Category Archive for ‘RNC’ at Blog P.I.

Archive for the 'RNC' Category

C-SPAN 2.0 (Ft. New Media Strategies)

Published by William Beutler on August 13, 2008 in #DNC08, #RNC08, 2008 Conventions, Barack Obama, Blog Consultants, C-SPAN, Cable News, DNC, John McCain, Metapost, New Media Strategies, RNC, Television, Twitter, Web 2.0, Web video, Website Design, White House '08 and William Beutler. 2 Comments

C-SPAN 2.0 Featuring New Media Strategies

I don’t write about clients often. When I do it’s really something, and this is really something: New Media Strategies will be working through the conventions with C-SPAN, perhaps my favorite Beltway news organization, to run their Convention Hub. The website was designed by NMS partner JESS3, will be maintained by the multi-partisan Public Affairs practice, with editorial oversight and video from the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network. I wish I could show it to you. I can’t just yet, but as I said, it’s going to be really something.

What I can offer are details about the Convention Hub microsites. There will be two, one for each convention, with video and blog coverage around the clock:

C-SPAN will provide exclusive video from the conventions, and for the first time, this C-SPAN video is searchable, clippable and embeddable. As someone who has tried (unsuccessfully) to jerry-rig an embeddable C-SPAN video, this is a huge leap forward.

NMS will feed the latest convention reporting and blogging to the Convention Hub around the clock. Or as our official language puts it, “extensive real-time blogosphere coverage using NMS’ proprietary combination of software and trained human analysts.”

More about that software another time; all I can say is that it answers the questions I’ve asked about such analysis tools.

The Hub will also include Twitter feeds of users using the hashtags #RNC08 and #DNC08 (and surely other tags, as their usage rises).

The site goes live at c-span.org/politics later this month. The Democratic Hub will be at c-span.org/politics/DNC08 and the Republican Hub will be at c-span.org/politics/RNC08.

NMS will have a presence at each convention to help to facilitate coverage and promote the Convention Hub. It certainly doesn’t hurt that we have bloggers credentialed to both (see you in St. Paul).

There is more, but I’m not exactly sure what I didn’t see in the press release that’s public, so I’d better hold off for now. At the moment, this is the only public hint on c-span.org:

Meanwhile, the C-SPAN Convention Hub is already drawing praise from one of C-SPAN’s (few) notable critics. The Sunlight Foundation has differed with C-SPAN before over distribution of copyrighted C-SPAN video, so they are enthusiastic about the open nature of the Convention Hubs:

The convention announcement marks a new moment for C-SPAN as a modern Internet information provider. Once a small cable channel with a dream; now with embeddable web video, Twitter hashtags, and aggregated blog posts.

As a longtime C-SPAN junkie, I couldn’t be more proud to play a small part in this project. How dependent am I on the C-SPAN network?

I wake up to Washington Journal every weekday morning (my Twitter account will bear this out).

Before I found podcasts, I’d listen to streaming Realplayer segments from the program (I still listen to the podcast of Brian Lamb’s Sunday night Q&A).

Back in college I would sometimes wake up early (4 a.m.) to catch particular episodes live, such as the first of the Hitchens-Sullivan conversations with Lamb, shortly after 9/11.

If it’s the weekend and my television is not on baseball or football, it’s on BookTV.

The tagline of my personal blog, The Washington Canard, is: “Where C-SPAN is the local TV news.”

The good news is that it’s a supportable addiction.

And by way of conclusion, a confession: I want this searchable video for my own reasons. On Election night 2004, The Hotline worked all through the night covering the coverage, as the election tipped from Kerry winning the exit polls to Bush winning the popular vote. If you’ve seen my Facebook photo, this is where that crazy image comes from.

As usual, C-SPAN cameras were in the office for Chuck Todd and Vaughn Ververs to offer recaps, also deep into the morning hours. Sometime around 3 o’clock in the morning, I informed friends watching from the coverage back on the West Coast to look carefully: As the cameras rolled, I picked up a plastic trash bin and… well, I danced through the background.

The waltz, I think.

I entered left with vulcanized dance partner, twirling across one shoulder, behind the talking head, past the other shoulder, and exit right. To this date, it’s still my best television appearance. And I look forward to the day, much sooner now, that I can embed this on Blog P.I.

