The GOP, McCain Fall Flat Online

Posted by Chris Bowers, Open Left at 7:55 AM on August 8, 2008.

Republican campaigns and party committees have a great history of successful, viral, online campaigns:

Remember the MyGOP fundraiser that was so popular it lost money? Remember when the RNC blog went weeks on end without being updated in the middle of the 2006 election season? Ever notice how Act Blue has raised more than 50 times as much money for Democrats as Rightroots has raised for Republicans? Well, Republicans aren't letting these past netroots bellyflops deter them.

Undeterred by these past failures, last fall the NRCC held a video contest where users were asked to submit their own ads on why the Democratic Congress wasn't working. The top five videos were to be voted on by the general public. Problem was, there were only five entries, including this one:

Now, another remarkable campaign can finally join this storied legacy, as only six people have taken up John McCain's offer to post pre-packaged talking points on blogs.

In case you hadn't heard, here is the background:

On McCain's Web site, visitors are invited to "Spread the Word" about the presumptive Republican nominee by sending campaign-supplied comments to blogs and Web sites under the visitor's screen name. The site offers sample comments ("John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan . . .") and a list of dozens of suggested destinations, conveniently broken down into "conservative," "liberal," "moderate" and "other" categories. Just cut and paste.

Spamers and trolls earn points by posting more comments, and the points can be turned in for a wide range of John McCain related prizes (I'm not kidding).

Curious to see how many people were participating in this project, I performed a Google search on one phrase in one of the two talking points: "respectful of the goodness in each other". There were about 150 results, most of which were either reports on the McCain speech where he says that phrase, or blog posts mocking the online campaign. Only six results appeared to be serious attempts to spread around the talking point. See one, two, three, four, five and six.

This isn't a new campaign either, as it has been around since at least late May. While only six participants in three months might seem pretty pathetic, I guess they at least got more people to participate than they did in their earlier contests. Also, I haven't looked around for the other talking point yet, so it might rise up to a total of twelve once I do. So, instead of mocking them, perhaps I should be worried about their growing online activist army. At a rate of one new participant every year, they should catch Democrats in the year 5,677,244. Yikes!

Tagged as: john mccain, republican party, the internet, online activism

Chris Bowers was a full-time editor at MyDD from May 2004 until June 2007. Some of his projects have included the creation of the Liberal Blog Advertising Network, the first scientifically random poll of progressive netroots activists, the Use It Or Lose It campaign, the nation's most accurate forecast of Democratic house pickups in 2006, and the 2006 Googlebomb the Elections campaign.