Patrick Ruffini has announced a new Rightroots-branded initiative called February7.org. The premise is simple: Republicans are likely to have a presumptive nominee by the morning after the morning after Super Tuesday (Tsunami Tuesday for you First Read fanboys and girls). This primary has not been as ugly as the Democrats’, but it has been ideologically dispiriting, mostly featuring candidates who fell short of conservative ideals. An early fundraising push could help rally the GOP while the Democrats are still fighting amongst themselves.
That nominee is most likely to be John McCain, while Ruffini has switched his support from “Rudy to Romney,” as he put it Tuesday night. Therefore, the most likely scenario is he will have to grudgingly switch again in about a week. If the move is a painful one for many, better then to get it over with. But there’s more to it, as he explains in the announcement on his own site:
You can probably tell that I have strong views about this nomination contest. Win or lose, I’m equally convinced of the importance of getting behind the eventual winner. A nation at war cannot afford Hillary or Obama in the White House. …
Beyond just showing support for our nominee, we’re doing this to help solve a concrete strategic problem for our Party during the month of February.
The simple fact is that when it comes to contributions from others, our candidates are broke. They’ve spent it all on Florida. No one is up on TV in any February 5th state, while Hillary and Obama have money to burn (I saw Clinton ads in California last weekend). Based on the fact that they have money to play with and have held a fundraising advantage throughout the cycle, there is a chance they could start pummeling our candidate with negative ads right away.
If we fundraise the same old traditional way — with fundraising events and direct mail early and banking on Internet enthusiasm late — we will lose. There is no way we’ll be able to get the money when and where we need it. On the Internet in particular, contributions come in late, often too late for the money to be spent effectively. We’re hoping to help frontload some of this money so that the candidate can use it against Hillary/Obama right away. When it comes to giving, early is the new late.
Well said. But for my money, the best part of the website is that one can toggle between “Stop Hillary” and “Stop Obama,” not unlike a blog that lets you change the background color:
Please notice that no “Stop Edwards” version was created.
P.S. I first heard about this through a Twitter account Ruffini set up last week: Twitter.com/February7. I followed the account back, but of 111 users Ruffini followed, only 13 followed it back. That 11.7% rate would be terrific if it was direct mail, but it isn’t that. Twitter marketing has been the focus of much discussion over the past year, but here is some evidence that the medium strongly favors established personalities — Ruffini is one, but @February7 is not. And setting up new Twitter accounts is fun, but not all that effective.
Whitman has talked with top Republicans about the possibility of a run for California governor in 2010, according to three operatives who have had discussions with her. Whitman is said to be asking detailed questions about the logistics of a run and the effect she could have as governor, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal the conversations. … 
eBay is one of the few survivors of the dot-com era, one of the great business success stories of the Internet, and Whitman has been on board since it went public in 1998. Before that, she worked with Mitt Romney at Bain & Company. Her professional credentials make her “supremely well qualified” for the job, quoth 
Despite 
symbol next to 
Matt Stoller Fails to Consolidate the Netroots
[Note: It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from Not Paul Begala, but he’s back today, for at least one more post.]
Matt Stoller, on Edwards’ departure from the race:
To paraphrase Dan Akroyd: Stoller, you ignorant slut. Or at least, you misreader of Internet polls. While dKos straw polls have consistently shown big leads for Edwards and Obama, with shifts to Dodd and Richardson, the full survey results of MoveOn.org — a measure the netroots once used to figure out what blog readers looked like — was always very different, showing stronger support for Clinton and Kucinich, but not Dodd and Richardson.
Stoller of all people should know, you can’t use a straw poll on one blog to claim the collective wisdom of the netroots. And it’s become all but tradition for the first comment on a Stoller post to call him out:
Epic fail.
Update: Yep. Hillary Clinton got nearly 30% support in MoveOn’s head-to-head poll, and just 11% from Daily Kos. They both favor Obama, but their memberships have different mindsets.