Why No Righty Kos?
by Patrick Ruffini :: September 8th, 2007 12:27 amLiberaltarian ex-Daily Kos diarist David Weigel and Newsbusters are engaged in a debate over why there is no right-wing Daily Kos.
My answer, as articulated here is that there is a conservative Daily Kos, that’s it’s Free Republic, but that it doesn’t really “count” since it’s not a blog, and more critically, it won’t play nicely with the rest of the movement and it doesn’t worship candidates like Kos does.
There are vast architectural differences between FR and Kos, as critics of this comparison are wont to point out. Most of them are points in Kos’s favor. But fundamentally they were founded to fill the same gap. At the end of the day, they are both vast communities for mid-level activists. Though Kos is more blog-based and tolerant of editorializing, Weigel is perceptive enough to distinguish it from “a blog” a la Power Line or HughHewitt.com, in which the voice of the blogger dominates and others comment (or don’t, in the case of some big conservative bloggers). Daily Kos is simply a different beast than anything else in the liberal blogosphere, in much the same way that Free Republic is a different beast than anything else in the conservative blogosphere. But in terms of traffic and community, it’s still the biggest. The same item that will get a handful of comments at my personal blog and 30 to 40 on HughHewitt.com, will get upwards of 100 responses when posted to Free Republic. FR may be primitive in its architecture, but I don’t think it can be ipso facto excluded from discussions about the size and extent of conservative community online, for the sheer fact of its size.
Part of the reason that there is no “conservative Daily Kos” is that the broader conservative movement isn’t really lacking for a huge online community in the same way the left was in 2002 (DU was, and is, a joke). That community may not be the healthiest one around, but it’s still a community.
The second fact is that conservative blogs, excluding Free Republic/Lucianne/etc. for a moment, serve a fundamentally different audience than the netroots. They’re more elite, focused on policy, and interested in the execution of the war. What was going on when conservative blogs first boomed? 9/11 and the American response to it. And discussions of the size of the conservative blogosphere (strictly defined) should take into account the fact that there are only so many people who can digest the kind of almost-scholarly analysis that happens in places like Power Line, Captain’s Quarters, and Red State. The conservative blogosphere today is what the liberal blogosphere would have been if elite bloggers like Kevin Drum and Matthew Yglesias had remained the dominant voices.
This is not meant to be self-congratulatory. In fact, I think it’s probably a serious limitation in the size of our blogosphere, to the extent that’s a concern. If you want to be bigger, you’re not necessarily going to like the people you have to let in to make it happen. If and when that were to happen, the elite flavor of many leading conservative blogs today would give way to more freewheeling Daily Kos and Free Republic-like sites and comment areas.
I think it’s probably worth paying that price if we can get people acting like true activists. Conservatives have paid a price for being inattentive to candidate recruitment and what’s actually going on at the county committee level. In effect, we allowed the unchecked rise of machine operators like Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, and John Doolittle who sacrificed conservative principle for back-scratching enrichment. One of the big reasons why Larry Craig won’t be missed is that he was uninspiring career politician (and porker) with no discernible ideological moorings (beyond the political leanings of his state). It’s those kinds of machine pols that always seem to the problem, and we let them flourish by being pundits on the sidelines.
I also think conservative blogosphere has misread the marketplace. To make a crass overgeneralization here, policy is boring and politics is interesting. By blogging about policy, you choose to be boring (and that’s ok). There is probably a much bigger marketplace for people focused on elections, especially in even numbered years. (And this is Kos’s primary purpose.) Why is it that we start talking about Presidential elections two years ahead of time? Because it sells newspapers. The blogosphere overall is stagnating, but if you want to start a new blog that will get read, your best bet is 1) obsessively cover 2008 and be good at it, and 2) fill a niche, especially one covering local politics.
The ‘08 blogs like Race 4 2008 and Eye on ‘08 will probably be in five figures in daily traffic by early next year. To give you a sense of the insane community that is building around a focused group blog like Race, take a look at their 700+ comment thread during the debate. There is a market there. And a lot of passion too.
