June 30, noon
This old-school “media giraffe,” more than any other person alive, is responsible for conservative Republicans taking control of our country. Instead of crowing, he revealed Friday, he’s hoping to use the Internet to “take back” the White House and Congress from George W. Bush and other Republicans who have supposedly sold out the right.
His name is Richard Viguerie. He ventured into a herd of liberal-leaning modern-day journalism and marketing pioneers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus gathered for a “Media Giraffe” conference on the future of news and democracy. On a panel called “The Internet as an Organizing Tool,” Viguerie shared a dais with, among others, a modern-day liberal version of himself who’s an Internet guru operating in Connecticut campaigns.
Long before the Internet, in the 1960s, Viguerie mastered a new form of communication to build power. He invented political direct-mail marketing. He was a Goldwater Republican trying to figure out how the right could capture first the party, then the country. He mastered the art of developing targeted lists of potential supporters, then mailing them effective pitches to donate money for conservative causes and candidates. He built up the network and the approach that enabled the right to elect Ronald Reagan in 1980, take over Congress in 1994, make George W. Bush the president in 2000.
Right-wingers like Viguerie are livid at the Bush White House and Republican Congress for, among other sins, supporting big-budget items like Medicare D and seeking compromise on immigration reform. He has a new book coming out called Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and other big-government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause. In the expected publicity around the book, Viguerie said, he hopes to “launch a half-dozen or more web sites through a central headquarters developing community and all the things talked about here. It will have the opportunity to restart, jump-start the conservative movement.”
Up until now, he acknowledged, liberals have dominated organizing and raised millions of dollars for candidates and causes on the Internet through sites like Moveon.org. But Viguerie noted, they have yet won many elections; they haven’t “radically changed” the country the way conservatives did through direct mail and then talk radio.
He argued that conservatives dominated those earlier avenues because their positions are simpler to explain and appeal to people with: It’s easier to convince people quickly to support cutting taxes rather than raising them, or to shrink government rather than grow it. “It’s a medium where people make decisions very quickly. People have a lot of things going on in their lives. They had a hard day in the office. They want to get into the yard. You have 10, 12 seconds. How do you get them to stop in their tracks, write a check? You have to have a pre-sold issue.”
In 2004 and now in 2006, John Kerry, Howard Dean and the current web-savvy campaigns (like Ned Lamont in Connecticut) have a simple “pre-sold” issue, Viguerie said: They’re “not George Bush” (or Bush-supporting politicians like Sen. Joe Lieberman). That’s the reason they’ve gotten an early jump on the Internet; being out of power helps sell a message. He said liberals will need to develop more of a message to gain power.
One question before the panel: How will bloggers and the Internet factor in the 2008 presidential elections? Already leading Democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton and Mark Warner have hired prominent bloggers who command loyal progressive followings. Don’t be surprised to see a candidate try to snap up Connecticut’s leading politically-oriented blogger and visionary, Aldon Hynes (pictured), who’s currently camped out with Ned Lamont’s Senate primary campaign.
Hynes suggested Friday that the political establishment may be thinking in yesterday’s terms. In 2008, power will move on the web to people who know how to speak with people who don’t already agree with them rather than preach to the choir, he suggested.
The challenge for bloggers is to “change the discourse,” he said. He spoke of how the Nixon-Kennedy debate in 1960 ushered in the era of TV politics, of marketed politicians speaking in sound bites to the public. Hynes sees a promise of making the discourse two-way through the Internet — not just “talking back to politicians,” but people from different backgrounds talking to each other.
His description of the mission: “Taking the discussion out of the echo chambers, whether it’s a left-leaning echo chamber or a right-leaning echo chamber, and taking it to people who have not been involved in politics.”
“Political blogs represent only 5 percent of the blogopshere,” Hynes noted. “A lot of other discussion is taking place online. People talk about their cats. A lot of the discussion goes on infertility.” Women who have lost babies “bond very closely.” Campaigns wouldn’t consider them “political” bloggers. But when a Virginia state senator proposed a law that would hurt women who have had miscarriages, the news shot through an infertility blog, whose founder appeared on “Nightline.” That killed the proposal.
1:10 p.m.
Right now I’m sitting in a room full of bloggers and freelance writers of all ages. They’re plotting the creation of a New England version of The Huffington Post.
During the course of my three days here, I’ve met other journalists who want to start sites like the Independent. I’ve come across dozens of localized web sites, some news-oriented, some more opinion-oriented, some involving kids, that are breaking new ground and snatching journalistic power from greedy corporations. I spoke on a panel with a man named Christopher Mackin; his firm, Ownership Associates, helps link capital to workers who want to own their own companies through ESOPs. He wants to see that trend spread through newspapers as an alternative to media chain ownership. I’m leaving here with hope. We’re not alone in what we’re doing in New Haven. It’s a promising new virtual, and real, world out there.