What If They Held a Federal Election and No One Noticed?

Published by William Beutler on December 12, 2007 in 50 State Strategy, 527s, Congress, Daily Kos, Elections, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Local Politics, Midterms '06, Ohio Politics, Online Fundraising, RNC, RedState, Special Election, Virginia Politics, Washington Post and William Beutler. 0 Comments

Last night Republicans retained two House seats in special elections called to replace members who passed away earlier this year. This morning, Captain Ed led his recap with the observation:

Had the Republicans lost their two special election contests to replace deceased GOP House members, one would see the papers filled with analyses of the coming debacle for Republican hopes in 2008. Now that they have won both handily, expect most to either ignore the races altogether or chalk up the wins to local Republican strength.

Indeed, about the closer-watched Ohio election the Washington Post merely ran an AP story on A02; the Viriginia story ran on B05 in the Metro section. Neither buried, but neither featured. Had Weirauch had won, the anti-Republican mood of ‘06 would seem to be continuing. So it’s kind of funny where the Post chose to cut off the wire report:

But Democrats had high hopes about Weirauch’s chances against the younger Latta. This was her third run for the House, and last year, against Gillmor, she received the biggest share of the vote — 43 percent — of any Democrat in the district’s history.

I noticed the same dearth of barking from the blogs, too. Here’s everything the Memeorandum algorithm deemed significant this morning:

And the whole story was off the page by the beep of twelve.

Daily Kos featured just one recap of the special election, which seemed very bitter even after explaining how the NRCC had spent a big chunk of its cash on hand:

The Republicans are still trying to pretend that 2006 was an aberration. Yet they have to go all-out, it seems, to hold the ground they already have. Yes, I was hoping for a better performance in this district. Yes, I’m disappointed.

Meanwhile, the RNC’s Jason Richardson said nyah in a post for GOP.com and at RedState, focused not on the party committees, but on the extra-party support apparatus:

Weirauch had heavy support from the DCCC, Daily Kos, Act Blue, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, Harry Reid, and EMILY’s LIST. We were severely out-manned in Ohio and Virginia and this is what they have to show for it? We came to the game to win. All in all, the liberal blogosphere should take heed: You’re not as powerful as you think and it’s about results not PR.

To be sure, these were retentions and the Virginia election was never much of a contest. But the Ohio race between Republican Bob Latta and Democrat Robin Weirauch was a focal point of both parties in recent weeks, with both parties’ house committees pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the district. Online, Slatecard and Big Red Tent both spotlighted the race and sent out fundraising pleas; Slatecard raised $1,908 from 21 supporters. Meanwhile Weirauch apparently collected more than $93,000 from ActBlue, some $15,600 raised by the Daily Kos/Open Left-backed Blue Majority and $12,300 by Wesley Clark’s WesPAC.

One race was obviously a dud and the other would prove to be one, too. It’s hard to nationalize a special election, and there was no Paul Hackett. In fact, there was barely an Iraq debate — though the Democrat in the Viriginia race, Philip Forgit, was an Iraq veteran. So the leftroots raised more money, but the rightroots (if not Rightroots) ended up with the win. But neither the leftosphere nor rightosphere owns this win or loss. This race just wasn’t won or lost online. And if it was a status quo election, Republicans have to be pleased with that.

Update: I somehow managed to miss Eric Pfeiffer’s understated observation, posted just after the beep-beep of twelve-thirty:

Bloggers Respond With Restraint to Yesterday’s OH/VA Special Elections

At least.

The One on the Right is on the Left

Published by William Beutler on August 16, 2007 in Entertainment, John Edwards, Oppo Research and RNC. 3 Comments

Almost a year ago, Blog P.I. called out a tone-deaf oppo docment from the RNC making a ham-fisted and easily-refuted argument against Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas, and by extension the entire lefty netroots. Today U.S. News’ Washington Whispers points out another one, which is even worse.

This time they sought to draw attention to John Edwards’ high-rolling, high-spending ways (which every political reporter already knows about) with a mailer trying to sully John Edwards’ name by tying him to… Johnny Cash?

