Today's Roll Call talks about the Club for Growth's use of technology:

The anti-tax group always asked members to donate to candidates endorsed by the club. But beginning last week, the club cast a wider net. In the past only members could access the portion of the Web site dedicated to Congressional races and listing candidates endorsed by the club.

No longer, Toomey said. The new Web site allows all visitors to peruse the list and click links to make online donations.

As a conservative, I've always liked the Club because I agree with them philosophically. But there are lots of conservative groups who have the right philosophy, but simply aren't productive. What makes the Club unique is that they marry traditional politics with modern "net-roots" tactics.

And here's the best part: The Club would be a major power-house -- even if they didn't have a website. So the fact that they have one of the best political websites (it's interactive and constantly updated) has taken them to another level.

There are still lots of good political organizations who don't really buy into the whole internet thing. They do direct mail, use phones, etc. While they are still major players today, I wonder if these organizations will be able to compete in the future.

Conversely, there are plenty of groups that have highly-advanced websites, but they aren't effective at traditional politics -- probably because they never learned the fundamentals (does DailyKos even have an office???)

Sadly, these groups almost makes it appear that being effective on the ground -- and being web-savvy -- are mutually exclusive (of course, they're not).

Club president Pat Toomey deserves credit for keeping his organization on the cutting-edge. Rather than simply relying on what has worked in the past, the Club is always looking ahead. In this case, they are positioning themselves as the group that can combat the Left. As the Roll Call article points out:

While Toomey hopes Web site visitors eventually join the club, he primarily is concerned with countering the campaign contribution bundling prowess of liberal Web sites and organizations, such as MoveOn.org, EMILY’s List and DailyKos.

The Club is the perfect example of what can happen when you marry traditional politics with modern technology.

Much of the credit for this goes to Andy Roth, the Club's in-house blogger, extraordinaire. Rob Bluey recently wrote about how presidential campaigns will all need to have an in-house eCampaign Manager -- well the same is true of organizations and trade associations, etc. Andy is the template for what other organizations should seek out (if they want to get serious about changing America.)