DEL.ICIO.USGeorgian gets GOP’s attention
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, December 26, 2008
Macon — In the coming debate over what a reformed and revived Republican Party should look like, one of the most influential voices from Georgia won’t belong to a governor, a congressman or a U.S. senator.
It will come from a 33-year-old former attorney, hunched over a keyboard in his Macon home, or tapping out his essays from the confines of a local coffeehouse on the edge of Mercer University.
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Erick Erickson is editor-in-chief and the only paid employee of the 4-year-old conservative Web site RedState.com. He remains a near-stranger to Republicans who make up the grassroots, grits-and-eggs gatherings in Georgia.
But via the Internet, Erickson and his band of 20 volunteer contributors from across the country have become an essential, beyond-the-Beltway sounding board for a GOP that, nationally, has suffered a generational defeat at the hands of President-elect Barack Obama and his tech-savvy, Democratic army.
“RedState is the largest right-of-center community online,” said Erickson, who also runs PeachPundit.com for issues closer to home.
While he could walk through the state Capitol ignored and unmarked, Republican congressmen and senators ring Erickson’s house.
Talk radio kings Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity drop his name on air. Former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), weighing a run for president in 2007, used the Web site to announce that he had endured a bout with cancer, and that it was in remission.
“We were able to control [the story], but most importantly, we were able to get instant feedback without polls,” said Mark Corallo, Thompson’s spokesman at the time. Corallo remains a fan. “There is a real sense that the ideological roots of the conservative movement are alive and well on RedState.”
Not every Republican would agree.
After Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) won his runoff in early December, Erickson blistered the Republican incumbent for making himself vulnerable: “You’ve gotten squishy on financial issues. You’ve gotten squishy on business issues. You’ve gotten comfortable in the establishment and the base does not see you as dependable anymore. In short, Saxby, you [ticked] off everybody.”
Because Erickson works out of small-town America, and, as a “hobby,” serves as a Macon city council member, it should come as no surprise that he remains an admirer of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Erickson came to the defeated vice presidential nominee’s rescue when, after the election, stories emerged of her lack of readiness for her job.
Erickson launched what he called “Operation Leper,” promising to identify the suspected leakers on the staff of Republican nominee John McCain — and make them outcasts.
Conservatives have long dominated talk radio, which has fit well with the national party’s top-down approach to rallying the troops. In Fox News, they have a secure base on cable TV.
But Democrats have outmaneuvered the GOP on the Internet, recognizing its usefulness in bottom-up, grass-roots organization, communication and — most important — raising money.
RedState.com was originally created as a Republican version of the Daily Kos, the liberal blog and political forum created by Markos Moulitsas. But the national gap between liberal and conservative on the Internet remains vast.
Both Daily Kos and RedState hit monthly high marks in October as the presidential campaign reached a fever pitch. According to Sitemeter.com, which keeps track of visitors to Web sites, Daily Kos had nearly 80 million page views. RedState.com had 2.8 million.
“You want to meet your competition where they’re playing, and Eric has been trying to do that,” said U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who has emphasized the use of new media. Kingston has worked with RedState from its inception in 2004.
“We could get the message out to the red-meat crowd, and when [President] Bush or whomever was not acting like a Republican, we could separate ourselves from where he was going. So [Erickson] has been important to us. In turn, he can keep our feet to the fire more than we want him to.”
RedState is only one of a myriad of conservative blogs on the Internet. Overall, Townhall.com, which emphasizes links to news stories and established conservative pundits, is viewed by more people. But Townhall’s blogging community — where individuals post their own articles and trade ideas — is only a third the size of RedState, again according to Sitemeter.com.
Erickson and RedState have also drawn a more muscular line between ideas and activism.
After last month’s election, which included Democratic gains in both the U.S. House and Senate, Erickson joined a group of tech-savvy young Republicans to demand changes in a party they view as overly centralized and, quite frankly, dominated by old fogies.
They’ve posted their requirements for an Internet-capable party on a Web site called rebuildtheparty.com. Among their demands:
• The recruitment of 5 million new Republican online activists. “Even a compelling message won’t go anywhere if we have no one to communicate it to,” reads the group’s manifesto.
• Require local campaigns not just to raise money, if they want to qualify for political support from the RNC, but provide e-mail addresses of voters as well. For a congressional race, the group recommends a minimum of 5,000 names.
• A commitment to younger voters. The group wants 40 percent of GOP candidates to be under the age of 40. “Undoing the damage to our party’s brand among America’s youth will take more than new slogans and hip spokespeople,” Erickson and his allies wrote.
Erickson is quick to say that he is no journalist. He’s a political activist whose postings are aimed at motivating conservatives to, in his words, “put down the keyboard and pick up the telephone.”
Even a radio talk show king like Limbaugh very rarely urges his followers to lobby individual members of Congress.
Erickson would like RedState to serve as a bridge. “When you start working with talk radio, which the left can’t do, you can get a leg up on the left very quickly,” he said.
Much debate over the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee is being conducted on RedState. The election is scheduled for January.
“I think the base wants change. And they haven’t seen leadership change,” Erickson said.
But Erickson is also among those who say the Republican Party can’t rebound by abandoning the issues — such as opposition to abortion and gay marriage — that have won the GOP the loyalty of social conservatives.
“The issue of life is one I think the GOP can’t yield on. It’s got to be central to the party,” Erickson said. That, he admits, won’t sit well with many of what he calls “leave-me-the-hell-alone” Republicans.
A return to strict federalism is Erickson’s solution. “Why not [put] social issues out of bounds on the national level? Let each state decide.
“I wouldn’t have a problem if, tomorrow, Georgia became a no-exceptions, pro-life state. Wouldn’t bother me in the least,” he said.
“I would have a real big problem, though, if we then decided to start prosecuting someone who went across the state line to have an abortion. That isn’t the way the system is meant to work. I may disagree with the decision, but it’s not mine to impose.”
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