So let’s follow it.
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conservatism movement
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would you rather have Rush Limbaugh’s audience or Kos’s
We dominate a different platform
Also, the right blogosphere was effective working with the GOP and the White House when there was a unity of interest. On major issues there’s been a parting of the ways
Why of course, the answer to that is simple.
I’d rather have Rush’s audience… reading PatrickRuffini.com. 
The reason the the Kosites are successfull is that they feel that all of the future trends are in their favor. Conservatism is now seen as a failure by most of the 20 somethings. Republicans were given full control of the government and all they managed to do is make it bigger, more inefficient and more intrusive while running up a huge debt.
The reason there is not Republican leaning blogs that can help candidates is that the candidates are all in very safe districts and thus do not need the help or they have no political future.
Any 20 something looking at the future on the U. S. realize that with the demographics change sin the U.S. coupled with the failures of both Bush Administration, there is no future in conservative politics.
Superdestroy’s statement “…there is no future in conservative politics” is wrongheaded. The assertion may become a reality over the issue of immigration (too early to tell) but certainly not from any of the reasons given i.e. debt and big government, which are binging beasts that have been feeding and growing larger for 50 years.
I’ve heard conservatives say that there is no future in liberal politics because it is preached most forcefully by a group of people that don’t procreate enough to have their ideals sustained through their offspring. The contention of such theorists is that most children will one day come back around to something similar to the ideology of their parents.
Liberals like Superdestroyer tend to put too much emphasis on the “20 somethings”. Kerry was counting on it in ‘04 but they didn’t turn out to vote, just like a thousand times before. For the vast majority of that crowd, politics is peripheral to a lot of other things, but they seem more significant in polling data since the 20 somethings ALWAYS have an opinion, however uninformed it may be. They evetually wake up and discard most of the liberal dogma they learned at college when they becaome SO enlightened.
Churchill said it best, “If you aren’t a liberal when you are 20, you have no heart. If you aren’t a conservative when you are forty, you have no brain.” [paraphrased]
[…] Why “Why not a righty Kos?”? digg_url = ‘http://www.eyeon08.com/2007/09/08/why-why-not-a-righty-kos/’; digg_title = ‘Why “Why not a righty Kos?”?’; digg_bodytext = ‘It seems that every couple of months, there is a discussion about the state of disarray of the righty blogosphere. This time it is mostly a different crowd moving it. Dean Barnett of HughHewitt.com writes, ironically, in the Weekly Standard. But then, in response, we get both Dave Wiegel at Reason and Sh+Sh from Newsbusters. […]’; digg_skin = “compact”; digg_topic = “politics”; ( function() { var ds=typeof digg_skin==’string’?digg_skin:'’; var h=80; var w=52; if(ds==’compact’) { h=18; w=120; } var u=typeof digg_url==’string’?digg_url:(typeof DIGG_URL==’string’?DIGG_URL:window.location.href); document.write(”"); } )() It seems that every couple of months, there is a discussion about the state of disarray of the righty blogosphere. This time it is mostly a different crowd moving it. Dean Barnett of HughHewitt.com writes, ironically, in the Weekly Standard. But then, in response, we get both Dave Wiegel at Reason and Sh+Sh from Newsbusters. Yesterday, Patrick Ruffini got into the game too. […]
[…] It seems that every couple of months, there is a discussion about the state of disarray of the righty blogosphere. This time it is mostly a different crowd moving it. Dean Barnett of HughHewitt.com writes, ironically, in the Weekly Standard. But then, in response, we get both Dave Wiegel at Reason and Sh+Sh from Newsbusters. Yesterday, Patrick Ruffini got into the game too. […]
[…] Why No Righty Kos? Th conservative blogosphere has misread the marketplace. To make a crass overgeneralization here, policy is boring and politics is interesting. (tags: NewMedia conservatism) […]