You don’t have to be a wealthy rancher hosting a $2,000 a head “diamonds and denim” cookout to become a big-time Republican bundler.

With new, online Republican fundraising utilities like Rightroots and Slatecard, you bundle online donations from your friends, family and associates from the comfort of your laptop. Or your Facebook profile. Or your blog. Or your website.

On both sites, customization will be king. In the near future, Rightroots will allow individuals to create their own “slates” based on issues, races, and geographical regions. Slatecard allows users to create their own slatecard widget. And both sites were created by avidly blogging political operatives.

Looking in through our non-campaign, bipartisan, armchair quarterback window, here are some things we would want to do with both utilities:

• Get my hands on the data. Clearly, one of the most important resources here isn’t just the online donations. It’s the people making the donations. In my fantasy campaign world, I want to see who is donating, who her friends are, where they live, who else they donate to, and how much and how often they donate.
• Hand out the suckers. There’s an old Machiavellian adage that has stuck with me over the past few years: a good prince (or in this case, a candidate) hands out the rewards herself (slowly, over time). I want to be the one who acknowledges and rewards my supporters for donating to me – not someone else. I want to give the warm fuzzies. That way, I build more affinity with the supporters. I’m rewarding them and acknowledging them, not leaving it up to someone else.
• Make my long tail the long tail that everyone sees. I blog regularly about widgets. I happen to like them, and I cannot deny the appeal of the long tail of fundraising. But if there’s anyway to get my logo (and a link to my site) on the widget, then I’ll be happy. I want to drive people to me, not necessarily to someone else.

Bottom line: when it comes to how successful the Internet is as an organizing tool, many people are going to look at one thing: dollar signs. Like it or not, online fundraising – especially small donor online fundraising – has become one of the most important invisible primaries – not just for the presidential candidates, but for how successful online outreach and organizing is in the political space. And over the past several years, Republicans have, well, lagged behind the Democratic pack when it comes to harvesting those small, online donations.

In 2004, we saw an animated John Kerry dancing to the theme song from “Flipper.”

Today, if you want to throw a term like “flip-flopper” at a presidential candidate, then you have to bring more web stuff to the table. Stuff like point-counterpoint issue statements, t-shirts, web video, PowerPoint presentations, a searchable online database of campaign contributions and a citizen journalist toolkit – so that everyman and everywoman can conduct a little opposition research of their own (then report back to the party, of course).

That’s what the Massachusetts Democratic Party did with RomneyFacts.com, a site designed shed light on Romney’s statements as a presidential candidate and make light of any flip-flopping. There’s also a hefty dose of do-it-yourself information to help bloggers and concerned citizens do their own research on Romney.

The Boston Globe quotes the Dean of GW’s Graduate School of Political Management (and IPDI’s interim director) F. Christopher Arterton:

It’s obviously a new application of the Internet, and it strikes me that . . . we’ll probably soon have equivalent sites for all the candidates.

Sites like these are fun to play around with – especially if you vehemently oppose a candidate, but can they really harm a candidate’s chances?

Boston Daily thinks probably not:

Perhaps a determined blogger with a mind for finance will make a significant find in the documents RomneyFacts.com posted, but the attention-grabbing contradictory quotes on the home page won’t hurt Romney much.

We’re wondering if RomneyFacts will develop a widget like the WashingtonPost.com’s Issue Tracker that will allow anti-Romney Democrats to track and compare campaign issue statements with previous performances.

Going where the presidential campaigns themselves have not yet tread, WashingtonPost.com just released its Issue Coverage Tracker widget.

Geared a young audience that might not journey to the WashingtonPost site every hour or even every day, the tool allows user to display breaking news content about their favorite presidential candidate.

Via MediaPost:

While driving traffic back to the Web site is one of the goals behind the widget, exposing The Washington Post brand to a younger reader base that may not be familiar with it–via sites like Facebook and MySpace–is equally important.