Seriously:

RNC mailer tags John Edwards as Johnny Cash

Unsurprisingly, Cash’s estate contacted the RNC (and presumably U.S. News) to ask that the Highwayman’s name be removed from future editions. So apparently now they’re calling him “Johnny Bills,” which doesn’t make any sense.

But it makes more sense than trying to drag down Johnny Cash’s name. At least an unidentified RNC official conceded the mistake to Washington Whispers:

We’re in a ring of fire. … They called us and said they had some issues with the trademarks and all. But they were cool about it. I mean, we have the same constituency.

Or maybe they thought associating Edwards with Cash would somehow… hurt Edwards? The connection between the two Johns is non-existent, except maybe that both their middle initials is “R.”

As a Johnny Cash fan, you can certainly count me as displeased with the RNC’s attempt to make “Johnny Cash” sound like a bad thing. And let’s not forget, this is the same guy who once sang, in the song whence this post derives its name:

Now this should be a lesson if you plan to start a folk group Don’t go mixin’ politics with the folk songs of our land Just work on harmony and diction Play your banjo well And if you have political convictions keep them to yourself

By all means, RNC, keep hitting John Edwards on his rhetoric and economic proposals. And his being out of touch with the electorate is fair game, too. But please, leave the Man in Black out of it.

Is Our Campaign Flacks Learning?

Published by William Beutler on June 2, 2007 in DNC, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Language, Metapost and RNC. 0 Comments

If you read the Drudge Report or watch cable news, you couldn’t have missed the spelling error that (literally) hung over Hillary Clinton’s speech to Silicon Valley bigwigs this week:

Whoops! But wait, have you checked the front page of the RNC’s website, GOP.com, today?

To be fair, a website is not a high profile media event. On the other hand, it is the party’s official site, and the rightosphere certainly notices the DNC’s page, Democrats.org, when they make mistakes.

The Clinton team’s error strikes me as a full-fledged spelling error — “tomorrow” is frequently included in lists of commonly misspelled words. The RNC’s error appears to be a case of typing too fast — look at your keyboard: the letters G, H and T are pretty much all in the same place.

I don’t know what it all means, but I do know I checked this post for typos before publishing.

Merry GOP-Round

Published by William Beutler on January 4, 2007 in Blog Consultants, Campaigns, RNC, Relaunches, Republicans, Startups, Virginia Politics and Website Design. 3 Comments

It’s been a busy few weeks for Republican bloggers in Washington: since late December, a number of Republican aides and activists have changed jobs, created new partnerships or relaunched old ventures. Let’s take a walk:

Start with Jon Henke, the Virginia delegate to QandO who this summer took on the thankless task of trying to save George Allen on the very Internet that would eventually do him in. His next job might not be much easier, but it should at least be a little more stable — on January 1 Henke officially announced he’ll be joining the Republican Communications Office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as New Media Coordinator. His family will be following him from Richmond, and I hear he could use some tips on finding a place in DC.
My headline references one childhood amusement, but let’s invoke another: If there’s a game of musical chairs being played, it’s over at Heritage. Last year Mark Tapscott, Director of the Center for Media and Public Policy, decamped for the Washington Examiner editorial page. Shortly thereafter, Tim Chapman took the job, fresh off a stint at Townhall during its late-middle period. Now he too is moving on, to assume the role of Senior Communications Adviser for Sen. Jim DeMint. Taking his place as of February 1 will be Rob Bluey, current online editor of Human Events. Replacing Bluey will be TBA, a hotshot young go-getter straight out of… okay, I know you know what TBA means.
There probably are not very many new media consultants working for presidential candidates at the moment — Pat Hynes (McCain) and Peter Daou (Clinton) come to mind first — but now there is another: Just a few weeks ago, when ex-Gov. Mitt Romney did not yet have to put an “ex-” before his title, the likely presidential contender hired the blog coordinator of then-Sen. Bill Frist’s VOLPAC. Bluey had the story first, reporting Romney’s acquisition of Stephen Smith, not to be confused with Stephen A. Smith.
A development of a different sort is the relaunch of PatrickRuffini.com. When Ruffini accepted the job of eCampaign director for the Republican National Committee in 2005, the first casualty of the job was his popular and beautifully-designed personal blog — by his choice, not the RNC’s. (Doing right by your job and your blog is no easy task, I’ll tell you what.) But as of the new year, PatrickRuffini.com is back — and back, and back, and back — with a sidebar blog, retooled 2008 Wire and a tech blog called Overclocked. If you’ve had to take this one out of your aggregator before, you’ll probably enjoy putting all these new feeds back in this time.
Maybe the most interesting development is the creation of the David All Group. All has made a name for himself doing creative work, mostly on behalf of Rep. Jack Kingston. I believe All’s firm is the first Republican strategy firm in Washington predicated on social media and the blogosphere. At launch, the site features a blog where All comments on politics and technology, which is already more than a perfunctory product demonstration — see, for instance, his in-depth, screen shot-laden (extra points) recap of how the “macaca” controversy unfolded. But something else caught my eye — the business address. I’m not quite an expert on Capitol Hill, but I was pretty sure the listed address was on a residential block. And I’m still a journalist, kind of, so… Yup. I don’t know if it’s his home address (and I don’t blame him for not returning that e-mail query) but it’s certainly somebody’s residential address.
A much more complex story is the recent sale of community site RedState to Eagle Publishing. That one will get its own post, soon enough.

