I’ve been thinking about RedState “4.0″ for a bit now, and one of the things I keep coming back to is how to make RS more of a “platform”, from a technology perspective.

For example, I know I can go to http://www.redstate.com/diaries/IlliniJon/ to access all of my diaries. Now, I’d like to start my own blog soon, but I don’t really want to have to go to blogger or wordpress or whoever; I’d rather do it on RedState. But the link to my diaries doesn’t feel like it could be my blog - it feels like some stuff I happened to post on RedState.

What if we made the layout of our diary page more configurable, so we can customize it and personalize it, so it really could become our own personal blog? Give us the ability to add/remove elements like redhot, comments, and some of the other links/ads. Let us upload our own custom headers, so it doesn’t blare “RedState”, with a bunch of other random links to thing like Human Event, RedState Sports…stuff that wouldn’t be relevant to our personal blog. Maybe even tie our own personal domain name to it, so I could be http://RacineWiConservative.com instead of http://RedState.com/diaries/IlliniJon/

I thought of this because a number of times I see people cross posting RedState posts to their own personal blogs, and I started wondering what we could do to make RedState and their personal blogs one in the same.

Basically, I think this goes along with a comment you made in Point 6 - “let us be the hub and facilitator, then get the hell out of the way and let our readers have fun together.”

If we could take steps to become the technology platform for conservative organization, education, and activism - that’s where the real power of this medium begins.

Thanks,

-Jon

Is there a way to promote upcoming Republican and conservative events without making it a diary? I thought there was to be a Calendar of Events in the new RS, but cannot submit anything under the “Events” tab.

Can we just have some sort of Google calendar or something like that? Or would events need to be reviewed before posting by a moderator? I would like to submit events for Missouri if I know about them, so that other Missouri RS posters and lurkers can attend.

We remain up front as a site that you must be pro-life to write on our front page.

You’ve done it again - you’ve distilled the entire party down to one issue. The result has been that some of the front-page contributors here (and, no, I’d prefer not to name names) have been what I consider to be deficient in some of the “three stool-legs” of modern conservatism/Republicanism simply because they are pro-life.

I had to say it, Erick, but they are liberal pro-lifers, just as there are people who are conservative on every other issue aside from abortion.

Look, I’m not saying that we should hand the page over to pro-Roe contributors. But they are certainly legitimate conservatives and Republicans who are anti-Roe, but may not be what you’d consider to be sufficiently 100% pro-life.

Don’t define the party around one issue.

Or, conversely, if this site is going to have litmus tests, it’s going to need way more than just one.

Conservate and Republican are not always interchangable because not all Republicans are conservative. If RedState is going to be the message bearer for conservatism, I think a special section for education on what conservatism is versus everything else, would be a good thing.

There are lots of diarists here who talk about conservatism, with teaching posts, etc. but once they drop off the front, recommended diaries, or recent member diaries, they’re not likely to be visited by many people. Nor is it enough to simply link to sites that do nothing but conservatism since RedState has the status it enjoys.

on #1:

I really think Red State could find a way to become not only a candidate vetter, but also a candidate suggestion box. Candidate selection reqires creativity. I think this site collectively has more creativity than any chairman of a congrssional campaign committee.

To be sure, Rove was really good at this for Bush in the 02 and 04 cycles. Corzine and Elizabeth Dole and Tom Cole were really bad. Schumer and Emmanuel were really good.

But this work is too important to be left to the politicians, especially when they are ineffectual. Red State could serve as a suggestion box. We need to help committees find candidates who can run competitive races, especially where there are “lean Democrat” situaitons. For example, in 2008, we missed a chance to really challenge Harkin or Baucus or Shuler. In 2010, Boxer should get a meaningful challenger, as should the Obama, Biden, and Clinton successors.

Red State has the capacity to identify potential candidates as much as any other conservative group in the nation. We should have our own top possibiities for these races, and we should help create a farm team of talented possible candidates.

on #4:

A prominent image on the front page that linked to an “activist resources” page would serve your purpose. This should not have to be re-inserted on an RSS treadmill every week; just give it a visible gateway link

on #5:

I am afraid the kind of catch as catch can approach to investigative journalism is a pale shadow of what the Left is doing at places like TPM. We need a funded, salaried conservative equivalent which at the very least challenges the purveyors of left-wing doctrine.

I am pro-life and support your platoform. I believe that we need to grow the pro-life movement and support candidates that support that position. Having said that I also believe that pro-life movement must exist and grow outside a political party. My opinion is the we should not reach out to the republican party, but that the republican party candidates should reach out to us. Thank you for this site and for what you do.

I am not a political activist. I spend little time with my local party, except at election time. I don’t know politics.

