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Erick Erickson

Erick Erickson, a Republican, is the editor and chairman of the board of RedState, a conservative political blog. A former attorney and political consultant, Erickson has been a member of the city council in Macon, Georgia, since 2007.

Josh Israel interviewed Erickson on February 20, 2008.

As a bit of background, I understand you were an attorney and a political consultant before you started RedState?

Yes.

What sort of races did you work in?

Generally, local and state races. I did some volunteer work, which really amounted to absolutely nothing for the president’s campaign. I actively helped the congressional race in Georgia and one in California. I guess you could just say accurately I dabbled in some in Virginia.

I think everyone in the D.C. area dabbles some in Virginia. It would be the closest thing to an actual real race in the D.C. area.

Absolutely.

Were you there at the beginning of RedState or was it there before you came?

I was not there in the setup phase, but came I guess a week after the site launched. Josh Treviño, who actually had a blog called Antagonist.org, conceived of RedState and really I think wanted to be kind of a right-of-center version of Daily Kos. It rapidly morphed into something I guess the same and different at the same time using the same platform. Not quite as pretty a site when it first started out. It had Ben Domenech, Mike Krempasky, as well, involved. Ben was working at the time or was just moving jobs into the government, and couldn’t be actively involved in it. Since I did both law from a political side and political consulting, after I came in, they asked me to swap places with Ben.

For someone who’s never been there, how would you describe what RedState is?

I would say it’s kind of a meeting ground for right-of-center online activists. I kind of joke and say it’s where the right fights online, both against the left and against each other, regularly.

I suspect the same is probably true of the left sites.

Yes, I think so. It’s a place for grassroots activists who are Internet savvy to come and argue among themselves about strategy, policy, candidates, and also take on the left on issues, candidates, and policy.

How many people, if you just had to guess, visit the site each day?

I can tell you specifically. Our average unique daily reader right now is 58,528.

That’s a pretty sizeable number.

I know for sure we are smaller than Daily Kos and folks on the left, some of the larger sites there. On the right, we’re one of the largest.

What would you say has been the most significant contribution of your site so far?

I think probably one of the biggest ones was defeating the Harriet Miers nomination, which ironically was an interim party fight. But then I also think in 2004 we really were able to play a significant role in the presidential election, participating in the whole Dan Rather memo issue. We certainly were not the impetus behind that, but really ran the ball with everyone else on that one.

I know that you’re not necessarily focused principally on fundraising, as a side. First of all, do you do fundraising for candidates?

We endorse candidates and recommend that people give money to candidates. We ourselves won’t fundraise for candidates. We’ll put up links to their own sites and encourage people to go through them and give money to candidates.

Can you talk a bit about how the rapid growth of online political donations, particularly in the presidential level, is changing the game?

I don’t know that it is significantly changing the game other than it is making it easier for people who want to get engaged to get engaged. A lot of folks aren’t going to sit down and take the time to write out a check, stick it in an envelope, address the envelope, put a stamp on the envelope, and get it back in the mail. They are willing in front of their computer to whip out their credit card and put in that information and click submit. I think it increases the number of donations because it simplifies the process for people. Someone can do it at their desk while they’re at the office or at home, wherever.

It also probably feels a little more painless to push a button than to write that check.

There’s definitely something about having to sit there and write out the check and write those numbers. 

There have been, certainly on both sides, but on the Republican side, some disagreements within the conservative movement about the two best main candidates.

Right.

Does most of the RedState community sort of fall behind any one of the candidates, historically?

We do now. Early on, during the primary season, it was very, very divided and frequently got very divisive. There were a number of us who were [Fred] Thompson supporters. I was a Thompson supporter. A lot of folks were [Mitt] Romney supporters. There really were not a lot of John McCain supporters. There was not a huge number of [Mike] Huckabee supporters although they were very, very vocal supporters. I would say Romney had the bulk of the support followed by Fred Thompson with McCain and Huckabee at the bottom.

Did any of the Ron Paul movement stow its way into RedState?

