Western CPAC Reveals Rift Between Establishment Conservative Powerbrokers And New Media Activist-Journalists
October 19, 2009 / 10:58 am • By Dr. Melissa ClouthierWestern CPAC might have been a small conservative gathering but it was certainly significant. It was as if a sample of the conservative movement was put in a petri dish, mixed with some steroids and allowed to grow over the weekend. The result was ugly.
One part of the conservative movement: The Old Guard. No joke, it’s as if Thurston Howell III and Lovey yachted to the weekend for some old time palling around and gentle joshing. Another part of the conservative movement: the old time attendees. They’ve been to every Republican gathering of any significance since the Goldwater years and they bleed Republican. Another part of the conservative movement: grassroots activists. They haven’t paid attention to politics until the Bush bailout and the continued Obama big government bonanza. They’re fiery, informed and ready to kick butt. Another part of the conservative movement: new media activist-journalists. And straddling this group: The Politicians.
At the back of the room, was Blog Row. Attendees had to walk by the bloggers to get into the room. Some attendees were groupies. They knew the bloggers, followed them on Twitter, talked to us and seemed happy we were there. Some attendees looked at us with curious interest–like seeing pandas at the zoo. We were a rare breed of animal rarely seen caged. Heck, rarely seen in the wild. Some attendees viewed Blog Row with indifference–don’t talk to the help dahling.
At the front of the room was the speaker, podium and platform. The room was small enough that speakers could see the faces of the bloggers and vice versa.
Who were the bloggers? It was a stellar cast. I’ll begin with my blog hero: Jim Hoft aka Gateway Pundit. Jim is just the nicest guy with a mischievous streak. He also likes chocolate. Also at the even, my longtime Twitter friend John Schulenburg of Infidels Are Cool. Ed Morissey was the Grand Pubah and trouble-starter. He has a problem with rudeness to authority. He was punished. Stephen Kruiser of RFCradio.com, Rachel Alexander of Intellectual Conservative, the men of Verum Serum John Sexton and Morgen Richmond (thanks for dinner gentlemen!), Ed Driscoll of Pajamas Media (he uses big, BIG words) and Caleb Heimlich of ExposeObama.com. Oh, and me.
I’m not quite sure the organizers grasped the scope of the bloggers on the panel. Each person has incredible influence both in number of people and force of reporting and ideas shared. The lack of understanding was part of the problem. Bloggers are viewed as some weird group of blabbermouths who talk on this internet thing. The Old Guard interacts with them with either indifference or with affectionate condescension–they’re the hired help.
So, when Ed Morissey wrote about the Nazi talk at WCPAC (I linked it here), the talker was shocked and dismayed. He shouldn’t have been surprised.
And then, an Old Guard funding type got seated on the New Media panel. Stephen Kruiser reports what happened:
Christopher Carmouche (rhymes with…) began his thought vomiting by giving Ed Morrissey a hard time for blogging about the impeachment nonsense earlier in the day. He then proceeded to regale us with a tale about his distaste for Twitter and Facebook, complete with a “why can’t we just pick up the phone” line that he pulled out of both his ass and 1989.
I looked over at Ed Driscoll and whispered “What in the **** is this idiot doing on the ‘New Media’ panel?”
I regret not saying that into the mic now.
After insulting the most prominent blogger there and pissing all over the reason for the panel, Carmouche then gave everyone a little lecture about avoiding the in-fighting that has plagued the Right for so long. “Planet Kruiser” fans can probably figure out who my “Tool of the Week” is going to be next Friday.
So why was he there? I’ll go out on a limb and say that may have made a donation.
The rest of us did too but we donated talent, exposure, ideas and credibility instead of money.
Carmouche runs something called GrassTopsUSA. Here’s what Mr. “Can’t We All Just Get Along?” and his company do:
This cutting edge organization charges people to send a fax to politicians. That’s right, a fax, by God! If the fax doesn’t do the trick you can order GrassTopsUSA’s premium service where they give you a stagecoach ride to Washington, D.C. and teach you how to churn butter outside your representative’s office until he or she pays attention to you.
