Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry of Personal Democracy Forum tell us (once again) that Democrats are superior to Republican online. (Oh, by the way, the sun rose in the east today.) Their piece appears in Politico and quotes extensively from a Patrick Ruffini blog post that I linked last week. Here’s an excerpt from Rasiej and Sifry’s op-ed:

What all this means is it’s highly unlikely Republicans are going to turn the tide online – not until they wean themselves off their top-down habits and start using the Web more to foster community and collaboration.

Right now, we don’t see much sign of this happening (except among supporters of Ron Paul) ‚Äì but we know plenty of Republicans who are watching how well the Democrats are doing this cycle, taking notes and making plans.

Rasiej and Sifry are partially correct. We are taking notes and making plans, but we’re certainly not just “watching how well the Democrats are doing.” We are doing something about it, as David All puts it on TechRepublican.

We’re actively talking about it on sites such as TechRepublican, where my friend Allen Roth has a great piece today about how to build the movement. Sites like Big Red Tent, Slatecard and Rightroots are nearing launch in what should provide a major boost in online fundraising and acvitism. Let’s also not discount our blogs, which are undergoing transformations to adapt to changing times. The megasite Townhall just added video and RedState is preparing for a major relaunch in a few months.

I’m sorry to report that Rasiej and Sifry fail to mention any of this, but then again, I wouldn’t expect them to know since they don’t travel in our circles. Their op-ed, nonetheless, has inspired liberal blogger Chris Bowers of Open Left to declare himself a blog genius. Here’s what Bowers wrote today:

Generally speaking, what we are seeing here are online Democrats taking more action on behalf of Democratic candidates than online Republicans taking action on behalf of Republican candidates. To put it another way, even though studies show that Republicans use the Internet at rates equal to Democrats, Republicans are less politically active online than Democrats. This basically confirms what I predicted more than two years ago in an article titled Aristocratic Right-Wing Blogosphere Stagnating.

There’s no question that liberals are more politically active online. However, I find Bowers’ assertion that Huffington Post and Daily Kos have excelled because they are driven by a community to be somewhat misleading. Free Republic invented the concept of an online community, and according to Compete, it still tops both in terms of eyeballs. (Ruffini, by the way, recommends Compete or Quantcast over the inferior Alexa for judging traffic.)

What does this all mean? Exactly what Ruffini said about Free Republic: “What a waste. Imagine how the history of the rightroots could have been different if Free Republic wasn‚Äôt still stuck in 1996?” Despite all of its success generating traffic and building a community, could Free Republic actually be considered a failure? That’s not a question I can answer. Its community functions very differently from Huffington Post and Daily Kos. But if and when someone figures out how to crack the code, it could be a goldmine. As it stands now, Free Republic has decided not to evolve. That doesn’t mean we don’t have the eyeballs. We simply haven’t figured out how to activate the community.