I do know military and intelligence affairs.

I think that Redstate makes me more valuable as a citizen, in that it gives me a place/way to be heard when I have something useful to say.

I heartily concur with Erick’s idea for using Redstate to raise points/issues that (a) politicians/MSM are ignoring or (b) many Americans don’t understand, so we can get those issues into the mainstream of discussion and the forefront of people’s minds.

The MSM’s power in this country comes from its ability to bury and ignore stories. The blogosphere is a powerful antidote to that.

With an MSM as corrupt as ours, we need a platform from which to fight back.

I firmly believe that, if more Americans are educated on/made aware of the issues that concern we Redstaters so much—taxes, pro-life, fiscal discipline, a bold foreign policy, an unapologetic patriotism, outrage over voter fraud—then the conservative movement cannot fail but to strengthen and grow.

Redstate can help make that happen. I hope we let it.

That’s why I come to Redstate & promote it to my colleagues. I have no personal aspirations of elected office or being anything in the political realm but a volunteer and spreader of the conservative message.

It’s good that the Republicans on Capitol Hill read Redstate. There are many good suggestions for using the new tools and power of internet to communicate & activate. I want Redstate, & I think most are in agreement with me, to be a force for fixing what’s broken in the Republican Party without messing something else up. Our leaders & representatives need to reclaim limited government & fiscal responsibility - not having that is what’s been broken & hobbled us for the last 2 election cycles nationally. Strong national defense is a winning issue - no change to that. Conservative social principles are winning issues - easy to see the great preponderance of victories over losses when the American people vote on social issues. Add in real limited government fiscally responsible conservatism to that mix, & we have a very powerful force to win elections & govern responsibly & soundly.

When Republicans run as solid conservatives - across the board, all-round, complete conservatives - Republicans win much more often than lose. I would like to see & actually am seeing Redstate promote across the board conservatism!

1-Candidate vetting- I like this idea, but take it one step further. A nice section to show people how candidates voted on the various bills would be an excellent way to compare the ‘Talk’ with the ‘Walk’ so to speak.

2-Policy on the front page-Keep policy on the front page. It’s a must have to me.

3-Enemies database-This smacks of something not good the way it’s phrased. However, if you had a database/list of how members of the government actually voted you could categorize them or give them a grade based on how they supported conservative principals. for that matter, there are probably sites already doing that. If you could partner with them perhaps you wouldn’t have to recreate the wheel here.

4-Activism-The calendar idea seems like a clean easy to read way to do this.

5-Investigative news-I don’t have feelings one way or the other here. Sorry.

6-Offline/Online-This might also be easily accomplished on the same calendar from point 4.

7-Army of activists-Isn’t this already being taken care of via email and the site itself? Perhaps a membership drive would accomplish the same task without all that pesky software development.

On the point of right to life in order to post on the front page, I’m fine with this since I agree with it. However, I believe a corollary to this should be the 1st amendment so long as the poster is, ‘Be respectful, or be banned’. Without going into specifics, I think someone should be free to air their political opinion of a candidate free from the worry of being banned so long as they’re respectful of other posters on this site.

That’s my opinion, we welcome yours…

Why only Dems? This is a battle for the hearts and minds of the Republican party.We just saw a lot of backstabbing towards Gov Palin from McCain staffers and Gov’s in FL. These kind of things play right into the hands of the Dems and MSM. We really need to know who our weasels are, also. And when we do, they get no money, no help, and no mercy.

Reading that right there tells me you all shouldn’t be allowed to lead the fight to restore the message about the princples of the party.

We remain up front as a site that you must be pro-life to write on our front page. That gives us credibility within the movement others lack.

We are not a single issue party. It is all fine and dandy that this website wants to promote that princple, as wrong as the platform postion may be, but making that the defining qualification makes me want to read this site significantly less because I believe that position puts you at contradiction limiting government involvement in a person’s life.

We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children

There are so many things wrong with that part of the platform I am stumped about where to begin. As anti-abortion I may be it is debatable where life begins. That simple reality is what makes an ammendment on this matter ambigious at best not to mention dangerous in regards to misuse for enforcement. And if you think it wouldn’t be turned against us raise your had if you think ever thought government would sieze a man’s property and hand it over to another man for private developemnt?

If you guys want to know why we keep coming up short with female demographic this is a defining reason. We constantly talk the talk about getting government out of our lives but we repeatedly contradict this position by supporting legislation that does the opposite.

but RS should look into taking some features from Dkos in terms of technology.

1.) A language that will make the blog automatically update. Whenever I’m patrolling the land of the orange plague, they have one thing that helps to make it more interactive: you don’t need to constantly hit refresh in order to see new comments. It works closer to an IM-style than your traditional blog, which encourages people to continue their conversations at length, which I feel helps the flow and exchange of ideas.

2.) A more personalized profile. You are able to not only have a blurb about yourself, but a personal blogroll, comments, etc. It allows readers to see more about the user and to intertwine the web of RS even further.

Some other ideas:

3.) Speed up the current version before you work on the next version. I have cable internet running at a 10 MBps connection on a top of the line iMac, and it takes me forever to pull up RS (if it even pulls up). It makes me leery to even read the site sometimes, much less post items.

4.) Limit recommends, and implement a system that would also give long-time users the ability to “unrecommend” certain diaries and comments. While the moderators do an exceptional job at patrolling the site, it would do well for a guy who’s been around here since forever, to be able to knock a guy down to size without calling for cleanup. As far as limiting recommends, it ensures that the items going to the recommend list are getting the support of the full community and not just certain “cliques” as I think I heard Erick speak of.

5.) Devise a sort of interface that would allow people to identify (if they so choose on their profile) to be identified as from certain states or locales, so that when events come up, one with the right access and permissions but not a moderator of the site can come on and easily see the handles of RS members within a target area, or who fit a target demographic. Doing this would allow people to grow our activist outreach and make it easier for one member to draw on the support of the others.

To second the first comment, I also like the idea of username.redstate.com, or going with state/large city quick addresses like mo.redstate.com, newyorkcity.redstate.com, dc.redstate.com, etc., with states in postal abbreviation and cities spelled out. These addresses could pick up anything with the particular tag that’s at the beginning of the address.

I’ll try to think of more, but focusing it on connections and networking more. It’s not the size of our base that will matter, but how active it is. Work on getting us to move together as “One team, one fight” (old ship’s motto), and we’ll move on to victory!

While we disagree with Obama politically, I think we have to give him credit for his organization (especially compared to McCain’s). We need to study what he did and copy and improve on it (as the Japanese auto manufacturers did in the 1960s and 1970s). Of course. we’ll never have MSM shilling for us.

No one from the McCain campaign should ever be let near another GOP campaign - except Sarah Palin of course.

You never see liberal columnists turn on the Democratic Party during elections. We need to make sure we don’t support the Noonans, Parkers and Brooks. The Dems have far better discipline than we do.

Erick,

Regarding your first rule “you must be pro-life to write on our front page.”…

I am a strong conservative. For example, I respect John McCain, but I thought he was not nearly conservative enough on immigration, climate change, education, campaign finance, and half a dozen other issues.

But on abortion, although I believe that partial birth or late term abortion is monstrous, I do not believe that 4 cells are the same as a human being and would not support an amendment for an absolute ban.

Maybe I just need some clarification. Is the standard that we must support a constitutional ban with no exceptions? Is support for the morning after pill in the case of rape or incest a disqualification? I’m not arguing with your right to put in place any policies you want, I just need to know where I stand.

One of the things that I have always liked best about RedState is that unlike Kos and other left wing sites, we are civil to each other and to liberals who want to respectfully debate. I guess I just assumed that that civility extended to tolerance of fellow conservatives who may diverge on a particular issue.

I had hoped that over the years I might earn the community’s respect as a valuable contributor and respected voice. Now I feel like I am being permanently labeled as a second class citizen.

I love RedState, so I gotta tell you, this is a bit of a kick in the gut.

Thanks to the election, we will now have less power than we’ve had in the last fourteen years, and it took us quite a while to get what we got in ‘94. I don’t think I’m alone in suggesting that our time in power was at best a disappointment, and at worst a failure. True, we had welfare reform in the 90s, a few balanced budgets, and a tax cut earlier in the decade, but relative to what many of us hoped to accomplished, we really didn’t get all that far. Our government is bigger than ever, courts continue to exceed their authority, and we didn’t actually accomplish anything in terms of getting our debt under control, a failure of monumental, and potentially devastating, proportions.

It is absolutely essential that regaining power does not become an end in itself, but rather a means to enacting an agenda. Putting the means before the end will effectively result in both failing. Democrats are the only ones who get elected on not being the other guy. We need ideas and goals. Even from our perspective, what’s the point of winning races if we don’t have realistic hopes of actually accomplishing things when we do so?

Not too long ago I suggested a list of ten items on which we could agree and focus. Judging by the response, or lack thereof, I understand that those particular ten items might not be the agenda. Even so, I still think that the idea of actually having unifying, set, tangible goals in mind will help us in every aspect of our activism, inspiring the base, recruitment, campaigning, and governing, and I think that this blog could play an important role in formulating and promoting that agenda.

We’ll integrate tools to contact Congress, etc. But we also need to find our kickass technologists who know PHP and can help Neil build awesome tools for collaboration, etc. The platform we’re shifting to will be very flexible and expandable. We’ve got to figure out who the users are who are able to and willing to volunteer time to build the site as a central hub or clearinghouse for the right online.

I’d be more than happy to volunteer!

I can help with PHP/MySQL development, as I’ve used it for numerous web design projects in the past.

And, just curious, but what platform are you shifting to?

I think it would be really useful if redstate created a repository of comprehensive position papers on all the major issues and also rebuttals of all the liberal talking points/lies.

This would be good for 3 reasons.

1. Conservatives (many of whom are not the most articulate defenders of our ideas) from all over could link here when arguing with someone about why we are against abortion, gay marriage, etc. Especially with more complex issues like marriage and free trade it would be highly beneficial to have a place to just refer people to.

2. It would help conservative leaning people to better understand why many people support issue X.

3. It would have the result of creating lots of links to redstate from all over the web and would create a lot of site visitors who might not visit otherwise. The combination of those two things will increase the search/alexa rankings of redstate and result in even more traffic and visibility.

Our efforts are too fragmented. Someone or thing must look at the big picture and connect the disparate parts for more power.

An online community that can meet in a central cyberlocation and split into interest groups within the whole then split by state or region.

We should have the ability to have real time discussion groups by area of impact, similar to what Newt is doing.

I didn’t seen an education/entertainment section. If we don’t focus on the education system, we’ll continue to lose ground.

OK, for myself, with my own abilities and insights, what I can offer that’s useful are primarily two things:

(1) Carry out a relentless and no-stone-unturned campaign to discredit and destroy all major news outlets that hate the freedoms and duties laid out by the Founding Fathers.
(2) Remind us all, teach and exort, on the conservative North Star - what conservative is, why it is, and how to advance it, teach it, and retake America with it.

War they brought us, and war it shall be.

A RedState presence here would be another start… advertising our grassrootness to the Beltway inner-circle. These conferences are about as far outside the beltway that beltway-types go to.

Oh, and read this book, excerpt:

In Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, The Global New Left, and Radical Islam, Dr. Robert Chandler argues that the West is in the midst of a three-way global competition pitting the future of democratic republics against Marxist totalitarianism and Islamic fundamentalism. Despite their vast ideological differences, Communist Russia, the Far Left and Islamists embrace a common goal: destroying Western civilization.

Precisely because of the message it sends. “Pro-choicers need not apply.” Notice, it does not say “You Can’t Post A Pro-Choice Article on the front page,” it says “You Must Be Pro-Life To Write On Our Front Page.” Think about that.

The message we’re sending is “If you’re not pro-life, you don’t have a valuable input. Not on taxes, not on gay marriage, not on immigration, not on foreign policy. You will not be allowed to be a front page contributor even if you are the world’s leading conservative voice on all of these issues if you are pro-choice.”

If the message we’re sending to people who are conservative in everything except abortion is “F* off,” how can we possibly expect to grow the party? Libertarians? Gone. Security moms? Mostly gone. Without pro-choice voters, we can’t get to 200 electoral votes, much less 270. I’m not saying we should compromise policy-wise on abortion, but I don’t think making pro-choice people think that we don’t consider anything they have to say as having any value is a good way to make an appeal to voters.

That said, this is your site, I’ll continue to play by your rules.

1. Redstate should establish a presence on internet radio. I think of WS Radio, which is hosting Sarah Palin radio on Monday’s (for example). They are the worldwide leader in internet radio. A downloadable one-hour/week beginning presence would be a start (interviews, call-ins, etc.)

2. With expanding 3G and coming 4G technologies, Redstate.tv should have been bought and ready for launch. It would allow feeds on phones as well as standard Web delivery. Reasons resonate in Erick’s points above, to include reporting from the grassroots (uploading video clips, etc.) whereapon anything could be brought in. Local candidate interviews live by locals for RS endorsement, support, etc.

3. I dig the idea of a slightly more personalized diary where we could display our own Top-5 blogroll, etc.

4. Can I get a simple print friendly feature with the option of with/without comments? There are times I just want to print and share with co-workers, friends, ya’ know, put ‘education’ in their own hands for follow-up and follow-through.

5. Establishing a ‘50 targets’ in ‘50 states’ congressional list. Heck, make it votable, whereas the conservative/libertarian grassroots could highlight weaknesses in blue dog Dem’s and other districts. A sort of grassroots bottom-up review vice RNC-driven model. Both could unofficially meet in the middle (*see CPAC conference recommendation).

6. What would be the plausability of a RedState sponsored Right Root’s convention???