Carmouche and his ilk are the kinds of dead weight, dinosaur idiots that conservatism doesn’t need around any more, no matter how fat their wallets are.
Stephen has more to say about this. His post nicely draws the lines.
The conservative movement is changing. It HAS to change. Does nobody on the Right remember the trouncing in the last two election cycles? Do the establishment types think that “we throw enough money at TV commercials and Republicans get elected” as one blogger said, and that will be enough? It wasn’t enough before. And it’s not enough now.
If the Republican party cannot find a way to engage with the Grassroots and partner with New Media Activist-Journalists, they will be out of power for a long time. The Party needs numbers. They need voters, not just dollars. And they won’t get elected if the very ones who stand for everything the Republican party ostensibly believes (until elected and voting) stays home.
So, some blood is going to be spilled along the way. Some blood was spilled this weekend at Western CPAC. It’s all to the good. There needs to be some clarifying moments.
Elections will NOT be won if the funders do what they’ve always done. Elections will NOT be won if new media activists are treated contemptuously and dismissed.
Interestingly, the politicians at this event seemed to get the picture. That, at least, was encouraging.
9 Responses to “Western CPAC Reveals Rift Between Establishment Conservative Powerbrokers And New Media Activist-Journalists”
October 19 2009 / 11:27 am
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Melissa,
There were at least two high profile individuals at the event who suggested (without naming names) that some of the top money people in the party were part of the problem. I think we saw that in microcosm this weekend.
October 19 2009 / 11:42 am
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The money people used to be necessary to get the message out through various media. The beautiful thing about online activism is that, the more powerful we become, the less the checkbook-carrying short bus idiots are needed.
October 19 2009 / 12:34 pm
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Thanks for the report. I haven’t donated one penny to “The Party” in 10 years, because of their continued support and backing of RINO’s. I do support individual candidates. In every Repub mailer/begger I get, I write in a big letters, with a huge thick Sharpie – Kick out the RINO’s and I “may” think about supporting you again. I don’t hide my name on who is sending it back to them (without a stamp – so they have to pay for it). I want them to KNOW what I’m thinking – and not just the answer to their loaded pre-written answers to their own questions.
October 19 2009 / 2:00 pm
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Stephen, sorry to tell you but ActBlue, the Center for American Progress (ThinkProgress), and The Huffington Post, became part of the Left’s online infrastructure because of money.
Funders on the Right should be supporting webloggers, podcasters, and twitters so they can do their online activism full-time. I’m confident $1 million spent on funding online activists is money better-well-spent than the $1 million cable tv ad buys you see various groups announce every week.
So it isn’t about online activists not needing sources of money, it’s about better spending money to build an effective and long-lasting infrastructure.
October 19 2009 / 2:08 pm
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Well, I think the problem is multi-fold. The establishment politicians (some) recommend where money should be spent. The big funders follow the lead. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle. And the big funders have their own interests, but not the nation’s necessarily at heart. And the grassroots activists have time, but little money, to put into the movement, and are often not listened to.
Sean, I think that funders on the Right want a solid ROI–non-stop positive coverage. They don’t view the online right like, say sponsoring an artist, but really, it would be the same thing.
The sponsor might have input here or there, but lets the artist do his work. In this case, the work is to influence policy and ultimately, America, to be a better place. That usually means electing Republicans. But it’s not a linear road. And often, there are critical renderings (just like artists lampooning the King).
So we need everyone working together, maybe not in a coordinated way, but at least recognizing that our aims are similar.
As more politicians see the point of online activists, they’ll influence the money people who will see the value. Good will will flow out of this more appreciative environment. And instead of beating each other up, Republicans will get elected. Hopefully.
October 19 2009 / 2:20 pm
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Melissa, an artist-sponsor model is what I envision. Fund Ace and Jeff Goldstein for a few years so they don’t have to worry about advertising revenue paying the bills. Sponsor a group of Right-thinking writers to do Talking Points Memo-style investigations. Fund a coder to think about and build the ultimate iPhone app for grassroots activism.