We actually had to ban the Ron Paul supporters for president. It was rather a unique situation. We got a lot of blowback from some folks within the conservative movement who just couldn’t understand what we were dealing with. We would have maybe a dozen just normal people making a case for Ron Paul. We had literally hundreds of people who would come to the site and want to talk about the Zionist conspiracy to keep Ron Paul out of the media and how there were so many Jews in the media. It was obvious that they didn’t like Ron Paul. It got to be so burdensome for our users who would write a general article.

One of the examples I give is total hyperbole, but it really gives you the flavor of what’s going on. You could put up a post and say, “I’m going to the bathroom,” and you’d have a dozen different Ron Paul supporters jump into the comments directory, “Be sure to vote for Ron Paul while you’re there!” So we put a blanket ban on people promoting Ron Paul at RedState. It actually has helped the site. We have had more people come to the site willing to have a safe place to discuss the election now.

That’s interesting. You covered the 2004 elections for MSNBC, was it?

I did. The last week of the race, actually, I was in my law firm and MSNBC called. They had gone to RedState to see who could do it. I was the only one who could, so they flew me up to Secaucus, New Jersey, for the week along with Matt Stoler over at Open Left. He was at MyDD at the time. He did a perspective from the left and me from the right, and [we] covered the elections online for them.

How do you think the blogosphere has changed, if at all, since the 2004 election as far as the way it worked then and the way it works now?

You are much more likely to find a close connection to YouTube videos. And people online [are] much more, I guess you could say, “tech savvy,” now than we were in 2004, particularly on the right, trying to become competitive with the left, but on the left side as well. There’s to some degree greater organization, greater mobility, and also larger audiences than there were in 2004. So more people pay attention and circulate news.

Maybe it’s not a fair perception, maybe it’s not a widely held perception, but I sort of detected a perception that the Democratic netroots, with ActBlue, Daily Kos, MoveOn, and so forth, have so far been a little bit more successful than on the conservative side.

I think that’s absolutely right. Part of that I think as well is — I’ll try not to make this sound so negative, because I know it can come across as that, although I think that it is a fair point — the left has a much more top-down structure than the right. To some degree, intentionally I think, with like ad markets, you’re going to play the game the way some of them want you to play the game if you want to get on. Like a blog-ads market that they have or something like that. By and large, I don’t think it’s intentional. I just think you have several very large sites at the top on the left. They can kind of set the news. Then, as well, they work very well with Media Matters and the Center for American Progress and get daily talking points. They all get on the same page and talk.

For example, I don’t think it’s a very big secret that they have a mail list supposedly shut down but isn’t, where “Atrios,” one of the bigger bloggers — Duncan Black, an economist — has emphasized repeatedly that they should not talk about the problems in Social Security because, while there is a Social Security problem, if they start talking about it while the Republicans are in the White House, then there’s going to be a Republican solution, so they should wait.

On the right, you don’t find that. There are a number of sites who are near equal in size. You have Power Line, Michelle Malkin, the National Review blogs, the Town Hall blogs, RedState, Ace of Spades. Then you have subsidiary sites to those that are a little smaller in size. Then you have some listed that they’re smaller in size. It’s very, very hard on the right to get people on the same page — much, much harder.

I suspect you’ll see on the right more consolidation over the next year, where you will have some big names and big players who kind of all get organized on the same page. You’re starting to see that, for example, with the Porkbusters project, where it’s not a right versus left issue. It is a policy-oriented issue where you have dozens and dozens of blogs of all sizes coming together and uniting around one issue, and sticking with the same line for the most part.

Do you think this is something that over time will sort of even out?

I think probably so. You’ve got to remember that when the right had to get organized, when they fell out of power, the Internet really wasn’t in existence as it is now. They captured the tools that were existent, which by and large were talk radio and direct mail. Now, when the left had to really get organized, in the late’90s and 2000, you had this thing called the Internet. They then took the tools and took time to organize. You’ve seen them now try to go back with Air America. It hasn’t been very successful. I think the right will probably be more successful online than the left. Or I shouldn’t say more successful, but more successful getting into the Internet than the left has been getting into talk radio, I think in essence because of the democratic nature of the Internet.

That’s a small “d” democratic?

