Conservative Blogs

Here’s a little tidbit from the NYTs Year in Ideas, entitled Conservative Blogs are More Effective:

When the liberal activist Matt Stoller was running a blog for the Democrat Jon Corzine's 2005 campaign for governor, he saw the power of the conservative blogosphere firsthand. Shortly before the election, a conservative Web site claimed that politically damaging information about Corzine was about to surface in the media. It didn't. But New Jersey talk-radio shock jocks quoted the online speculation, inflicting public-relations damage on Corzine anyway. To Stoller, it was proof of how conservatives have mastered the art of using blogs as a deadly campaign weapon.

That might sound counterintuitive. After all, the Howard Dean campaign showed the power of the liberal blogosphere. And the liberal-activist Web site DailyKos counts hundreds of thousands of visitors each day. But Democrats say there's a key difference between liberals and conservatives online. Liberals use the Web to air ideas and vent grievances with one another, often ripping into Democratic leaders. (Hillary Clinton, for instance, is routinely vilified on liberal Web sites for supporting the Iraq war.) Conservatives, by contrast, skillfully use the Web to provide maximum benefit for their issues and candidates. They are generally less interested in examining every side of every issue and more focused on eliciting strong emotional responses from their supporters.

But what really makes conservatives effective is their pre-existing media infrastructure, composed of local and national talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, the Fox News Channel and sensationalist say-anything outlets like the Drudge Report - all of which are quick to pass on the latest tidbit from the blogosphere. "One blogger on the Republican side can have a real impact on a race because he can just plug right into the right-wing infrastructure that the Republicans have built," Stoller says.

Earlier this year, John Thune, the newly elected South Dakota senator, briefed his Republican colleagues on the role of blogs in his victory over Tom Daschle, the former Democratic minority leader. The message seems to be catching on. In Arkansas, the campaign manager for the gubernatorial candidate Asa Hutchinson sent a mass e-mail message to supporters in May promoting the establishment of blogs "to comment on Arkansas politics as a counter to liberal media." With the 2006 elections coming, Democrats have begun trying to use blogs more strategically. But given their head start, Stoller says, conservatives "will certainly have an upper hand." Again.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who spends time reading blogs. Don’t get me wrong, there are a fair amount of liberal hacks populating the blogosphere, who seem more concerned with bashing Republican policies than thoughtfully discussing issues. But generally speaking, conservative bloggers tend hold the party line while liberal bloggers delight in their own crankiness, targeting their critiques at Republicans and Democrats alike.

In many ways, this difference in blogging style reflects positively on bloggers of the left, suggesting that we are more even-handed in our criticism than our counterparts on the right. But as long as this distinction stands, conservative blogs will remain the more "effective" political tools. I agree with the NYTs piece that tie-ins with the media infrastructure give conservative bloggers mainstream prominence, but that prominence would be of little value to the Republican Party if right-wing bloggers were more critical of their own side.

This all begs the question: Is it better to fight the good fight or to win? I suppose it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.

--Matthew McCoy