It's understandable that the Republicans want to get hip to this Internet thing. It's universally acknowledged that Barack Obama's social-network-savvy Web effort first steamrollered Hillary Clinton's formidable but old-school political operation, then sledgehammered late Twitter adopter John McCain in the general election. Even now, anyone even tangentially involved in the campaign is claiming to be the Web guru who got Obama elected.

The GOP's web aspirations are as ludicrously ambitious as they are maddeningly vague.

Chairman Steele made his tech priorities clear... "bottom line is if we haven't done it — let's do it. If we haven't thought of it — think of it. If it hasn't been tried — why not? If it's going to be 'outside the box' — then not only keep it outside the box, but take it to someplace the box hasn't even reached yet.

In fairness, someone probably once told Steele that people who live in urban-surburban hip-hop settings talk crap like that. But if Steele wants to catch up to the Democrats' online efforts, he'll have to do better than the risible request for proposal he sent out. Some highlights from the document's hopelessly vague and self-contradictory requirements:

Integrate outside products through common API's, widgets, or iframes (examples: Kimbia fundraising, Voter Vault, Widgetbox, Ning).

Flash interfaces can often make mundane tasks exciting, and having Flash developers who understand user behavior will make the site more user-friendly.

No limitations on design; the RNC will be in on the entire process and will ensure everything is to our exact specifications.

Oh, and did the RNC mention they want the website within 45 days, on a fixed budget? Dale Franks at The Next Right calls the GOP operatives who put the proposal out "clueless losers." That's being kind. The last thing any designer wants is a client who's "in on the entire process," throwing out buzzwords they read in some two-year-old article about the Web clipped from a newspaper. The full proposal:

RNC Website RFP

Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, can't run again because of California's term-limits laws, which means the 2010 race to replace the Governator is wide open on both sides — the only kind of scenario in which a political novice like Whitman might even consider running for office. (She could even face a former employee: Steve Westly, an eBay executive who won election as California's state controller in 2002, is a Democratic contender.)

Why won't Whitman just come out and say she's running as a Republican candidate? Her off-again, on-again efforts are increasingly bizarre. She didn't even register as a party member until 2007, when she started working on Mitt Romney's doomed campaign. She then staked out a far-right position on gay marriage, at odds with eBay's HR practices. She has yet to form an exploratory committee, a necessary step before she can start raising money for the 2010 election.

And yet she is taking vigorous action against a California businessman who registered several domain names related to a Whitman gubernatorial campaign. Henry Gomez, a former eBay executive who now serves as her spokesman, offered the lamest possible explanation for the effort: "We're retired. We're bored."

Whitman must be even more restless, now that she's quit her corporate boards. But her pseudocampaign is off to a rocky start. She hired Republican operative Steve Schmidt, who ran campaigns for George Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and John McCain, last fall — but he quietly quit the Whitman effort in December. One step forward, one step back. She's not even running, and yet Whitman's finding politics much harder than business.

(Photo by Getty Images)

• Hide behind anonymity: For chrissake, the Grand Old Party isn't about transparency, it's about shady dirty tricks organizations like C.R.E.E.P. and Vietnam Veterans for Truth! (The only thing different about the Democrats is that they haven't been caught (yet), and don't pick names that are nearly as catchy). The rules: Don't let your campaign staffers hold social network accounts in their own names unless they're doing nothing but disseminating thoroughly vetted talking points. Use online anonymity to your advantage. Create fake "sock puppet" accounts, and lots of 'em. There are certainly security consultants mercenary enough to teach you the finer points of spoofing IP addresses, emails and phone numbers to protect your schemes from being discovered.
• Think alternate reality, not astroturfing: If you're going to game the Web to literally scare up votes, you need to start thinking like Alternate Reality Game (ARG) designers. Hire an army of twentysomethings to create an even larger army of fake Americans across the country and the demographic spectrum. Give them back stories with linked accounts on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, et al. The next step: figuring out their artfully fakes stance.
• Moderate, not extremist: This army of sock puppets should all be moderate voters who claim to be undecided. Republicans already have the overtly racist right-wing extremist vote, and they're already blogging. What the GOP needs is moderate voices who will subtly tip voters in your direction by doing things like expressing fears about neighborhood safety while linking to local news reports of violent crimes which just happen to be committed by immigrants and people of color. Use nuance when pointing to the other party's extremist element by also linking to more reasoned articles criticising your opponent as a centrist.
• Engage with the online audience: Once you've assembled hundreds of fleshed-out fakesters, start weighing in on debates — everywhere from blog comments to Wikipedia. And have your virtual voters pretend to fight amongst themselves over policy points. Only then do you use your real soldiers to weigh in with a reasonable compromise that agrees with party policy. A few fake Democrats who turn the debate in a less-than-civil direction might be handy to gain sympathy for your argument, but you can probably count on the Kossacks — fans of DailyKos — to do that work for you.

Yes, this is all incredibly evil. If your party isn't doing it you can bet the other party is.

David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer — and noted Obama supporter — claims Google is "pleased to work with the Republican National Convention to give citizens around the world easy access to convention information and new ways to engage in the event." I bet. Google is so pleased, it didn't feel it necessary to issue its own press release touting the partnership.

The reality: Google is trying to beef up its GOP lobbying, and the partnership will present plenty of opportunities to do so, in the guise of touting Google products. Drummond may be dextrous enough to deliver simultaneous reacharounds to both left and right, but many of his colleagues may not have the same political skills. No wonder Google PR is staying out of this one. (Photo by AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Fifty or so other Republican candidates have also been made targets in a sophisticated "Google bombing" campaign intended to game the search engine's ranking algorithm.

How sophisticated is this attempt to link searches of GOP candidates to negative news articles?

Each name is associated with one article. Those articles are embedded in hyperlinks that are now being distributed widely among the left-leaning blogosphere. In an entry at MyDD.com this week, Mr. Bowers said: "When you discuss any of these races in the future, please, use the same embedded hyperlink when reprinting the Republican's name. Then, I suppose, we will see what happens."

Did you get all that? Very sophisticated work indeed. More after the jump.

The highlight of the confused article is rehashing everyone's favorite 6-year-old email forward.

The ability to manipulate the search engine's results has been demonstrated in the past. Searching for "miserable failure," for example, produces the official Web site of President Bush.

Even my grandmother sent that one to me. Every time one of these articles makes mainstream media (go ahead google 'French Military Victories" for old time's sake) Google PR issues the canned response.

"A site's ranking in Google's search results is automatically determined by computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query."

A New Campaign Tactic [NYT Times]