March 02, 2007
Blogging To Victory?
Pushed back to half and hour due to the crush to see Rudy Giuliani’s speech in the main convention hall, Townhall VP Chuck DeFeo kicked off CPAC’s “Conservative Victories with New Media” panel by introducing the Heritage Foundation’s Rob Bluey who asked each panel member to share their new media conservative victories.
RedState’s Erick Erickson talked about their success promoting an altercation between Harold Ford and Bob Corker at an airport in Memphis, TN. Erickson said RedState kept video of the incident at the top of their site for days before it start going play locally before breaking on to Fox News. Erickson said the episode was key to Ford’s slipping behind Corker in the polls, eventually leading the GOPers victory.
David All touched on his efforts to put his former boss Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) in front of as many eyes as possible, even if that meant venturing into enemy territory like the Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert shows.
James O’Keefe promoted the Leadership Institute’s mission of helping students start their own conservative newspapers nationwide. For his new media angle, O’Keefe told how we captured his satirical yet successful effort to ban Lucky Charms at Rutgers dining halls on YouTube.
NewsBusters.org Matthew Sheffield recounted his role in starting the RatherBiased blog that eventually helped dethrone CBS anchor Dan Rather by exposing flaws in 60 Minutes National Guard/Pres. Bush story.
The first panel questioner from the audience asked how CPAC planned to help him hookup with fellow CPAC attendees once he was back in GA [CONN CARROLL]
Not addressing his concern specifically, David All said conservatives needed to embrace social networking platforms like Facebook and MySpace so that conservatives meeting at the conference could better solidify their relationships with like minded individuals once they returned home. James O’Keefe also mentioned that Facebook was their best recruiting tool on campus.
Jeff Gannon was the next audience member to address the panel, and he wanted to know if the panel was concerned about liberal control of new media hubs like YouTube and Google, specifically citing YouTube’s pulling of a Michelle Malkin video criticizing Islam.
The panel said that conservative needed to become more active in YouTube communities so they could better learn to game the system to their advantage like liberals had.
Next the panel was asked how conservatives planned to match liberal success at creating state and local ‘watering holes’ like the netroots have done in states like CO, TX, and MO.
Erick Erickson said RedState does make strong efforts to promote and local blogs on their states page but that often blogs once started were eventually abandoned before they could build an audience.
Finally, an audience member who said he had done tech work for both liberal and conservative bloggers worried that liberal bloggers were always ahead of conservatives on blogging software (citing Daily Kos’ early adoption of drupal and their rumored impending switch to ruby on rails).
Chuck DeFeo responded, saying he’d been told privately by leading Dem tech operatives that Pres. Bush’s use of technology in ’04 was very better than anything Dems did. He stressed that conservatives understand that elections are won by getting voters to polls, not building communities online by using the latest bells and whistles.
Speaking specifically after the panel DeFeo said the best Bush tools matched supporters identified online with accurate and timely information on absentee and early polling opportunities as well as custom tailored directions to polling cites on election day that included estimated travel time. DeFeo happiest moment in ’04 came when he heard voters were showing up at polling stations with Bush campaign directions to the site.
Posted at 04:57 PM
Comments
Good post.
What will be taking on the liberal watering holes is TheVanguard.org.
It is the conservative answer to MoveOn.org and is backed by people like Grover Norquist, former Apple CEO Dr. Gil Amelio, and many who were involved with PayPal in its early days.
Adam | 03.05.07 05:47 PM
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