The focus – on making customizable news portable for a young audience – is an important theme. We see it as just another step away from the tired line that young voters only care about “boxers or briefs” when it comes to presidential candidates.

Or at least help register voters.

Working Assets, the mobile, long distance and credit card company that supports progressive organizations, has been working with Rock the Vote to register almost a million voters since 2003.

Get ready for 2008.

Working Assets has rebuilt it voter registration platform. Instead of asking visitors to “click here” and go to a different site to register to vote, the new tool is a widget.  Now registering voters on your own site is a cut-and-paste process.

The websites of both Clinton and Richardson already use the widget. I tested both sites this morning. Clicking on “Register to Vote” in the “Action Center” and “Take Action” menu option pops open a register form take covers only about a quarter of the home page for each of the candidates.

Bonus: it also helps you build your list. Organizations that use the widget also get access to a control panel that allows them to use the widget as a list building tool, retaining information such as name, address, email and telephone number.

When I spoke with Adam Klaus about Working Assets voter registration widget this week, he told me that he expects the 2008 election year to see the biggest voter registration campaign in history.

If we were playing a game of buzzword bingo, having the phrase “Long Tail” on our bingo card would most likely win us the jackpot.

In an article for Advertising Age titled “Three Strategies for Thriving on the Decentralized Web,” Steve Rubel looks at three things that marketers need to create a “perfect storm” of “bite-size” online content.

We’ve given his strategies a politic spin.

Rubel Strategy #1 - Think web services, not websites.

The goal, according to Rubel, is to “create similar mini-experiences via web services that plug into these sites yet are consistent with the brand.”

Some of the most popular sites on the web today function as platforms on which interesting and – most importantly – useful applications run. Think about how easy it is, for example, to start an event or raise money on Facebook, which has become something of a trend amongst politically active Facebook members.

We add that these types of applications are successful because they are essentially useful. They do something for us. They give us something – even if that something is getting book or movie reviews. They aren’t merely the online equivalent of direct mail pieces.

Local government, offices on the Hill, federal departments have very little to lose when it comes using their web presences to develop online tools that serve the public, rather that merely functioning as brochures. And, for their part, many federal organizations appear to be moving carefully, slowly in this direction.

Some of them.

And if, by “services” we mean online games and multi-media presentations often directed toward an audience of students, promising enough in themselves  – if they lead to a more enabling, service-oriented approach to the web and aren’t merely the online equivalent of museum brochures.

Rubel Strategy #2 - Connect people.

The new, service-driven platforms aren’t increase in value if they connect people.

“Connect”: another bingo buzzword. According to Rubel, “the greatest value is created when people connect via platforms of participation around a common goal.”

What better common goals to participate in than creating better policy, making government more transparent, volunteering on a political campaign, and helping government goods and services run more efficiently.

Rubel points to microcontent as a new consumer-engagement platform. Specifically, Rubel looks at the Los Angeles Fire Department, which opened a channel on Twitter to inform the public during times of disaster.

Rubel Strategy #3 - Make everything portable.

Rubel writes, “Traffic is becoming something that happens elsewhere, not just on your site.”

In other words, find ways to embed everything. Instead of hoping that our web content will drive people out of their way and onto your website over and over again, think about ways that your visitors can take pieces of your website with you, embed them on their desktops, and share them with their friends.

For political candidates, associations, and advocacy groups, this may mean developing a widget that shares breaking news about a candidate or an issue with your supporters.

For the Los Angeles Fire Department, this may also mean using widgets to send that disaster-related micro-content off a web page and onto mobile devices and desktops.

For a Congressional office, this may mean developing a platform that allows constituents to chart the progress of their requests.

Rubel trumpets these strategies as way to market products better, and we certainly agree. But they aren’t entirely new in the corporate space.

Where they are unique, however, and where thy pose the greatest potential to shape the way we live is in the political space, not merely to market future leaders, but to make the way we lead more efficient and effective at meeting the needs and queries of their constituents.