A (NZ) Bearish Take on the New Republican Leadership

Published by William Beutler on November 16, 2006 in Campaigns, Internecine Battles, PorkBusters, RNC and Republicans. 1 Comment

The Senate Republicans chose their leadership today, and while no one was much surprised or upset by Mitch McConnell’s ascension to Minority Leader, the return of Trent Lott to the whip position — which he held a decade ago, before becoming leader and then becoming the first major public figure to be brought low by the blogosphere — is not pleasing anyone. The leftosphere excepted, of course.

On Friday the House GOP votes on its leadership, and if conventional wisdom holds, the rightosphere may find the results even more disappointing.

Perhaps hoping to forestall the expected defeat of conservative favorites Mike Pence (for leader) and John Shadegg (for whip), pseudonymous GOP blog organizer NZ Bear — first known for his link and traffic ratings (which he compiled as a hobby long before Technorati went into business) and later for leading the Porkbusters effort — put together a successful series of conference calls wherein leadership contenders submitted themselves to the questions of conservative bloggers. (These were covered most diligently by Blog P.I.’s Higgins, Extreme Howard Mortman.)

Some of the questions were drawn from a concurrent project — the collection of nearly 300 reader-submitted questions, which were subsequently voted on by 1,135 bloggers and blog-reading individuals.

The conference calls have now concluded, and the vote is back in the hands of the House GOP caucus (where, come to think, it actually always was). But I thought it would still be worth grabbing the top- and bottom-ranked questions, as they give a pretty good insight to what the rightosphere thinks is important (and unimportant) for the 110th Congress.

First, the three most popular:

Question:

Popularity:

Question:

Popularity:

Question:

Popularity:

There are a few irregularities here; that last one asks several distinct questions, whereas the second entry — besides possibly being planted by Dick Cheney — is really more of a complaint than a query. However, the hot-button concerns above are definitely expressed more coherently than the not-so-hot-button issues at the end of the long list:

Question:

Popularity:

Question:

Popularity:

Question:

Popularity:

Whoever submitted that last question can be legitimately unhappy that it was deemed even less popular than the practice of spelling “balls” with an errant apostrophe.

While we’re on the subject of conservative blogger discontent with the GOP’s post-election moves, here’s what they think of the White House’s endorsement of Florida Sen. Mel Martinez over outgoing Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele to be chairman of the Republican National Committee, according to a poll conducted by Hot Air:

Rightosphere overwhelmingly favors Michael Steele to Mel Martinez for RNC chair

The right-blogosphere could have a couple of long years ahead of it — at least.

