Digital Republicans Have Weekly Twitter Chat to Rejuvenate Before 2016

Online collaboration might be the Republicans' path to victory in 2016, a former member of Mitt Romney's digital staff believes.

Accordingly, he has organized a weekly Twitter chat to help Republican digital staffers foster an atmosphere of partnership following Romney's loss.

That defeat triggered accusations and finger-pointing among some of the right's digital director community, a tense environment which ex-Romney staffer Bill Murphy believes is hurting the party.

"I worked on the Romney campaign and I noticed afterwards there was a lot of — call it disagreement or criticisms — of what the right and Republicans were doing digitally," said Bill Murphy, who organizes the chat, in an interview with Mashable. "I thought it was time we all came together and collaborated and started this discussion of how we can do better and how we can all work together to do better in 2014 and 2016 and beyond."

#Polichat has become a hub for right-leaning digital and social directors to openly discuss and debate online politics.

Topics discussed so far range from messaging strategies to online advertising to the role of big data in modern campaigns. Participants often ask one another questions, helping to generate a cross-party collaboration and, perhaps, heal the post-Romney rift.

Re: Rapport. Politicians with purely "press release" style twitter feeds are a #fail. #polichat

— Ben Howe (@BenHowe) January 28, 2013

RT @polichat: #Q3: What's available to campaigns to provide canvassers geo-enabled info? #polichat // I tested a cool app called VoterIntel.

— Jonathan Gormley (@JonathanGormley) January 28, 2013

It's also used by employees of platforms such as Facebook and Google to pitch their products:

Graph Search is an interesting new feature. Not sure how much of game-changer it is, but certainly makes micro-targeting easier. #polichat

— Cooper Reves (@CooperNReves) January 28, 2013

@coopernreves the graph is the game changer. Search just makes the graph easier to find things. #polichat

— Katie Harbath (@katieharbath) January 28, 2013

Murphy launched #politichat after he became convinced the right needs to work together to match the left's technological prowess and collaborative environment.

"I think the left has had success with — their culture is a little bit different than ours, we're more politically oriented and we have a campaign operative-type system, the left has a little bit more of a collaborative atmosphere, like an agency you'd see in New York City or out in San Francisco," Murphy said.

Among the most notable players in the chat are representatives from Facebook and Google, former Romney staffers, congressional staffers and other major figures in the Republican digital community.

Notably absent, however, has been former Romney digital director Zac Moffatt, who took a shellacking from some Republicans following Romney's loss. Moffatt has defended himself in a series of blog posts, in which he argues that digital is not a "zero-sum game," but rather his team made real accomplishments of which he's proud.

"There can be a tendency for people to determine that when you lose, there were no successes and that all the ideas were bad," wrote Moffatt. "It is imperative that we as a party understand that we have an opportunity to continue to grow if we fully capitalize on the achievements and time invested over the last two years."

Murphy said he agrees with what Moffatt wrote.

"What I wanted to focus on is our communication with each other," added Murphy.

"What I wanted to focus on is our communication with each other," added Murphy. "I think there's a hole that needs to be filled for open discussion, and it doesn't have to be anything overly sensitive online, just to get that discussion started on how we can all work together and build a coordinated effort anywhere from a local county race to a presidential campaign in 2016, I think we all need to come together and work together."

Murphy also runs a website, Polichat.org, which curates the weekly discussion and publishes guest blog posts with deeper dives into the topics discussed in the chats.

What do you think Republicans need to do to be more successful online? Share in the comments.

Photo via Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images