Yes. My perspective is that you’re going to see the left and right go in different ways online. I suspect that that long-term may be to the advantage of the right. By that I mean the right won the direct mail game. I suspect you’re going to see the right move from direct mail to direct e-mail in a way that the left probably is not going to. I actually think e-mail is more effective long-term than websites. People can’t be on the web all day at work but they can be in their e-mail program all day at work.

Or on their Blackberry or whatever.

Exactly.

That’s interesting. One of the areas that we’ve looked at is sort of the influence money has on presidential candidates and people once they get into office. Historically, candidates, to a large extent, have raised money from interest groups, from lobbyists, from people with a lot of money in their pockets. They hand it to them. There’s a perception at least that they’re getting access and influence. When someone makes a contribution online after coming to your blog, do you think that conveys any interest or any influence to candidates?

I think, from a RedState perspective or any other website perspective, if that’s what you’re asking, yeah. I think it builds our influence to some degree by having people coming through us to give them donations. Take for example, Eric Egland out of California, though I think he’s probably going to drop out of the race this time. We were able to raise $10,000 for him in three days by just pitching him on the site and putting up a link to his website. His campaign certainly pays attention to RedState now.

One doesn’t necessarily associate a donation from RedState as being a donation in favor of making cheese the national food or anything.

Yes, exactly. I think to some degree that’s one of the benefits of going through blogs. Generally, I think people understand that all we want is a conservative candidate, and all some of what the left wants is a liberal candidate. I could care less. I would be actually opposed if they were funneling money to Boeing for the government to buy some plane contract. I think probably there would be a good sense of that’s not the type of candidate we want to support.

I guess where I would head with that is that there’s a frontside-backside equation that I think is different between blogs and other instruments. What I mean by that is we want to pick a good candidate on the front side and keep him from changing positions. I think there is, in the whole grand scheme of lobbyists and money and stuff, a backside connection where they’re giving money hoping to pull them in a different direction later, if that makes sense.

So you see it more as an ideological?

Yeah, I definitely think so. From a blog perspective, we don’t go out and look at candidates on particular issues, except we want to make sure they are for strong national security and pro-life and for limited government. If you check the three big ideological issues, we’re probably going to be willing to support them. We’re not interested in whether or not they are for or against SB 103, for example.

Over the past couple of years it’s died down. I gather it sort of failed, but there were some proposals within the FEC to restrict the blogosphere with campaign finance restrictions and so forth. Was this sort of an area of agreement between bloggers on both sides?

Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever seen before or since the left and right in total agreement on an issue.

You may never see it again.

Yeah, I may never. I think that the points made were proven correct. There will always be the opportunity, I think, with an individual, to be able to persuade that individual by giving them access. I think it’s much harder to do in the blogosphere. Number one, most of the big sites that are influential are group blogs anyway, and you’re not going to buy off the entire group.

Number two, you’ve got so many blogs on both sides. One of the things the media always says is: “How can you be accurate? We at least run corrections.” My God, you’ve got a million rabid bloggers who are all competing with each other. If all of a sudden you deviate from your position because someone has bought you off, you’re going to have a million other bloggers piling on and being able rapidly to discredit you. Some of the concerns raised about influence-peddling in blogs were very overstated. The history since that legislation failed has proven that a lot of those concerns were not legitimate.

One of the criticisms of bloggers has sort of alluded to the notion that they can be paid for by someone. Some bloggers have worked for campaigns. Do you think there’s any sort of ethical code, or should be some sort of ethical code, requiring them to disclose?

I don’t think you can have an ethical code.

Not necessarily an FEC-imposed ethical code.

No, I don’t think so. While you’re right, bloggers can be bought off, by and large, though — and I know of cases of where that’s happened — the blogs have largely failed or failed to gain traction, frankly because they weren’t that good. There’s a difference between someone passionately believing in something and writing about it and someone being paid to write about it. The zeal that makes someone enjoyable to read is not there if they’re just getting paid.

I frankly have no problem with someone who really believes passionately in candidate X. Candidate X starts buying ads on their site or starts putting them on the payroll to get them to blog. If they’re going to be on the payroll, they’re probably going to be on the FEC report anyway. If not, it’s a problem with the candidate, I think. If the guy really believes in the candidate, so much the better. They’re probably going to be very fun to read anyway.

