It had to happen.  The Reps have opened an internet fund-raising site.  The scary part is that Keith A. Davis of Huckaby Davis Lisker (who previously worked for Bush-Cheney ’04) is the Treasurer.  I am cross posting from my DailyKos diary.

In 2006, 22 federal races were won or lost by less than 2 percent. In 2002 and 2004, just seven races total were won or lost by less than 2 percent. We’re no longer winning and losing races with wide margins. One reason Democrats won the House and Senate majorities is because sites like ACTBLUE allowed Democrats to raise funds across the country and raise resources get our message out.

The Republicans are now entering the field with Slatecard.com PAC that operates SlateCard.com,
acting as a “conduit” for Republican contributors to federal races.

Acknowledging that Democrats are far ahead of Republicans in converting their online presence to off-line support, SlateCard.com states,

It is our hope that Slatecard will level the playing field for Republican candidates and causes by providing an innovative platform for use by the Right kind of activists.

SlateCard uses several innovations that ActBlue should implement. 

First is the innovation of “issue badges.” Currently, on any candidate’s website or on a site like ActBlue, once a user inputs their credit card information and clicks submit the process is over.

Not so on Slatecard. On Slatecard, when a contribution has successfully processed the user is then taken to an issue badges page where the user can choose one of 26 issues that they believe the candidate represents well. For example, a few popular issue badges are “Faith & Values,” “2nd Amendment Rights,” Secure Our Borders,” and “Stop Hillary.” Once we’ve amassed enough data, we’re going to give activists the ability to search for candidates they might support based on the issues. But we’re not letting candidates choose the issues, instead the issues are selected by the community that supports that candidate. In other words, we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to make a qualified-Wiki of candidates where issue-based voters can support candidates regardless of geography.

The second innovation is to provide a “Connect” section on every candidates profile where the candidate can add links to social networking sites like facebook, myspace, youtube, flickr, linkedin and other outlets.

The third innovation is what the page calls “Snacktivism.” The Reps track every action on the site (Who knew the Reps would do such a thing) by registering the site  The Ticker. It is in effect a score card of visits to pages and shows interest beyond just donations. 

There is also a blog page and other features that ActBlue could effectively implement.