« Local Blogs Continue To Grow. | Main | Blogger Conference Call with Al Gore »
Republicans “Losing the Web” to Democrats…But Will It Last?
By Lowell | May 21, 2007
Cross posted on Raising Kaine
Republicans can try to game the system and pretend that they’re doing better than they are, but George W. Bush’s 2004 internet strategy director, Michael Turk, acknowledges the fact of the matter: Republicans are “losing the Web right now.” Another top Republican blogger, David All, adds that “For the most part Republicans are stuck in Internet circa 2000.” And K. Daniel Glover, editor of the National Journal’s Technology Daily, says:
…look at the short history of online politics. For Republicans, the Internet is where bad things happen. Take [former U.S. senator] George Allen and his ‘macaca’ moment. . . . You can kind of understand why Republicans have this almost instinctive fear of the Internet, where the mob rules.
I love it: Republicans have an “instinctive fear of the Internet,” a place that’s not rigidly top-down or disciplined, where the atomsophere is “often chaotic, bottom-up, user-generated.” Instead, Republicans appear - as I’ve been saying for a long time - to like the more passive, directed, “dittohead” style of Limbaugh-style talk radio.
In contrast, Democrats appear to be kind of into this quaint thing known as “democracy” - “talking and discussing and fighting.” Fortunately for Democrats, there’s something to that Democacy thang; according to Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, it “energizes everyone, involves everyone, and gets people totally into it.” In other words, Democracy and dissent are forms of strength, not weakeness - as many on the right would have us believe. And it’s also a heck of a lot more interesting than the echo chamber and coordinated “noise machine” messaging of the right. Yawn.
For the rest of this article, click here
Topics: Uncategorized |
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.