Governor Romney, just when I start thinking that you’re possibly not that bad, you seek the endorsement of uber-conservative, fundamentalist Baptists?

The worst week of my life was spent at Bob Jones University.* While I consider myself a member of the religious right and an Evangelical, no love is lost between me and the institutions affiliated with the Bob Jones family.

Bob Jones’ III endorsement of Mitt Romney just gives me one more reason to distrust the former governor from Massachusetts.

Please tell me that Bob III’s endorsement is a location issue. They should only be given consideration since the university is in South Carolina. Even within evangelical circles, BJU is divisive. There are many more prominent Evangelical leaders who better represent conservative Christians. Why Bob Jones?

This also doesn’t help keep the right cohesive. Why would Bob III endorse a candidate who miraculously became a right-wing conservative in time for the 2008 election? Why not support someone with a long-standing conservative background? Huckabee is a Baptist preacher, and they went with Romney?

After the racism debacle in 2000, BJU lost a lot of respect. It looks like they’re trying to flex muscle that doesn’t really exist except to loyal alumni and their offspring, of which I know many.

*My former high school is affiliated with Bob Jones, and national competition was always held on campus. My junior year, I qualified for nationals in extemporaneous speaking. The experience was so bad that even though I qualified my senior year, I opted to stay home and go to class. Aside from doctrinal issues, the experience was just strange:

• The Jones family is buried on an island in the middle of campus. A bridge goes over the island that connects the side with the women’s dorms to the side with men’s dorms, so every day you literally walk over the buried Jones family.
• There’s a 10′ security fence along the perimeter.
• Students are required to wear suits and dress clothes to class. In order to make their shoes last longer, students put tap plates on the soles. During class breaks (they actually have bells to signal the end of class), there are thousands of silent students tapping all over the concrete sidewalks of campus. It’s so strange.
• At 6:30 a.m. a wake-up bell goes off. The RA opens your dorm room door and stands there until you get out of bed. The reverse happens at 10:25 p.m. at night.
• You aren’t allowed to go on a date off-campus until you’re 23.

These are the few remaining memories of the trip that I haven’t blocked out. Sarcasm is a common theme here at GFTS, but that week at BJU was truly freaky. I shudder to think that Bob Jones is the image that most people have of Evangelicals.

Slatecard launched today with much applause from the right. I’ve played with it a little bit, and it’s a great new tool. Now you can see Girl from the South’s approved lists of candidates. Thus far, it’s only Fred and Zach. Lamar! and Corker have upset me as of late.

Once the Slatecard crew adds state and local races, it’ll get interesting.

I must ask what’s up with the buttons? The Hoff? At least add a graphic of the Gipper.

Fundraising isn’t something that excites me that often, but it’s nice to finally see options on the right. With RightRoots, Big Red Tent and now Slatecard, small donors have choices. As much as I love Fred, it’s disheartening to keep getting invitations to $1,000-a-plate fundraisers.

Listen conservatives, right-wingers, the base, or whatever you want to call us. We’re constantly complaining that the party never listens to us. If we started supporting real conservatives with small donations, we have a greater say in party politics, and you aren’t stuck with pseudo-conservatives like Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander. A tool like this would have been wonderful for the ill-fated Ed Bryant campaign. The little Rs loved Bryant, but Alexander had support of the state party and major donors. Keep in mind that Tennessee’s major donors are some of the biggest contributors in the country.

Go to one of the sites mentioned above and donate money for me. I especially recommend Jim Ogonowski from Massachusetts. I’d love to wipe the smirk off the faces of quite a few liberals that I know if he beat Niki Tsongas.

A few months ago, Morra Aarons at techPresident and Blogher started a discussion about women and political blogging. At first I rolled my eyes and cited a few statistics from Pew and IPDI about men and women using the web for the same activities at equal rates. Then the NYT Caucus Blog delved into the topic a bit more. Earlier this week, I took a more irreverent stab at it, but some of the comments at the NYT have a point.

Men and women are using the Internet at the same rate for gathering news, sharing videos, checking e-mail and blogging. We know what people are doing online, but do we know why?

There’s a perception problem that far more men are engaged in online politics. Sairy at Blogher does a rundown of leading women, but note that most are grouped together at sites like Blogher or specific policy issues. Women are engaged online, but in different places than political blogs. They’re hanging out at mommyblogs, feminist websites, cancer support groups and craft forums. While the focus of these blogs and forums may not be political, their insights and topics reflect what women encounter in their daily lives, and politics play a major role. They care less about the horserace and more about the big-picture issues.

