It was probably inevitable that the launch of the GOP's new website would involve a few bumps, but as Andy Barr reports for the Politico, the site's first day was pretty messy.

Among the problems were the posting of administrator passwords, a list of GOP accomplishments that ended in 2004 and a “future leaders” section that was devoid of material. In addition, the site was inaccessible for much of the day.

The RNC's recently-hired new media director Todd Herman joined a conference call of participants in the RNC's tech summit grassroots group to lay out what he sees as the pillars around which the Republican National Committee can rebuild itself online -- and, by implication, offline. Herman's clearly spent time thinking through his vision for the party. (TechRepublican's Meghann Parlett has a recap of the call.) In the hour long chat, Herman testified that the Republican Party and chairman Michael Steele are planning an aggressive strategy to ready to move on the web front; a new web development firm has just been retained to implement the RNC's first round of online changes.

Or as Herman phrased it, the GOP is ready to "lock and load, down into code."

Step zero was, said Herman, was basic: Rebranding the RNC's "e-Campaign" as a modern new media department, not the IT desk. This is a strategic, proactive wing of the new GOP, he said -- not a service department there to help struggling elected officials log into their email accounts. (And here I was thinking those "No, I will not fix your computer" shirts were obsolete.) That settled, Herman detailed his five strategic principles for revitalizing the RNC online...

"It's time this stopped," writes the Next Right's Patrick Ruffini. "Conservatives need to decide who we want to see succeed and who we want to see fail. We then need to calibrate our reactions to the inevitable missteps from either camp accordingly." Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele, and Bobby Jindal, writes Ruffini, are "all important personalities that we should all want to see succeed." Each of the three putative leaders of the Republican Party have had a few rough weeks, though for distinctly different reasons. The Louisiana governor, of course, for his widely-panned response to Obama's non-SOTU. The RNC Chair and the radio host, meanwhile, have gone punch for punch over Limbaugh's use of the "fail" word in close proximity to talk of the Obama presidency. Read the Atlantic's Chris Good for all the gory details. Ruffini's call to circle the wagons has sparked a fascinating batch of comments. Several commenters object to lumping a rising GOP elected official like Jindal with a incendiary media figure like Limbaugh.

Michael Steele's Republican National Committee is circulating a Request-for-Proposal (pdf) to rebuild the RNC website. The sketchiness of the document is raising speculation that Chairman Steele is simply going through the motions, having already picked out a consultant for the job -- despite his pledges to pump some oxygen into the party's tech ecosystem with outreach like the recent GOP Tech Summit. That, or there's something funny in the air over at party headquarters. The RFP lays out RNC HQ's tech vision in a way that might make more sense were hallucinogenic substances involved: "If we haven't thought of it -- think about it. If it hasn't been tried -- why not. If it's going to be 'outside the box' -- then not only keep it outside the box, but take it to someplace the box hasn't even reached yet." Like, woah.

Red State's Erick Erickson is a bit circumspect, but see if you can suss out his take on the RFP by reading through the lines: "[T]here is no way any competent person would put together an RFP like this. It's crap. It is not legitimate. It is unprofessional. It is illusory." The RFP is all buzz words -- "Flash," "widgets" -- but little in the way of specifics. No matter: the RNC wants all bidder to attach a firm price tag to their proposals. How much is "some place the box hasn't even reached" going for these days? On the Next Right, Dale Franks is holding on to some glimmer of hope: "Surely this is all some sort of elaborate joke. Perhaps on Monday the RNC will tell us that they were just having us on. Then, once we've all had a good laugh, they'll release the real RFP."

Check out the RFP after the jump.