap - We talked about something like this previously. IM, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and now Digg... all of these profiles. No way to manage them all. This is where TruTap comes in. Another one featured in the TC4 is Orgoo.

Flock - Quoting from TC40 :"A social web browser. When using Flock, people can easily discover, access, create and share videos, photos, blogs, feeds and comments across social communities, media providers, and popular websites.

Teach the People - This of this site of How things Work with Social networking. Interesting field with a growing host of start-ups. 1 GB of storage, voting, docs, blogs, and other treats make this an interesting place to watch.

Publishing
8020 Publishing - Publish your own magazine online! Become the next big National Review!

Honorable Mention
Faroo - Right now thousands of people are looking for Steve Fossett and his presumed downed plane using satellite images of the Nevada landscape. Faroo takes the notion of the power of individual computers to rival Google's network farms of massive servers. In short, imagine if you could index everypage a user actually visited on their own computer. Cool stuff!

I'll let you digest these for a moment. Back with more in a few...

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.

Episode one of my new vlog, "Hit or Miss," which identifies some positive "Hits" and "Misses" for Republicans.

Patrick nailed it when he wrote earlier in this space, "...this is the summer it started to happen."

It is happening. I can feel it. I've heard it from the 150+ conservatives who attended the inaugural Modern Media Strategies Workshop. I see it in the growth statistics of TechRepublican. We see it with the emerging competition to be the counter to ActBlue.

The it we speak of is our Revolution. The Revolution of conservative politics.

The fact of the matter is that this is the summer when modern conservatives and Republicans decided to quit bitching, and decided to "act like a Web 2.0 operation," and simply do something about it. You and I are grabbing the bull by the horns and we're digging in.

And it's happening all over the nation. I receive countless emails and facebook messages from people who tell me that they're taking what they've learned and are evangelizing to their peers, friends, bosses, and elected officials. They're listening to you.

While Republicans and conservatives are starting to turn the corner online, we can't rest now. The fight is just beginning. We need to continue to push onward to win the battle every single day. We need to continue to work together and promote the projects that are making a difference.

The moment we let up or lose an outpost in the Revolution, the battle could be lost.

Take for example the guys over at the Majority Accountability Project (a DAG client). They've been fighting tooth-and-nail to hold the Democratic Majority accountable for their actions. And now the liberals at DailyKos are looking to "expose" them (whatever that means).

The ironic thing about the DailyKos attack is that they didn't even do cursory homework on the MajorityAP before they attacked (like a simple Google search). For example, in the MajorityAP vlog, the project was already "exposed" for what it is. But, no mention of that in the Kos post.

The guys over at the MajorityAP know that the work they're doing is critical to helping level-the-playing field, but it's tough to keep the lights on at a project like MajorityAP when so few understand the dire importance of the project and are willing to financially support it. They risk closing down if the tide doesn't turn.

So if you agree with me that the MajorityAP is a valuable outpost in the Revolution, you should send them a contribution today. Every single penny will help keep their operation running.

Think. Listen. Understand. Participate. Share. Act.

We're in this thing together. Whether they like it or not, we're in it - and we're in it to win it.

Revolution.