Dean Barnett writes in the Weekly Standard about the “Lopsided Netroots,” an analysis of why there’s no YearlyKos on the right. (Hat tip to Allen Roth.) It’s a question that Mark Tapscott and Patrick Ruffini addressed last month, and one I remarked on more than once.

It’s no secret that Dean and I don’t see eye to eye when it comes to activism vs. punditry in the blogosphere. My criticism of him back in May sparked a full-fledged fight among several friends on the right. Dean’s latest piece rehashes some of those same themes.

Some people on the right fear that the left has developed an insurmountable advantage in harnessing the power of the Internet. While the Daily Kos, YearlyKos, and other bastions of online liberalism have clearly become power players, conservatives have no comparable entities. The right-wing blogosphere doesn’t hold conventions, doesn’t win the attention of candidates, and more important, doesn’t move voters the way the progressive blogosphere does. The progressive blogosphere is a hotbed of activism; the most prominent outposts of the right-wing blogosphere stick to punditry.

Without getting into the reasons why we don’t have a YearlyKos of our own — however, we do have the Defending the American Dream Summit and Washington Briefing coming up in a few weeks — I will instead take issue with Dean’s narrow view of the rightosphere. He quotes two bloggers, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and Scott Johnson of Power Line, about their views on the differences between conservative and liberal bloggers. Nothing against Glenn or Scott, but anyone who reads either one of their blogs knows they’re devoted to punditry, not activism.

It’s too bad Dean didn’t quote his fellow Townhall blogger Ruffini, who has written extensively on this topic and has reminded us that we can’t just look at blogs when we’re talking about the online right. High-traffic conservative sites such as WorldNetDaily, NewsMax and Free Republic were amassing traffic years before anyone had heard of Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong. The problem is they didn’t evolve.

I’d also question Dean’s belief that the liberals are devoted solely to electing Democrats regardless of their ideological perspective. I don’t buy it.

Contrary to popular belief, the Netroots aren’t particularly liberal. Opposition to the Iraq war aside, they’re nonideological. They will happily support centrists like Virginia’s Jim Webb or Montana’s Jon Tester so long as those centrists are “proud” Democrats.

That may have been the case in 2006 when Democrats were in the minority in both the House and Senate, but I don’t think it holds true today. Take the recent debate over terrorist surveillance. It was Markos who called the Democrats who voted with Republicans on FISA “cowards.” That debate promises to be one of the biggest in Congress this fall and it could set the tone for which Democrats face liberal primary challengers next year. Liberal blogger Matt Stoller at Open Left has gone so far as to launch a campaign to “tighten the leash” on Blue Dog Democrats.

So what does this all mean? I agree that our most popular conservative bloggers on the right are devoted to punditry. But I also believe that people like Dean Barnett, who occupies a prominent place on Hugh Hewitt’s blog, can do something about it. If he doesn’t want to, then others will fill that void. You have to look no further than TechRepublican to see it’s already happening.