Photoshop: Still Harder Than You Think

Published by William Beutler on October 8, 2006 in 9/11 Attacks, Blogs vs. MSM, DNC, Daily Kos, Earned Media, George W. Bush, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, National Security, Photoshop and RNC. 15 Comments

Yesterday afternoon, Michelle Malkin and Charles Johnson reported more or less simultaneously on a curious image (since removed) from the front page of the DNC website, purporting to show a U.S. soldier “hurting” because of “GOP broken promises.” To wit:

Canadian soldier fauxtoshop job by the DNC

Only problem: The pictured soldier is actually Canadian, and Johnson’s readers quickly located more stills, providing conclusive evidence that a Democratic Photoshopper had doctored the image to remove a medal evidently believed to be a dead giveaway (but embarrassingly leaving another — the funny lapel pin).

This phenomenon is common enough now that such images have come to merit their own word: Fauxtoshop. In November 2005, MoveOn.org ran a TV spot conservative bloggers found politically outrageous, and which luckily happened to be an example of this burgeoning trend. Much like this latest imbroglio, the uniforms of foreign troops (this time, British) were modified to look more American:

British soldier fauxtoshop job by MoveOn (original)

British soldier fauxtoshop job by MoveOn (doctored)

In both cases, one wonders just how hard it would be to find a genuine photograph of members of the U.S. armed services looking vaguely aggrieved or lining up for a plateful of slop. The circumstances were slightly different in one of the earliest instances of blog-era political fauxtoshoppery, an image from the front page of the Bush-Cheney ‘04 official website, offending sections encircled by an unidentified Kossack:

Here, the idea was to make it look a lot cooler, as if this wall of troops just went on forever. Just as their counterparts on the right saw leftist perfidy in later fauxtoshop jobs, this manipulation was seized upon by the nascent netroots as another strike against A”W”OL.

But what should we make of all this? Be assured, neither side is above manipulating images of American troops for political expediency. These incidents say a lot less about comparative patriotism than than about the primacy of images in propaganda. Good visuals are hard to come by, and if a deceptive visual is more striking than a real image, unfortunately, that’s considered good enough.

P.S. There is also, of course, the recent case of photo manipulation by Lebanese Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj, also brought to light at Little Green Footballs:

While it falls beyond U.S. partisan considerations and does not involve soldiers per se, it is also probably the biggest Photoshop fraud uncovered by those pesky bloggers, and certainly deserves mention here.

P.P.S. Any journalism professor worth his whiskey makes sure freshman communications students hear about the distortive power of photographs. Already in the curriculum, I’m sure, is the recent case of an ambiguous photograph by Thomas Hoepker of young Brooklynites observing South Manhattan on Sept. 11, which has been the recent subject of debate at Slate:

Unlike the military-themed images above, this photo underwent no changes. When it’s hard enough to tell what undoctored images mean, one might hope that propagandists would use images in their proper contexts — but one might be hoping for an awful long time.

Hey (Hey) You (You) Get Off Of My Comment Board!

Published by William Beutler on October 4, 2006 in DCCC, Democrats, Midterms '06 and RNC. 3 Comments

In all likelihood, the Foley scandal will redound to the Democrats’ electoral benefit in a few short weeks — but it presents obstacles the Dems too must avoid, and not just a risky alliance with traditional homophobes, as John Dickerson suggests. There are also activists on the left who will promote the scandal with an intensity that would be unseemly for “responsible” Democrats to partake in. Take for instance, Mike Rogers, a DC-based activist notorious/celebrated for forcing gay Republicans out of the closet.

Some in the rightosphere see potential conspiracy in the fact that Rogers showed up early in the comment section (since removed) at the fake-but-accurate Stop Sex Predators blog. They shouldn’t; Rogers was only too glad to help get the word out, but by all appearances, he got scooped. Otherwise, it would have appeared first on his own blog, instead of an anonymous black ops blog. Here is a Rogers post at his own site, on Oct. 1:

Well the good news is that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is finally getting it. I called their Director of Communications, Bill Burton, before the Foley story broke to let him know about Foley (and another case) were coming down the pike. While Burton promised to have someone email or return my call and didn’t, I am glad he followed up on my call and was ready on Friday to come out of the gate running. The bad new is they are still not paying enough attention… There are others within reach… If the Democrats would only fight half as hard as the Republicans. I posted comments at the DCCC website on the Foley entry. Not only do their promises of returned calls and emails never come to fruition, but now they are deleting my comments from their blog, The Stakeholder.

