“there may never be another Republican President.”

That might not be a bad thing…now if we could only insure there would never be another dim-a-crit president

Joel, Kos has done many things that are impressive - some impressively potent, some impressively awful. I don’t think anyone here wants to duplicate the depravity, dishonesty, and outright venom at Kos. What we are interested in doing is making more use of the possibilities for networking and political influence that he, among others, have pioneered.

Swell. A conservative version of the Kossacks. As if we did not have enough problems already. Let me count the ways that is foolish:

1. The effectiveness of Kos came not because of its organizational effectiveness (that came later), but the deranged hate by its members for anyone who dares to disagree with them. That is the driving force, pure and simple. I love America, but not enough to turn myself into a right-wing doppelganger of Markos Moulitsas Zuniga.

2. Read the HuffPo, DailyKos, or any other hard-Left website, and the overwhelming impression that you will get is of a bunch of third-rate Hollywood scriptwriters peddling the next version of Rendition or Fahrenheit 911. The anti-intellectual atmosphere promoted by these websites is stifling. Can conservatives possibly dumb themselves down to this level?

3. Do conservatives have the money to run with the Kossacks? Like it or not, money is the driving force in American politics. The modern Democrat Party is hip-deep in millionaires nursing a liberal guilt complex. Does the conservative movement have anyone even remotely comparable to George Soros, Ted Turner, or Mark Cuban, at least in terms of deep pockets?

Jack has expressed it perfectly. With the Kossacks there is nothing there that conservatives can imitate successfully – or would even want to in the first place.

KOS has accomplished nothing of substance, except regarding his own standing.

Likewise, any net born movement to create a right wing movement to mimic the left wing net roots will be to the betterment of the network of web sites and not the movement itself.

Emily’s list is a better model to follow than Kos/net roots. And that is not a recommendation of Emily’s list.-

Odd, from a party that at one time had no hesitation in slaughtering hundreds of thousands in order to achieve a victory over its own slaveholding brothers.

Well, yes and no. In the early years of the war, there was quite a lot of hesitation. It wasn’t until a ways into the war that Lincoln and company figured out that there would be no quick and easy victory. Eventually, they found and promoted commanders like Grant and Sherman, who were willing both to inflict casualties and to take them.

Easy to start a war in which others’ lives will be lost. Lincoln didn’t even risk his only child who was old enough. (Joining Grant’s staff in 1865 wasn’t exactly a risky move.)

Lincoln - and the Republicans - did not hesitate to make that decision in the affirmative.

We must be using different definitions of the word “hesitate”.

Look at this letter from Lincoln to MacDougal in March of 1862 and tell me that this is a President fully committed to a war of attrition and the attendant casualties. He’s still trying to solve the slavery problem peacefully while hostilities have already commenced.

By 1863, Lincoln and his Cabinet had come to the conclusion that full-scale war was the only way to preserve the Union. They did commit to it, via the Emancipation Proclamation, stepped-up military draft (with the attendant draft riots), and strategy designed to overwhelm the Confederacy through sheer weight of men and material. They took the casualties, they gave the orders, but they surely hesistated before choosing that route.

…there may never be another Republican President.

Based upon the performance of the last two such we’ve had - and upon the performance of the last two unsuccessful Republican aspirants (plus the profile of the most recent such) - that can’t presently be viewed as a bad thing.

…If Republicans want to return to power they should promote and defend conservative values…

Well, that would be a step in the right direction - the Republican Party, as presently constituted, has pretty clearly demonstrated that being “Democrat Party-Lite” is a big-time loser, that’s certain.

However…

The ‘netroots’ represents the institutionalization of vendetta.

They represent a strong attempt to establish such - the jury’s still out on just how effective they’ll be at that, in the end.

To inspire their counterpart on the right would further undermine the perceived legitimacy of democratic processes and institutions in the US.

Wake up and smell the current events - the “perceived legitimacy” of which you speak is already in some serious difficulty.

If, for instance, the FrankenFool is, in the end, able to gin-up enough “votes”, how much “perceived legitimacy” will the Minnesota voters feel towards the Senate election there?

How can building and using a truly effective online network to project conservative political influence cause any further deterioration? Couldn’t such an organization be a successful antidote to the Nutroots, ACORN, etc.?

…if the emergence of Kos represents anything, it is that a significant cohort of American residents seek this end - to effectively do away with multiparty elections, division of government, civil liberties, and the basic good faith that allows for the peaceful transition of power through elections.

That’s not new - nor is it unique to DailyKos, et.al. There’ve always been those who sought these ends. It’s simply that we’ve seen the rise of an effective online presence that seeks to promote those ends. There needs to be an equally effective opposition - and it doesn’t necessarily have to “mimic” Kos and the others in order to be effective; it just needs to recognize and utilize the useful characteristics of the opposition, in order to project basic conservative views.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, in effect, the Presidential election just past can hardly be said to have been a “multiparty” one; presently, there’s barely any “division of government”; more and more, those “civil liberties” are in trouble; and that “basic good faith in peaceful transition of power” seems to be wearing pretty thin, too.

…I want no part in harming this country and so will never join a Kos-like movement regardless of it’s espoused political orientation.

Then you’d better resign yourself to never seeing anything resembling true conservative principles having any useful control over the electoral processes in this country - at least, not for a very long time - or to having to resort to even less palatable measures in order to achieve said control.

…With the Kossacks there is nothing there that conservatives can imitate successfully – or would even want to in the first place.

Yeah, well - you guys don’t seem to fully understand the situation. As long as you continue to take that viewpoint, the Dems - and their “Kossacks” - will continue to eat your lunch.

Make up your minds - do you want to keep on listing all the reasons why you can’t deal with the way things are, or do you want to win elections?

Patrick Ruffini opined on this in NRO today.

Another problem is that conservative bloggers are there to provide you with their opinion. The new pillars of left-wing media are there to provide you with information, such as that on the U.S. attorney firings. Recognizing that page A1 of any newspaper usually trumps the op-ed page in setting the agenda, these outlets have fashioned themselves as dispensers of information — information usually helpful to the Left and its candidates.

He’s got a good point here. Opinion writing is fine, and useful, but people are naturally skeptical of open opinion writing. What really moves public opinion is not what pundits write, it’s which stories get reported and which get buried. If one side of the debate can control the narrative so that stories which support their premise are published and stories which undermine it are buried, then those who lack the buried data, i.e. the majority of voters, will be likely to conclude that the opposition is crazy, stupid, or evil.