In 1995, when the World Wide Web was still a novelty, 9600 bps modems were fast, and not many people were certain what the acronym AOL stood for, the web sites for both the Republican and Democratic Parties were barely an afterthought. They were only modest concessions to the few technically savvy people in the parties. The Democratic site had links to the names of state party chairmen and a picture of Rush Limbaugh morphing into a pig. The Republicans simply republished a web version of their partisan favorite magazine, Rising Ride. The sites were static over many months and frankly, by contemporary standards, conspicuously amateurish. After all, in the first heady days of the web, virtually everyone was learning what was and was not effective. Although Robert Dole actually mentioned his web site during a presidential debate and generated thousands of hits at his campaign web site, the Internet did not appear to have much of an impact on the 1996 presidential election.
Then came the new millennium and the 2000 presidential primaries. Steve Forbes thought he was embracing the new technology by announcing his official candidacy at his web site, but it turned out that his campaign did not completely understand how to effectively use the Internet. However, as so often the case, necessity is not only the mother of invention, it is also its father, its teacher, its coach, its baby sitter, its everything. The John McCain presidential campaign was short on everything, but bravado and daring. The campaign needed to conduct a national campaign with virtually no resources, so they turned to the World Wide Web. With no real campaign, they created a virtual one. The McCain web site was unique in that it solicited and organized volunteers, kept partisans informed, and most of all raised a lot of money quickly. On an investment of $400,000 to set up and staff a web site, McCain's campaign raised $64 million directly through the web. The Internet costs associated with $1 raised is only eight cents, while the comparable direct mail cost is 30 cents for every $1 raised.
The success of the McCain campaign in using the Internet was not lost on the political parties. To develop a cadre of Internet-knowledgeable Republican, the Republican National Committee held a conference focused on "Winning in a Web World." The conference featured the developers of the Dole, Forbes and McCain Internet strategies. Several important themes surfaced at the conference:
