I had a great time today at the Defending the American Dream Summit. This online activism and new media conference sponsored by Americans for Prosperity is a smaller, less noisy counter to the liberal Netroots Nation event being held downtown here in Austin.

It was great to spend time with fellow Austin bloggers Robbie Cooper of UrbanGrounds and Travis Fell of Voice in the Wilderness as well as several bloggers from around Texas and other states. I also got a chance to meet some prominent national bloggers including Danny Glover (formerly of the Beltway Blogroll), Matt Sheffield of RatherBiased and NewsBusters fame and Erick Erickson of RedState

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It’s no secret that conservatives and libertarians are behind the curve when it comes to online activism and organization. While conservatives and liberals are on the net in nearly equal numbers, liberal/progressive organizations and Democratic campaigns regularly outpace their conservative or Republican counterparts.

So why is this? Aside from the obvious answer – conservatives tend to have jobs (sorry couldn’t resist) – there are a variety of factors. A big part of the conference today was to explore some of these factors and to teach would-be online conservative activists how to take advantage of the internet and new media to shift the balance.

Online liberals have a number of advantages in their favor. Age and demographics is one. Liberals skew younger and younger people are highly active on the internet and take advantage of social networks and other emerging technologies more so than conservatives who tend to skew a little older. To close the gap, conservatives have to leverage all of the tools the internet has to offer for connecting, organizing and taking action.

Group-think is another factor. Liberals love to cast conservatives as mindless automatons waiting for Rush Limbaugh to tell them what to think, but the reality is that there is a wide range of ideological diversity on the right. Conservatives often find themselves fighting each other as much or more than they’re fighting the left. Progressives certainly have their disagreements, but overall, they are much more unified in their desire to win (sometimes apparently at all costs, but I digress…). Conservatives need to focus more online energy on the issues they can agree on (smaller government, lower taxes, etc.).

Liberals also have an advantage in unity when it comes to group-blogging. RedState’s Erick Erickson asserts that there are actually more individual conservative and libertarian blogs than liberal/progressive blogs, but liberals have larger and more influential group-blogs. Conservatives’ strong individualism may be a strength in life, but online it fragments the movement and dilutes its influence. This squares with a conclusion I came to myself some months ago.

Liberals also exhibit an intense emotional attachment to their political causes. Emily Zanotti of the Sam Adams Alliance referred to this as a “weird emotional instability” related to political wins (or losses). During the 2004 presidential election campaign, people like Alec Baldwin claimed he would leave the country if Bush won (we’re still waiting). Obama supporters today make similar and even more extreme declarations in regard to the results of the 2008 election (go read a Digg or Reddit for examples of this). This intensity actually works in their favor in terms of online activism. Conservatives just don’t think this way. We have families, careers – lives. We’ll be fine whoever wins in November (or at least despite whoever wins in November).

It was also suggested that maybe conservatives’ natural tendency toward civility may actually be a disadvantage compared to the foul language and obscene tirades that are de rigueur for liberal blogs. Spend a little time on some popular liberal group-blogs (if you can stand it) and you’ll quickly learn just how nasty and vicious liberal bloggers can be. Another take on this is that conservative and libertarian bloggers should stick with their strengths in civil, reasoned debate and not sink to the level of these sites. Whatever the balance is, conservatives aren’t going to take what liberals dish out lying down.