Rogers seems genuinely puzzled that the DCCC would remove his comments — also referencing his contact with Burton — from their blog, which is amusing, really. Considering the hay Republicans made of user-generated Bush/Hitler comparisons on MoveOn’s website in 2004 and GOP campaign committees’ proven eagerness to publicize Democrats’ association with their over-enthusiastic and unpredictable supporters, it should come as no surprise that the DCCC would like to save themselves this press release attack.

Of course, the NRCC will probably let this one slide — it’s certainly not in their interest to keep the focus on ex-Rep. Foley’s behavior. Conservative bloggers, however, perhaps unmindful of who all they may cause headaches for, can be counted on to pursue the angle relentlessly.

P.S. Believe it or not, another post has appeared at Stop Sex Predators:

I’m thrilled that so many folks are looking at this simple blog. Please attempt to limit your comments to the purpose of this blog.

Pay no attention to the curtain (behind which there is surely some man)!

If you have any ideas that I should post, please let me know. I’m happy to pass along information about the current situation, but would much prefer to keep marching toward the large goal or stopping sex predators. I don’t think we’ll see it in the Congress anytime soon, so let’s focus our energy elsewhere.

Okay, now you’re just wasting your own time.

Who Are The Ad Wizards Who Came Up With This One?

Published by Olly Ruff on August 24, 2006 in Campaigns, Daily Kos, Lamont v. Lieberman, National Politics and RNC. 3 Comments

Unintended amusement abounds at this GOP press release, which is either an attempt to damage the Lamont CT SEN campaign by linking it to Daily Kos or vice versa. To a devotee of attack journalism and smear campaigns, it’s a rather unsatisfying document; we carry no brief for Kos here, but when the slings and arrows are this poor — or this poor — it’s hard not to remark upon it.

After a puzzling focus on the fact that Markos Moulitsas apparently went on holiday this summer and has recently returned, the release warms up by collecting a few of Kos’ pricklier comments — the infamous “Screw ‘em,” etc — and chides him for calling Joe Lieberman a “sore loser.” If you recall the “Sore Loserman” meme from 2000, they’re not really on very firm ground here.

As is typical of the form, the sourcing varies from overzealous to non-existent: the Las Vegas Review-Journal is invoked to establish that there might just be some kind of a connection between the blog “Daily Kos” and the convention “Yearly Kos” — or, possibly, to establish the unthinkably controversial statement that dKos is “left-leaning” — whereas the statement

MOULITSAS’ NEW JOB: CO-CHAIR OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY

just sort of hangs there in space. At best, we get deft mischaracterization, whereby

“I know it’s not the most popular thing to say, but the French are right. You don’t win wars against terrorism on the battlefield.”

is summarized as:

Moulitsas On Fighting Terrorism: “The French Are Right.”

and the fun game — good for any high-traffic site of any political affiliation — in which the site’s proprietor is criticized for the ridiculous or offensive statements of their commenters or diarists. The rest of the time we’re left with their amusingly obstinate refusal to say “Democratic Party,” the assertion that two thirds of the “Democrat” leadership “fled to” Yearly Kos, and the off-message allegation that dKos is an “out-of-the-mainstream blog,” which is less defensible even than it is comprehensible. As far as the leftosphere is concerned, dKos built the mainstream — and that’s exactly the criticism the RNC would presumably wish to wield against blogs of the left.

Of course, the point is not that the RNC shouldn’t be trying to drum up bad publicity about Kos and his blog. The point is that they really should be doing a much, much better job than this. What’s more, if they really are intending this as the first shot in an ongoing campaign (see “Lieberman v. Lamont” halfway down the page, see also here) then it’s especially alarming. One assumes their next salvo will include an informative paragraph explaining what “web log” means.

Blog P.I.

Archive for the 'RNC' Category

C-SPAN 2.0 (Ft. New Media Strategies)

What If They Held a Federal Election and No One Noticed?

The One on the Right is on the Left

Is Our Campaign Flacks Learning?

Merry GOP-Round

A (NZ) Bearish Take on the New Republican Leadership

Photoshop: Still Harder Than You Think

Hey (Hey) You (You) Get Off Of My Comment Board!

Who Are The Ad Wizards Who Came Up With This One?

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