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Archive for the 'PorkBusters' Category

A (NZ) Bearish Take on the New Republican Leadership

Published by William Beutler on November 16, 2006 in Campaigns, Internecine Battles, PorkBusters, RNC and Republicans. 1 Comment

The Senate Republicans chose their leadership today, and while no one was much surprised or upset by Mitch McConnell’s ascension to Minority Leader, the return of Trent Lott to the whip position — which he held a decade ago, before becoming leader and then becoming the first major public figure to be brought low by the blogosphere — is not pleasing anyone. The leftosphere excepted, of course.

On Friday the House GOP votes on its leadership, and if conventional wisdom holds, the rightosphere may find the results even more disappointing.

Perhaps hoping to forestall the expected defeat of conservative favorites Mike Pence (for leader) and John Shadegg (for whip), pseudonymous GOP blog organizer NZ Bear — first known for his link and traffic ratings (which he compiled as a hobby long before Technorati went into business) and later for leading the Porkbusters effort — put together a successful series of conference calls wherein leadership contenders submitted themselves to the questions of conservative bloggers. (These were covered most diligently by Blog P.I.’s Higgins, Extreme Howard Mortman.)

Some of the questions were drawn from a concurrent project — the collection of nearly 300 reader-submitted questions, which were subsequently voted on by 1,135 bloggers and blog-reading individuals.

The conference calls have now concluded, and the vote is back in the hands of the House GOP caucus (where, come to think, it actually always was). But I thought it would still be worth grabbing the top- and bottom-ranked questions, as they give a pretty good insight to what the rightosphere thinks is important (and unimportant) for the 110th Congress.

First, the three most popular:

    Question: Will the GOP support a “no earmark” policy. If not, why not? Popularity: +564 Question: Will you actually defend yourselves in the mainstream media, and assign some members to a continous media communications task, or instead allow the MSM to paint you however they wish, especially to independent voters? I realize that Lynne Cheney is not an elected official, but her recent CNN interview is quite instructive. Popularity: +506 Question: What is your position on immigration? Specifically: 1. Are you in favor of funding and building the 700 mile fence on the Southern border? 2. Do you support stronger enforcement of criminal laws and civil sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrants? 3. Are you for or against an expanded guest worker program and how/when would you implement such a program? 4. Do you support amnesty for illegal immigrants currently living in the US and, if so, what specific provisions do you support? Popularity: +413
There are a few irregularities here; that last one asks several distinct questions, whereas the second entry — besides possibly being planted by Dick Cheney — is really more of a complaint than a query. However, the hot-button concerns above are definitely expressed more coherently than the not-so-hot-button issues at the end of the long list:
    Question: Since, after Nov. 7, the GOP is toast this election cycle, what brand of butter do you prefer, and will that preference change after more toast becomes available after the election cycle ending in 2008? Popularity: -37 Question: Please stand up…don’t hide…and grow some ball’s..in other word’s be for the GOP Popularity: -41 Question: Will you make it a goal to make the party more appealing to moderate secular voters or will you continue the policy of reliance on the Evangelical movement? Popularity: -56

Whoever submitted that last question can be legitimately unhappy that it was deemed even less popular than the practice of spelling “balls” with an errant apostrophe.

While we’re on the subject of conservative blogger discontent with the GOP’s post-election moves, here’s what they think of the White House’s endorsement of Florida Sen. Mel Martinez over outgoing Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele to be chairman of the Republican National Committee, according to a poll conducted by Hot Air:

Rightosphere overwhelmingly favors Michael Steele to Mel Martinez for RNC chair

The right-blogosphere could have a couple of long years ahead of it — at least.

On Different Internets

Published by William Beutler on October 19, 2006 in Blog Fights, Campaigns, Instapundit, John McCain, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, PorkBusters and Republicans. 31 Comments

It appears that until about this time in the afternoon Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh had never heard of a weblog* called Instapundit (even his transcriber thinks the name of the site is “Insta-Pundit”). This was news to me, but it wasn’t necessarily a surprise.

To start, here a rambling Rush reproves Glenn Reynolds:

Now, I got a couple of e-mails I was checking here during the break from people who say, “Oh, no, Rush! Don’t get in a war with conservative bloggers. If the media rips you guys apart, it’s all over.” I am not at war with conservative bloggers. I quote countless posts from many blogs on this program. I use them as resources. I’m referring to one blog post, and I don’t even know who it is. This all got started when I cringed when I saw the use of the term “premortem” on a blog site called Insta-Pundit. … Whoever Insta-Pundit is, is letting somebody else reply to whatever it was I’m saying on the program, and it’s a little one-page post that I responded to this morning in the first hour.

