Unbelievable. The Republican Party’s pathetically inept new website actually cost them more than a million dollars to set up: Entering digital age an expensive proposition for GOP.

And for that $1.4 million, they got a website that crashed continuously on its launch day, had almost no real content, was mocked across the blogosphere, allowed trolls and Ron Paul idiots to post antisemitic images, and violated several basic principles of good web design. Excellent work, GOP.

The Republican National Committee shelled out $1.4 million dollars over the last six months for Web sites and services, much of which was spent on GOP.com, the party’s major Web presence that was unveiled this month, new Federal Election Commission expense reports show.

The figure is far higher than what experts estimate it should have cost, and five times the amount its Democratic counterpart spent to host and maintain Democrats.org.

The biggest disparity seems to be bandwidth costs–the RNC paid Smartech Corp., a Republican-focused hosting firm, more than a million dollars, plus $22,000 to Eloqua, compared to the DNC’s $203,000 to Sprint, Switch and Data and Servint Corp.–despite the fact that the two sites’ traffic, which determines bandwidth usage and, largely, hosting costs, was the same.

But the design of the site itself was costly, too. In the months prior to the October 13 launch of GOP.com, the committee paid $328,000 to 11 firms for Web development. (The Democrats, which did not completely overhaul their site during that time period, spent $45,000 on Web development.)

And when the GOP’s graphics-laden product was unveiled, many of the main sections appeared missing or broken, including one advertised as listing future party leaders, which showed up blank.

Smartech Corporation has been taking big money from the GOP for years:

2004
In the 2004 election cycle (2003-2005), the Republican Party paid:

SMARTECH CORPORATION $2,275,081 (153 expenditures) for internet services, computer consulting, email programming, website services, web hosting, email services, wireless services, internet consulting, domain registration, and network consulting.

2006
In the 2006 election cycle (2005-2006), the Republican Party paid:

SmarTech Corp. $8,539 (2 expenditures) marked “Paid for by transfer from RNC”

SMARTECH CORPORATION $3,320,066 (245 expenditures) for equipment, domain registration, web hosting, web services, email programming, data storage, internet connection, internet services, in-kind phone services, computer programming, database programming, license fees, video services, online video streaming, software purchase, training, office supplies, airfare, transportation, meals & lodging, sales tax, etc.

In the 2006 election cycle (2005-2006), the National Republican Congressional Committee paid:

SMARTECH CORPORATION $2,228 (41 expenditures) for “Generic Web Hosting”.