On a conference call earlier today the Romney campaign rolled out "Sign Up America," an ambitious online plan to sign up 24,000 supporters in 24 hours (tied, obviously, to tonight's debate in South Carolina).

I asked about the details, which were a bit vague, as well as the GOP's inferior presence to the Democrats in cyberspace.

The campaign disputed my characterization somewhat, though did "concede the point" that the Democratic candidates were way ahead of their Republican counterparts. I don't think there's much doubt on that, but the campaign wanted to make sure I knew that of all the GOP candidates, Romney was way ahead. For example, according to the campaign, Romney has the most YouTube videos of any other GOP candidate, as well as the most Facebook "friends" -- not to mention that Romney was the first on Facebook.

Romney's Director of eStrategy Mindy Finn also made the point that for online support to mean anything, it must translate offline. For instance, she used the example of Howard Dean's tremendous online enthusiasm in 2003 preceding Dean's implosion in early 2004 (which of course preceded a Bush victory). It's a point that's been made often enough since, most recently in Newsweek, and it's true. And there can be no question that the GOP's "offline" Get-Out-the-Vote effort in 2004 was superior to the Dems'.

However, Democratic Internet gurus like Joe Trippi (who's with John Edwards these days) have been spending the last four years trying to make the online translate offline, while Republicans it seems to me are still working on the online part. Finn's reasonable explanation was that supporters of the party in power felt less of an urgency to cultivate the online world than their out-of-power peers -- but that's a debate for another day.

It'll be interesting to see whether the Romney campaign meets its "24,000 In 24 Hours" goal, though I suspect, as does NRO's Jim Geraghty, who was on the call, that a campaign wouldn't set itself up like this if it wasn't quite certain it would reach it. It'll be even more interesting if those 24,000 newly signed Romney boosters can make a difference.