REPUBLICANS ONLINE….Micah Sifry has taken a look at online activism and says that Democratic presidential candidates are way ahead of their Republican counterparts. Part of the reason, he thinks, is that Republicans are clueless about the net:
By and large, none of the Republican presidential candidates appear to be making a serious effort to garner support online through MySpace or Facebook; nor do they appear to have much outreach to blogs going; nor do any of them have a clue about Flickr. In fact, while several of the Democratic sites have front page links to many of those sites (and others), I don’t think I saw one on any Republican site. Is entrepreneurial behavior dead in the Republican party?
But even this doesn’t explain the massive online imbalance in favor of Democrats. Sifry’s conclusion? “The Republican field just isn’t generating as much enthusiasm online as the Democrats.”
That sounds right to me. Aside from the obvious fact that Democrats are hungrier than Republicans because they’ve been out of office since 2000, the Republican field is remarkably weak this cycle. Compared to Democrats, who have half a dozen genuinely strong contenders, John McCain is really the only high-profile candidate they’ve got, and even he’s hardly setting the world on fire. It’s pretty amazing, really. From being on top of the world a mere two years ago, Republicans are having trouble just treading water these days.