Do you think they should identify themselves as such?

Yeah, I think they probably need to. I certainly would and would expect others to. Am I really going to get worked up about it? No. If I ever found out the person was being paid and had failed to disclose it, I would probably never read them again however enjoyable they were. That, I think, is probably the overwhelming issue there, is that I think that, by and large, is the case. If someone was being paid to blog and was not being ethical in their disclosures or by saying, “Hey, I’m getting paid to write about this,” then I think the majority of bloggers on the left or the right would begin shunning that blogger. There may be no code of ethics out there, and I don’t know that there really needs to be one. There are some best practices that I think folks on the left and the right maintain to keep themselves credible.

What’s your thought on the campaign finance system in general?

I think it’s a disastrous system. I think it has basically eliminated the ability of the little guy to run for office. I think you have to be extremely wealthy now to be able to run for office, to be able to fund the lawyers to regulate the system. I kind of look at the campaign finance system the way I look at the tax code. I have done campaign finance law. Anytime Congress passes a set of regulations that are able to create an entire industry solely for compliance, it’s probably a bad law.

I, frankly, with the advent of the Internet, see no problem with unlimited contributions. I think with the Internet you can have very conceivably and very easily a 24-hour disclosure period and have unlimited contributions on it. I don’t care how much money someone gets. It’s just letting me be able to see within 24 hours of receiving the check who they’ve gotten it from. If I want to run a campaign ad attacking them for getting $2 billion from George Soros and attacking George Soros in the process, so be it. We’re past the stage in life where the candidate with the most money wins. If we were still there, Howard Dean and Mitt Romney would be the candidates who actually got the nomination.

President [Ross] Perot would be supporting one or the other.

Exactly. I think there was a time and a place that we needed the campaign finance laws that we have. I think they are now just an incentive for money to flow into more shadowy organizations. Sure, you can now write new laws and further laws to restrict these shadowy organizations, but I guarantee you, some very smart lawyer is going to find a loophole to get around that. Then you have to do more regulations until someone gets around that. Why not just reduce it, put it back, so that all these shadowy organization guys go back into the campaign infrastructure where they were before all these rules, and just require immediate disclosure.

In the last couple of weeks, we had some controversy when Senator McCain opted out of public financing for the primary and some controversy when Senator [Barack] Obama indicated he may opt out for the general, even if his opponent takes it, as he, I guess, indicated that he would before. What do you think of the public financing system? Is it dead and should it be?

Yes. I really bristle under the idea that the federal government should be using tax dollars to pay for campaigns. Now as it presently is, it’s totally voluntary and I really don’t have a problem with it. I actually check the box and send my three dollars to the campaign system. I don’t have a problem with doing that. I don’t think that the government itself needs to be spending anymore tax dollars than what people voluntarily give to fund political campaigns. I personally don’t think it’s right.

With the exception of Senator [John] Edwards and some of the, I guess you’d call them second-tier, third-tier candidates, just about no one participated in this system this time around. Do you think that’s pretty much over?

I think it probably is. There’s just not enough money there. I actually think Obama would be smart to take it for the general. You have a situation where he spent $84 million, I think someone told me, in the primary system, and he’ll get basically that amount to spend over a two-month period. I think he would be nuts not to take that, John McCain as well. It prevents them from having to go through the fundraising hurdle. They can rearrange and reassess staff and infrastructure and not have to worry about getting a bunch of campaign donations. But for the primary system, yeah, I think it’s over and dead, and good riddance.

Last question for you. Will you just talk a little bit about sort of where you see the 2008 election going and what you think RedState’s role will be?

I know very few candidates who have ever really been helped by blogs except when those blogs went after their opponent. So I expect you will see, on the left and the right, RedState, Daily Kos and others, will be very much in-tune with the national parties on both sides, serving as a way to get news about the opposition or about the candidate on their side that you otherwise wouldn’t hear. I also think you will see them increasingly be places that focus on local and state politics and local and state organizations because, while the 2008 election may be important, everyone is starting to realize that in 2010 we get to redistricting. Local and state elections for local and state legislative races are going to be much more important in the long-run.

Right, because that’s Congress for the next . . .

Decade.