GOP not ready to concede Web to Democrats

WASHINGTON -- Some Republicans fear that they're falling behind in the online race.

"We're losing the Web right now," says Michael Turk, who was in charge of Internet strategy for President Bush in 2004.

Recent figures from NielsenNet Ratings are one measure of the gap. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards' site had about 690,000 unique visitors in March, when his wife Elizabeth announced she had cancer. That was more than the combined number of visitors to the sites of Republican contenders Rudy Giuliani (297,000), Sen. John McCain (258,000) and Mitt Romney (76,000).

There are other measures as well. No Republican comes close to matching the popularity of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois on YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. The Democrats are ahead in the online money race. The top three Democrats amassed more than $14 million over the Internet in the first three months of 2007; by contrast, the top three Republicans collected less than half of that, $6 million.

Why the disparity?

Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank that in recent months has been advising Democrats on how to take full advantage of the Web, argues that the culture of Democrats is a much better fit in the Internet world.

"What was once seen as a liability for Democrats and progressives in the past -- they couldn't get 20 people to agree to the same thing, they could never finish anything, they couldn't stay on message -- is now an asset," Leyden said. "All this talking and discussing and fighting energizes everyone, involves everyone, and gets people totally into it."

But Republicans are hardly conceding the Web campaign for 2008. They've created the group blog TechRepublican, plus QubeTV, which is part YouTube, part MySpace part Flick.

K. Daniel Glover, who edits National Journal's Technology Daily, noted several bright spots for Republicans recently.

"But look at the short history of online politics," he said. "For Republicans, the Internet is where bad things happen. Take George Allen and his 'macaca' moment ... You can kind of understand why Republicans have this almost instinctive fear of the Internet, where the mob rules."