Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

There's an excellent article today at CIOInsight.com by Edward Cone on the role of the Internet and social media networks in the current presidential campaign. Here's a short excerpt...

Trippi believes this kind of technology will be a real difference-maker in the race for the White House, and that his party has a big lead in using it. "There is this amazing competition between the Democratic campaigns; nobody is giving an inch," he says. "It's going to lead to an explosive, powerful progressive community online for the general election, with millions of people connected and hundreds of millions of dollars in small contributions. The major thrust is engaging voters, creating community around candidacy and getting people to be evangelists for the campaign. It could decide the election."

But not everyone agrees on best uses of technology in politics, with differences often breaking down along party lines. As of early August, for example, leading GOP candidates, including Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, were planning not to participate in a September CNN/YouTube debate similar to the Democratic event in Charleston, so that debate may be canceled.

Snubbing YouTube nation is a terrible idea, says Patrick Ruffini, a Republican consultant who worked briefly this year for Giuliani, but he is less enthusiastic about social networks than many of his Democratic counterparts. "Having more Facebook friends won't make you President," he says. "It might tell you something about the enthusiasm of your supporters, but it's just one metric." The issue, he says, is perspective. "The emphasis, especially in the media, and to the exclusion of other technologies, is out of whack."

A former online strategist for the Republican National Committee and Webmaster of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign, Ruffini favors what he calls "a mid-tech approach" to campaigns and organizing. What really jazzes him is integrating older technology like phone, television or snail mail, things millions of people already use regularly, with an online approach. "You do it by improving upon existing media," he says, pointing to the "Tele-Town Halls" run by the Mitt Romney campaign in Iowa. These conference calls involve perhaps thousands of people in that caucus universe, but when people on the call respond to prompts—pressing 1 to volunteer, for instance—their action is translated into ones and zeros that the campaign can store and use at will. Everyone is working on these kinds of approaches, Ruffini says, but "I think Republicans may be a little more attuned to it."

Whatever their different emphases, campaigns in both parties are feeling their way toward the same big goal: close alignment of technology efforts with the mission of winning elections. "It's a false dichotomy to divide campaign strategies into bottom-up versus top-down," says Zack Exley, a Democratic consultant who was director of online communications and organizing for the Kerry-Edwards campaign after stints with Dean and the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org. Successful campaigns must build large communities and coordinate their activities, letting individuals act independently within the overall campaign strategy.

But technological and cultural obstacles remain. Nobody is sure precisely how social networks translate into votes...

At the end of the day - or, more precisely, at the end of election day - what matters is not the technology but how many voters showed up and voted for your candidate. Ruffini's approach seems right to me.