Many of you out there may not be fully aware of the existance of TechRepublican, a group blog created by David All and others professing to bring the tech revolution to the convervative cause:

Collectively, the contributors of techRepublican will focus, like a laser, to report best practices on the application of technology to the political spectrum, identifying Republicans and conservatives throughout the world who are using the Internet to bridge that great partisan digital divide and reach modern voters. We’ll provide tips, tricks, and tools for campaigns to use — for FREE.

And we hope you’ll get involved in our Revolution. After all, it’s your Party too. Together, we’ll be successful. But we can’t do it alone.

For the most part it’s an okay site with some interesting information. I don’t completely agree with their desire to utilize every single bit of Web 2.0 technology for political gain (I have yet to see a real use for Twitter as a campaign tool) but it’s not bad.

Except when it messes up it’s code.

Last week a post was made with some really bad code that ruined the rest of the site. It kinda looked like this (click to make all big like):

I contacted David All about it and sent a screen capture of the error. His response: I’ll talk to my developer.

Now, that’s all well and good for some sites, but it just struck me as odd that a site of people trying to sell themselves as conservative revolutionaries for the Web 2.0 cause need to turn to a developer for a coding issue. Just one more log on the fire, really.

You see, my big problem with TechRepublican and even folks on the Left side of netroots is that they’re trying to create a market for themselves and their abilities. Campaigns are being told you have to blog, you have to have a netroots coordinator to be in touch with the blogosphere, this is the future, don’t get left behind!

But, really, these people are trying to create jobs that only they can fill.

Communication directors or other already created positions need to get to know the blogs and how to handle them. They’re not so drastically different from other mediums that a whole new position needs to exist to deal with them. Current pros just need to adapt. And politicans need to realize that the blogs may not truly impact their race depending on what they’re running for. Why someone running for dog catcher needs to have the blogs on his side or create a MySpace page to appeal to half nekkid teenagers is beyond me.

Something like TechRepublican shouldn’t be acting so much as a cheerleader for the blogs and creating a market. No, if they really want to help bring about this revolution they need to show how easy this is for anyone already in the know to do it and easing their way in with handy tutorials and how-tos. Otherwise it’s a revolution for the few who want to be employed.

July 24th, 2007 at 1:27 pm | Tags: TechRepublican, politics, web 2.0