What does this mean for campaigns? We’ve understood this in the media for a long time. There’s a reason why candidates and their spouses share cookie recipes, tour the country talking about education and fight for the covers of women’s magazines. Female voters respond to these efforts, yet web communication is still one-size-fits-all.

Elizabeth Edwards gained the favor of Democratic women a long time ago with her involvement on the web. She and Hillary took in rave reviews for stopping by the Blogher conference while everyone else failed to have a presence. What about Republicans? Yesterday, the Romney campaign launched AnnRomney.com and is on the right track. There’s also Jerigirls.com, started by female Thompson supporters and devoted to all things Jeri Thompson. Does it take a female web director, like Mindy Finn at the Romney campaign, or a dedicated female supporters to reach women on the web?

Blogger outreach and community building are more important than ever. Women aren’t going to pick up on the blow-by-blow updates that political blogs cover, yet they will discuss them when it relates to the issues that they care about. They enjoy policy discussions when there’s a human interest angle. They don’t want soft news, but more interesting packages of news that are deserve our valuable time. If you’re still confused, realize that Madison Avenue has spent the past 100 years and billions of dollars trying to grasp how women think.

I can’t emphasize the impact of community enough. Mommyblogging started when moms connected with each other through their blogs. Free Republic has recipe threads, and iVillage hosts thousands of message boards. We think about the web in flat, equal terms with every blog or web site connected through a series of social networks or blogrolls. In reality, especially with women, the web is a group of clusters ranging from Blogher to neighborhood listserves like Capitol Hill Mommies. Finding these clusters and understanding how your candidate and his or her issues fit into them can make the difference.

We do this with outreach. Why did Hillary speak at a hairdresser convention? She went where her supporters where. It’s time to mimic this on the web.

With the most basic software, it’s possible to target the female vote, but it takes time, staff resources, a bit of creativity and the willingness to try to understand women.

Cross posted at TechRepublican.

Ron Paul supporters really amaze me. Their verocity and loyalty are reminiscent of Dean in 2004. Their ability jump in an comment in en masse are also rather Kos-like. I’ve noticed it on any threads about the 2008 Election on Free Republic and then today at TechRepublican.

They have an angry underdog thing going.

Can someone explain this fanaticism?

My last class in grad school is political communication, which seems fitting. The professor is a communication director on the Hill with a wealth of experience in Texas politics. He may be a liberal Democrat, but liberals from Texas are generally fun.

Throughout the class, we’ve had numerous professionals come to class–a pollster, micotargeter, VP at an agency, new media strategist, an a couple of communications people from advocacy groups. Last night Amy Walker from the Hotline and  Mike Allen from Politico visited. They were by far the best speakers  that we’ve had.

Walker and Allen led a Q&A, which at the graduate level is far more interesting than a lecture. Allen stayed for the entire class. After two hours, the discussion veered towards our media viewing habits. He started asking about what blogs we read, if we watch TV other than Stewart and Colbert, and how much time we spend reading the news all day.

Then he pulled out his BlackBerry and started taking notes.

Suddenly, it started feeling like an informal focus group of twentysomethings and their political and media habits.

The interesting thing was that our habits weren’t that different from national averages. While we all read different blogs that vary with out individual interests, Drudge, the WaPo and other popular publications topped the list.

If you read Politico and ever come across a reference to an unidentified group of graduate students from American University, I’m the outspoken conservative.

Want to motivate conservatives to vote on Election Day so that you get a Republican in the White House? There are two possible strategies:

1) Engage them with something like Contract for America so that they feel like the party respects their views and values them. (Unlike the current state of conservatives.)

2) Pray that the Democratic front-runners keep pushing this agenda and throw in gay marriage for an added benefit.

Obama, Hillary and Edwards are pushing for expanded funding for abortion? Are they insane? Democrats are going to vote for them no matter what. Why are they pushing such a controversial issue this early in the campaign? After the Democratic party won the 2006 election by masquerading as Republicans, are they going to out-liberalize each other now?

