Old Guard

Leslie Graves emailed me earlier today with an interesting point: The institutional Right is finally spending money online, but there's still a mis-alignment between the organizations and the Rightroots.

[L]egacy orgs are starting to be active online...like righty e-activists have always wanted them to do ... but for the most part, they are not doing the things online that we wish they were doing. ... Thus, there is no love lost between the conservative e-activism community and the orgs.  [A]ll this money being spent ... finally ... online but generally not doing the things that e-activists probably would prefer be done.

The institutional Right has realized there's a new battlefield and they have finally moved into it.  But I'm reminded a bit of the British troops versus the Colonists in the American Revolution (the analogy is tactical, not political).  The Left built new institutions and adapted their tactics to the new battlefield - guerilla warfare, as it were - while the Right is trying to port over the institutional cultures and tactics that they have built up over generations, regardless of the new battlefield.

Andrew Breitbart's Big Government and Michelle Malkin's Hot Air are excellent examples of good, innovative projects on the Right.  We need more guerilla media, like Breitbart is doing.  And Malkin had the right idea with Hot Air - take successful, iconoclastic bloggers (Ed Morrissey and AllahPundit), give them free rein (rather than pandering and red meat) and build around them.

The continuing cultural divide between the Left and Right approach to online media is best illustrated by this: While organizations on the Right tend to hire a single blogger (generally from internal or junior political staff, rather than the blogosphere), organizations on the Left very often (a) hire successful bloggers and give them freedom, and/or (b) have very large staffs focused on muckraking, research and blogging.  Huffington Post has something close to 50.  Talking Points Memo has a staff of close to 20...and they're expanding.  Think Progress has something like 14-17 people working on their 3 blogs and daily email.  Media Matters has a staff of many dozens, most aimed directly at the web.

The Right cannot invest in simply pushing an institutional message; the Right has to invest in adding value.  That means research, muckraking, fact-checking, policy wonkery, information organization and information activism. That's what it takes.

"The Right has aircraft carriers, the Left has pirate ships."

The Old Guard is building more aircraft carriers. Two new groups have been announced, one composed of "House and Senate Republican lawmakers", the other "a collection of the party's senior strategists".

Because nothing says Reform like a coalition of the politicians who got the Republican Party where it is today.

The National Council To Stay Relevant for a New America intends to "hold town halls" and "produce GOP ideas".   "Let's start an organization, then figure out why later" does not inspire confidence - normally, organizations are created because somebody already has an idea - nor does their announcement letter which is a buzword salad that manages to say absolutely nothing.

They also intend to "rebrand a struggling Republican Party", which is something I think Republicans fundamentally misunderstand.   Your "brand" is not "spin you hope people believe".  Branding only works when you're focusing attention on something authentic about a product.  Republicans can't sell the brand they want to sell (limited government, responsibility, values, good defense), because those things are not authentically true of the Republican Party. 

Rebranding the Party can't be done with new Buzz Words and a shiny coat of paint.  Republicans are going to have to actually reform the Party.

Look, I really don't intend to be such a downer and I sincerely hope these organizations can do something to genuinely reform the Republican Party.  If they do, they can count me as an ally.  But the rot is deep and it's hard to see how the Old Guard will be the agent of change.

The GOP has been a Zombie Party for a long time now, and the only thing that kept it moving was a certain skill at tactical political posturing and the fact that people didn't want to believe the legacy brand of the GOP was gone.  But now, even that appearance of Republican vitality is gone.

The conservative movement is carrying the dead body around, trying to convince everybody that the movement and the GOP are doing just fine and won't you please help us stay relevant?  The Zombie Party is spending a Weekend at Bernie's.  But it's quite clear by now that the Right isn't capable of accomplishing the ideals we want to accomplish with our current policies, politicians and infrastructure, and repackaging the status quo is not how the movement and the GOP will be renewed.

The next Republican revolution will come from outside current (political and movement) leadership.  The next political leaders of the Right will be the people who reform the Republican Party.