I don't disagree with Erick, but I don't believe he is seeing the issue in terms of what the real problem is. And the way the Right is currently structured, none of the major stakeholders have any incentive to make it better. It isn't about the technology. That's the easy part.
I have a confession to make: I think the Right is still bogged down on the technology front in a way the Left is not.
The conservative donor infrastructure, which has too often been burned by the charlatans on our side, remains hesitant to fund tech projects on our side outside of existing 501(c)(4)’s. One of them needs to step up. This is ridiculous.
The Right is trapped in media activism and capitalism land. The Left does some of that. But the large portion that makes a big difference is that they focus on political activism. And the sites that do it are funded, or fed by sites that are, so let's not pretend they are simply bloggers.
The Left built their infrastructure to accomplish political objectives. New philanthropist money flowing to the Right is either GOP establishment aligned, or focused purely on profit. How can I unload this in three years for five million dollars? There's nothing wrong with capitalism. But it is not designed to accomplish political objectives.
Our consultants have no incentive to encourage funded, larger platform political activism on the Right. If it emerges, half of their job and profit center goes away. They'd rather send bloggers emails - the majority of which are kill-filed by bloggers, btw. Talk about a waste of time and money.
At the same time, the old-line political infrastructure was built for the 80's and has become as much a part of the problem, as it is a solution today. I mean, come on, Mike Castle is all but announcing we are now in the era of bi-partisan national health care, and NRO's Jim Geraghty thinks it's a plus for him. They're good people. But they don't even see how corrupted their thinking has become as a result of becoming a part of the Beltway, as opposed to a force in opposition to it and the big government it wants to grow its power for both parties.
In any event, when traditional conservative donors give all of their money to NRO, Heritage and others, they don't even realize they are missing the boat and the Left is running circles around us. And the old line institutions have no incentive to clue them in. It would mean less cash for them. And if you think I'm being hard on Heritage, when they are using resources to elevate people like Conor Friedersdorf, they're headed in the opposite direction of the majority of the grassroots, conservative Right.
I'm not suggesting any of the above isn't important, or necessary - they are. But they are Beltway relevant and mostly elitist themselves. And they are incapable of doing the hard political work required for a center-Right majority to prevail in America, again. When they try, they tend to fail miserably. And their overhead makes them inefficient at it to begin with. They are bricks, the new political world is clicks only.
And, finally, the GOP establishment, which is most closely in touch with Right-side philanthropists, has absolutely no incentive to see some new conservative Right emerge on line. They prefer things remain top down with absolute 100% message control. They are not interested in letting genuine conservative philanthropists in on the secret that they could be funding efforts to take out a Charlie Crist, a Mike Castle, or a Bennett in Utah. Why on earth would they want to see that?
Our problems on the Right - from a conservative prespective - are political and instiutional. Solve those and the technology is a walk in the park. That's a mere distraction. You can simply buy it at this point.