It’s also interesting to note that the Edward’s campaign is using Elizabeth as the attack dog. First there was Coulter, and now she’s talking to Planned Parenthood. It’s a working formula. Protect your candidate by having his wife talk about the most controversial issues. She’s protected from any Hillary-like backlash, not only because of the sympathy generated from her cancer, but also because she’s a well-liked lefty soccer mom. She’s just as liberal as Hillary, but more appealing. You can tell that the family dynamic is genuine, unlike the Clintons in ‘92. She’s managed to be the caring housewife, while staying politically active. Research shows that candidate wives do little to help win elections, but they seem to be using her to appeal to their base and rally the grassroots.

My favorite Freep has a fairly humorous story today about the potential of former Vice President Al Gore throwing his hat into the election.

The story leaves out the small fact that Gore lost his homestate in 2000.

The Free-Press had to pull some desperate Democrats for quotes. The Sasser family? Lincoln Davis? They’re responsible for creating grassroots buzz?

Gore may be the darling of the intelligentsia and green progressives on the left, but is he a good grassroots candidate? Is he even capable of running a campaign that appeals to mainstream voters? He lacks the charisma and appeal that has created the buzz around Thompson. Just because a tactic happens to be in style, doesn’t mean that it’s a good fit for your candidate. Does Gore make an impact with the blue collar/union votes? Aside from inventing the Internet and starring in a really boring documentary about the environment, does he have any other issues that resonate with voters? The environment is likely to be a major topic in the election, but can one-issue candidates even win the nomination?

Rob Bluey points out a Newsweek article that examines Senator Thompon’s personal papers, which he donated to the *University of Tennessee when he retired.

I’ve heard this charge from several sources. Is Thompson conservative? Is Thompson a Reagan Republican? Is he truly pro-life?

Is abortion the best litmus test for conservativism? This isn’t blind loyalty to Thompson, and I’m still the most pro-life individual that I know, but there are other important issues that define conservative ideals. This brings up a subject that I’ve been thinking about lately: what does it mean to be a conservative in 2008?

This may be my own limited observations, but the conservative movement seems to be splintering. Between the growth of libertarianism and the distancing from the religious right, what does conservative mean now?

Is this a result of the Bush administration? Bush campaigned as a conservative. I bought into Compassionate Conservatism. A lot of us did, and we fought hard to see him elected and then blindly defended him for years. However, the Federal government has grown more under Bush than it ever did under Clinton. Bush may be pro-life, but under him the larger conservative movement has suffered devastating blows. Peggy Noonan’s column earlier this month sums up all of Bush’s damage.

Regardless of how truly conservative Thompson is, he is by far the most appealing candidate in traditional conservative circles. He seems to actually like his supporters, which is more than anyone can say of President Bush.

Last week Patrick Ruffini wrote about benefits of using the web to mobilize grassroots and reach opinion leaders and early adopters. Young Voter Strategies at George Washington University recently released a new study that shows e-campaigns aren’t just added bonuses, but crucial to winning tight elections.

Something changed in 2004 and again in 2006. Suddenly, voters aged 18-29 started turning up at the polls. Millenials, those born between 1977 and 1997, cast 4.3 million more votes in 2004 than 2000 with 49% of the age group voting. In 2006, Millenials increased their votes by 2 million from the 2002 mid-term election. If this trend continues, our youngest voters will be the deciding factor in many elections.

The bad news is that Millenials largely favor Democrats. In 2006, 60% of 18-29 year-olds voters cast ballots for Democratic candidates. The picture gets a little more scary when factoring in research that voting is habit forming, and once an individual supports a particular party for three elections, they are likely to form a life-long loyalty to that party. However, not all is bleak for the Republicans.

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Voices for National Service just released their wishlist for community service in America under the next administraton. Sometimes I agree with them, and sometimes I don’t. It’s hard to be a conservative and Ameri*Corps VISTA alum.

Community service may be a strong campaign issue in 2008. John Edwards has One Corps, and this week Young Voter Strategies released information that the emerging group of 18-29 year-old voters have volunteered more than any other generation. In 2005, 70% of all college freshman reported that they volunteered weekly. If candidates hope to woo new voters, it’s a smart idea to add a community service component to their campaign. This is also a good bridge between the campaign vs. movement debate. Call me a bleeding heart or a Crunchy Con, but you can’t lose with helping the community around you.

While the Voices for National Service plan calls for expanding all Ameri*Corps programs and increased funding, they do have some much-needed ideas:

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