Today, twenty years ago, the lights were turned on at RedState. 

When it started, it was anything but a commercial project. Four guys — Ben Domenech, Mike Krempasky, Josh Trevino, and one other who is no longer involved in politics — had the idea of trying to energize the online right toward activism in the same way that DailyKos was inspiring the anti-American left. This is how Wired.com described it:

IN AN ANSWER to liberal activists' online successes with fund raising and rabble rousing, conservative bloggers Michael Krempasky, Ben Domenech and the pseudonymous Tacitus decided to fight liberals with one of their own innovations: the activist site.

More than two weeks before the Democratic convention, on July 12, the men -- all in their 20s -- launched RedState.org as an outlet for conservative bloggers and blog readers. Borrowing tactics from progressive activist blogs, such as Daily Kos and Eschaton, Red State encourages readers to support Republican candidates in tightly contested races.

The first two candidates on Red State's slate were in primary races for the U.S. Senate: former Rep. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and three-term Rep. Jim DeMint of South Carolina. As of Aug. 2, Red State raised $1,000 for Coburn and will soon begin fund raising for DeMint. "Now that the primaries that we're most interested in have passed, we're going to focus on general election contests," Krempasky said. "DeMint is at the top of our list."

I learned about the site's opening via James Taranto's "Best of the Web" feature in the Wall Street Journal. It was great timing because I'd just been defenestrated by the humorless drones moderating Lucianne.com. It was an unfortunate incident involving Angelina Jolie and a nip-slip in a movie poster that fell into the genre of "the cop never thinks it is as funny as you do."

At the time, I'd never done long-form writing, and the RedState site had a "Diaries" section where no-name folks like myself could write. If you wrote something good, your work might end up on the front page, and that experience was quite an ego boost. The site had a page with diary guidelines that inspired me. "Don't be derivative," it said. People don't want to read your take on the same take everyone else has. They want a fresh look. Shortly after I settled in as a commenter, the 9/11 Commission report was released. Josh Trevino announced that the site would "read the report so you don't have to," I jumped right on that. My very first diary on RedState was on that report. In December of 2004, Mike Krempasky invited me to join the front page.

The masthead was a directory of right and libertarian bloggers. Some were active. Some not so much. While the main content was good, the comments were a war zone. The site used the DailyKos "Scoop" blogging platform. The platform allowed you to rate comments. The comment ratings were weighted. The lower your rating, the fewer people who could see your comment. If you hit "0," you were the only person who could read your comment. Conservatively, 90% of the commenters were also DailyKos commenters so just about every week I had to email the RedState admins and beg to have my rating reset. 

Eventually, that problem was fixed when Robert Hahn joined us from Free Republic and instituted a very healthy policy of banning any liberal for any reason. His philosophy was critical to RedState surviving. Any time, he said, you spend arguing with lefties about their issues is time you lose to talk about your issues. The left will argue the same issues over and over, and your readers get tired of seeing it and move on. So we purged our comments section, and guess what? We attracted readers from other sites who were bored with reading the same left-right arguments every day. I'm happy to say that one of my accomplishments as managing editor was to talk Robert into rejoining the site.

The site prospered. We did "money bombs" for candidates, getting men like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio the attention they needed to win upset races. We were seen as DailyKos's direct competitor; some of their big names commented and posted diaries at RedState when they weren't off beating their wives, even though we only had a fraction of their traffic. 

We were on the pointy end of beating down a lot of lefty narratives during the early Bush years. RedState was a focal point of the online investigation that revealed Dan Rather's fraudulent Texas Air National Guard documents. I was among the first to bust a Stolen Valor guy who claimed to have participated in war crimes in Iraq.

For the site to grow, it needed two things: capital and full-time leadership. Erick Erickson, who at the time was a lawyer and city council member in Macon, GA, took the great leap of faith and became our full-time managing editor. The same year, 2006, we were purchased by Eagle Publishing. Somewhere along the way, I'm not sure when, we went from RedState.org to RedState.com.

Over the years, we helped elect candidates. We did some policing of the ranks. RedState's "Operation Leper" after the disastrous, horrific John McCain presidential bid helped end the campaign consulting careers of Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt by revealing their roles in trashing Sarah Palin, who they were paid by the McCain-Palin campaign to help, to the media. The RedState Gathering became a thing. Rick Perry announced his presidential run at the 2011 Gathering...but we got Mitt Romney instead. In 2015, every GOP candidate for president attended the event. 

We launched the careers of several candidates, and some of our writers have gone on to other careers. We number a university provost, appeals court judge, and a member of Congress among the alumni of our front page and diaries. We always punched way above our weight, with much more influence than our traffic would lead one to believe. That was because of smart writing and insights into what was going on in conservative politics.

In 2015, Erick, who had become nearly synonymous with RedState, moved on to other things. About the same time, we were acquired by Salem Media Group. With the resources and supportive leadership of Salem and Townhall Media, RedState has grown exponentially. There have been changes, to be sure, but nothing that is alive is static.

Our expose of former California congresswoman Katie Hill pushed us back into the forefront of conservative media and a lot of readers who had drifted away in the post-Erick years and during Trump's primary and presidential campaigns rediscovered RedState. We promoted some great writers from the diaries to the front page. Along the way, I got to wear the managing editor hat for a couple of years. To be sure, it hasn't all been smooth sailing. Behind the scenes, we adapted to an increasingly monopolistic and hostile online media environment. 

As RedState enters its third decade of operation, we do so with some of the best right-of-center writers in the country and massive reach among conservative activists who are out there every day working to make America a better place.

Happy 20th, @RedState. Just a little longer and you’ll be of legal drinking age. Cc @bdomenech, Joshua Trevino, @EWErickson @streiffredstate (and so many others!) RIP Jay’s Saloon in Arlington, VA.

— Michael Krempasky (@krempasky) July 12, 2024