Such a funding model is like Silicon Valley venture capitalism. Lots of bets need to be made in the hopes that the few that succeed make a big impact.
Someone give me $1 million to spread around and let’s see what kind of damage I could do.
October 19 2009 / 5:05 pm
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What would I do with a million bucks of political money? First, I’d limit my salary and expenses to less than five percent, probably a lot less.
Two, I’d create multi-level book awards with several categories. One requirement, if you’ve already sold 3000 or more books, you can’t enter. I don’t want Glenn Beck to win this award. What I want is for him to either judge it, or have one of them named after him.
Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, and Rush can all have an award named after them. Beck for pugnacity and questions, Coulter for comedic wit, and Limbaugh for overall excellence. And if I can give 20 K to the winner, and 10 to the second, and 3 to the third, and about seven 500 buck awards to the last seven, I might be able to get our heavyweight trio to discuss them in their forums, hand out the awards possibly, and who knows, even kick in some dough to help support a worthy cause.
That’s nonfiction punditry.
Also, have awards for a Capturing the Culture fiction section. We need stories to give life to the theories. 1984 by George Orwell and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand did an awful lot of good, and they were’n't all that good books, but they gave the nightmare form in the minds of men.
This is more long-term, but actually more important than awarding punditry books. I’m going to suggest a wide array of genres be awarded. Western, Science Fiction (and yes, about a month ago, I heard a notable person say that Christianity and Sf were opposed which goes to show you that moderate fame and stupidity are not irreconciliable states.), Fantasy, Mystery, Romance.
I’d have a two tier system. If you’re a significantly published author, you can run in your category, and receive an award and a bit of cash for you and your publishing house. Say a thousand each for first place, and it goes down to third place at 250 each. The thousand the publisher gets has to be spent on promotion.
Authors have a lot of problem getting publishers to promote their books. Offer the incentive of a ‘Winner of the Tom Clancy Thriller Award’ blurb for their front cover, and a few bucks to promote it, and …who knows.
Unpublished or weakly published authors get a good bit more cash, something along the lines of the pundits.
All of this gets heavily promoted on conservative blogs by advertising buys. You pretty much can’t turn around for several weeks without stumbling into an add.
Its a question…should one offer special awards for fiction that deals with certain topics, or should one just simply say ‘write Conservative’, and leave it up to the judgement of the judges if that is done. It would be neat to have a SF novel which dealt with global warming as the fraud it is.
Put up a website with all the contestants (anything that is not totally out of place–I’m sure someone would send in a plagiarized version of Mein Kampf.). I’m not sure if doing a public voting would be possible as if this at all works it would attract lefty trolls.
This should in no way cost anywhere near a million bucks, but I’ve been long-winded enough already.
October 19 2009 / 9:27 pm
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The money people used to be necessary to get the message out
That’s what they would like you to think.
But the fact is, back then, and even now, the money people are necessary to raise money, which is used to raise more money, which is used to raise money. The only “message” that they are necessary for getting out is to give them more money.
I remember the Bob Dole (McCain I) campaign. Or, rather, I remember seeing on the news that he was nominated. I can’t remember seeing any commercials or bumper stickers or any other advertising for him. I do vividly remember reading a news story that he had burned through tens of millions of dollars on his campaign though. And after I asked myself where the hell he could have spent it since I saw zero evidence of spending even one dime, I read that almost all of the money was spent on fundraising efforts. Spending money to get money.
IT’S A SCAM PEOPLE. Ninety-five percent of these groups exist for the sole reason of soliciting funds in order to pay themselves. The occasional shooting off of the mouth that they do is designed for one purpose and one purpose only — not to actually change things — but to use it to solicit money. They may spend a nickel or dime every now and then on the cause, but most of the money is spent on “overhead,” i.e. paying themselves.
They are nothing more than leeches. Many of them are dinosaur leeches who have been around since the beginning of time, and some are newer, but their main interest is in having people think that they are a big shot and giving them money. It ain’t about actually solving the problem.
October 20 2009 / 2:33 am
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“But I thought that was Art you were trying to do?”–John Malkovich ‘True West’