Left vs. Right online

There has been a lot of chatter on the interwebs (for years, but again now) about the differences between the ways the political Left and Right use the Internet and blogs:

GOP losing the new-media war:

.......The right is engaged in the business of opining while the left features sites that offer a more reportorial model.

At first glance, these divergent approaches might not seem consequential. But as the 2008 campaign progresses, it's becoming increasingly clear that the absence of any websites on the right devoted to reporting -- as opposed to just commenting on the news -- is proving politically costly to Republicans.

While conservatives are devoting much of their Internet energy to analysis, their counterparts on the left are taking advantage of the rise of new media to create new institutions devoted to unearthing stories, putting new information into circulation and generally crowding the space traditionally taken by traditional media. And it almost always comes at the expense of GOP politicians.

While online Republicans chase the allure of punditry and commentary, Democrats and progressives are pursuing old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting, in a fashion reminiscent of 2004........

A different view on the left versus right online debate:

In the regular debate about about how the right can catch up online, several points are often missed. The first is that the left has developed a movement based on the interconnectedness of people inside the movement. People get recruited, energized, and leveraged. This may or may not be as much a function of larger demographic and political trends, as it has something to do with the netroots specifically.

At the same time, the right has often been better at campaign mechanics, especially in recent years. Our assumption seems to be that if we get enough people to go and vote in this country -- which we still believe is just right of center -- then we can win.

Rebranding via Blogging:

The web is conducive to insurgency movements. That's been the Democrats for the last eight years. They were out of power and needed different tools. Progressives perceived that the political culture had shifted, but the Democratic Party did not shift with it, so they began telling a story about a different vision of the Democratic Party and the political system. They made fundamental criticisms of both parties and the media, and rallied a lot of people to them. They erected a very effective mechanism for bringing the party in their direction, they created a gravitational pull so the political leaders and the money people had to come to them. That has fundamentally reshaped the Democratic Party. The Republican Party, on the other hand, was perceived by most in its base as being a more effective machine.

Via Ed Cone:

What the left does better online: report, rather than just opine.

Why they had to do it: the mainstream media was "browbeaten" into ineffectiveness.

Read the entire articles for more.

Well, an anti-democratic party cannot allow its lowly prole members to do anything but follow orders. It is a hierarchical structure where all the information (hmm, talking points and lies) flow from the top down. And how much fun is it to read second-hand lies on some blog instead of first-hand lies straight from Cheney? No amount of re-branding will ever change the basic core worldview of the GOP-ers, thus they can never have anything like a bottom-up online movement, independent from the party elders, working at reshaping the party from within.