'It has happened far too much . . .'

. . . for it to be a coincidence," says a commenter:

What the hell is it with trolling left-leaners being the first to post a negative, argumentative, misleading or outright false comment to any Obama-related post in many moderate-to-conservative websites? I've seen it time after time after time in perhaps 30-40 websites. It has happened far too much for it to be a coincidence.
I think there are actually so many deranged Obamites that they can mount a monitoring campaign on virtually every current-event or political website with a moderate or conservative bent which gets a noticeable number of hits. I can't explain it any other way.
I am absolutely serious. Start paying attention and see what you think.

Well, of course, it is not a coincidence, my anonymous friend. It's called "organization," and the Left is far more organized online than the Right is. The Democratic Party and its affiliated liberal groups have devoted millions of dollars to the development of online resources, the Republican Party and its affiliated conservative organizations have not, and that's one of the big reasons we've been getting our ass kicked since 2005.

Look, I could write a book -- and will, I'm sure, at some point -- about what's wrong with the conservative/GOP leadership at this point, but if I had to boil it down to a single sentence it's this: Over the past decade or so, the conservative movement has increasingly operated on a top-down, centralized-control, hierarchical model.

There is a lack of organizational spontaneity on the Right. The Right's donor base is older and more set in their ways, compared to the Left, which has made tremendous inroads among newly affluent information-industry entrepreneurs.

Major conservative donors tend to be in their 60s and 70s. In return for their contributions, they expect to go to an annual banquet with congressmen and Cabinet officials, get a slick quarterly magazine, and see some kind of brick-and-mortar headquarters with a paneled lobby and a bunch of well-groomed, well-mannered young "policy analysts" and "senior fellows" sitting in offices.

These donors respond to snail-mail appeals featuring well-known names -- Reagan administration Cabinet officials and other political celebrities they recognize from Fox News -- affliated with well-established organizations. The people who run these major conservative organizations then spend these contributions in the cautious, responsible way their cautious, responsible donors expect.

This is all fine and good, except that it has resulted in the organizational equivalent of arterial sclerosis. The structure of the conservative movement is fairly rigid. Innovation is difficult and improvisation impossible.

Furthermore, much of the movement is subdivided into a number of speciality operations -- e.g., "family values," "defense and security," "economics," etc. -- each with their own resources and donor bases. Which is necessary and useful, except that the specialization prevents effective mobilization of the entire strength of the movement. A policy analyst at a think tank who specializes in abortion-related issues isn't going to be any help when tax policy is front and center, and a defense-policy researcher has nothing to offer when the key issue is gay marriage. The revenue streams of these various specialty groups are more or less locked in, and results in a sort of soporific bureaucratism.

I've merely skimmed the surface of the problem. I could talk about the generational problem -- the fact that most big operations on the Right are run by 60ish people who don't know basic HTML, much less understand the dynamics of the blogosphere. Or I could talk about Republican Party campaign operations run by people who see bloggers as lackies to be manipulated and exploited, not sponsored and consulted. (Don't ever start me talking about GOP staffers, especially their habitually hostile attitude toward the press, unless you've got all night to hear me rant.)

These problems -- and, I repeat, I've just skimmed the surface -- are not isolated and episodic, but systemic and intrinsic. And so long as Republicans are winning elections with the existing structure, so long as bigwigs at major conservative organizations can keep their donors believing that they are effectively advancing a conservative agenda, it will never change.

But ... where was I before I descended into venomous ranting? Oh, yes: Why the leftoid trolls always seem so far ahead of the game.

Ever hear of "Google alerts"? Feedreaders? Or else, keep a steady eye on Memeorandum and look for threads on subjects of interest.

Who are these leftoid trolls? Possibly (a) professional operatives paid to do what they do, or (b) fanatically motivated graduate students, or (c) people bored at the office, surfing the 'Net instead of doing whatever it is they're actually paid to do.

Go look at the comment fields on left-wing blogs and you'll discover that there is an online army of these liberals who seem to have nothing better to do than comment on blogs. Some left-wing blogger posts up an open thread and -- presto! -- 400 comments within an hour. Amazing, but I guess liberals are the kind of people who would rather do that stuff than look at pinups.