I’m going to tell you the blog postings that I regularly read in my RSS reader. I’ve communicated with many of the people who run them. They’re fabulous people, starting with National Review Online, then Hugh Hewitt and his Townhall blog, Captain Ed, Ed Morrissey at Captain’s Quarters. The three lawyers at Power Line. These are resources that I have added to everything else that I use for show prep which makes show prep an ongoing, never ending thing. Red State is another site.(I hope I don’t forget anybody.) Little Green Footballs. I don’t want to leave any out. A.J. Strata, Strata-Sphere. I don’t want to leave anybody out here. The American Spectator. You here me talking about these. I’m referring to two days’ worth of posts on this one site.

So Rush is on speaking terms with RSS and knows what blogs he likes — mostly well-established members of the right-blogosphere — and yet he has no apparent knowledge of just who this “Insta-Pundit” fellow is supposed to be? A little unusual, no? But the fact of the matter is, though their Democratic and left-leaning critics might be slow to realize it, Reynolds and Limbaugh are actually, in the parlance of our times, on different Internets.

I’m willing to bet dollars to puppy shakes that Limbaugh doesn’t know who he is because Reynolds really isn’t kidding when he says he’s not a Republican. I’d wager Pajamas Media’s endowment that Reynolds has never sent so much as an e-mail to the EIB Network, whereas Strata, Morrissey and the NROniks all have him saved in their Outlook.

Limbaugh’s favorite bloggers are always on message, always hitting the day’s big news or arguing with the left. In contrast, consider the podcast Reynolds hosts with his wife — sure, they’ve hosted Bill Frist more than once, but then Frist is clearly enamored with blogging; Reynolds just happens to be a friendly, a big dog, and Frist’s constituent to boot. Yet the Insta-Pundit and the (arguably more conservative) Insta-Wife have also turned over considerable airtime to Democrat Harold Ford and John McCain — who is no friend of Limbaugh’s, to say the least.

Is Reynolds anti-left? No doubt he’s wingnut enough for the moonbats to write him off. (The project of exposing him as a stealth reactionary certainly has its adherents, but that’s old news.) Yet he’s also not pro-right enough for serious GOP activists in the blogosphere to rely on him to push their agenda (nor their candidates). To the extent that Reynolds is a political activist at all, he seems to prefer policy and procedural reforms to party-building (c.f. PorkBusters).

Reynolds’ preferred reforms tend to be government-limiting and market-oriented, and the Limbaugh-sphere is certainly amenable to that. But whereas their online efforts are intended to elect Republicans, Reynolds spends less time bashing Democrats and more time evaluating digital cameras.

  • According to a commenter, not quite. But it’s still clear he didn’t know a “heh” from an “indeed.”

Secret Hold, Secret Senator

Published by William Beutler on August 30, 2006 in Campaigns, Earned Media, Instapundit, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Midterms '06 and PorkBusters. 7 Comments

[Note: Updated below.]

Just shy of a year in existence, the blog-based PorkBusters campaign is making bigger waves than at any point intervening. The investigation into a secret hold on an earmark accountability bill by Sen. Tom Coburn (arguably the campaign’s best friend in Washington) and Sen. Barack Obama is reaching tidal/tsunamic proportions, and even made CNN this week. Danny Glover — who never gets too old for this — has the back story.

PorkBusters LogoAs of this morning, the coalition of mostly right-leaning bloggers have narrowed down the suspects to just a handful of candidates: at least as of now it depends on who you ask, but Ted Stevens is to this case as Richard Armitage was to Plamegate — no one will be shocked if/when the hold turns out to be his; in fact, a little-noticed Arkansas newspaper report from Aug. 18 quotes Coburn himself going all J’Accuse! on Stevens.

As of yesterday, PorkBusters’ Secret Hold page counted Stevens, Thomas Carper, Mel Martinez, Mike Crapo, Judd Gregg, Orrin Hatch, Robert Bennett and Jay Rockefeller, down from about 40 senators earlier in the week. If nothing else, this list may well comprise the senators with the most Internet-illiterate staffs.

Until now, the PorkBusters campaign has mostly sailed under the MSM radar screen, even during its previous high watermarks, killing the bridge to nowhere and helping derail Roy Blunt’s try for the majority leader position. Some of the attention is undoubtedly owed to the left-oriented TPM Muckraker for having just now joined the effort to unmask the holder, and for good or ill, the liberal blogs usually get more media play.

It’s a curious bipartisanship, and not just because TPMm’s Paul Kiel got PorkBusters co-founder NZ Bear’s name (handle, actually) wrong in one post [update: since corrected]. For one thing, this is the sort of thing TPM Muckraker and site overseer Josh Marshall do all the time — the right-blogosphere doesn’t pursue investigations quite so often (the most successful have been one-shots like the exposure of fraudulent Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj). Nor is it too closely coordinated, considering the differing opinions of who’s in and who’s out: As of just last night, Republican-leaning PorkBusters had given a pass to Robert Byrd, whereas Democratic-leaning TPMm had not.

While conservatives might bristle at the notion that they need liberals’ support to grow the PorkBusters effort, the theme of openness is a natural fit with the Democratic netroots’ disillusionment with the Beltway elite. Daily Kos front-pager SusanG wrote about this a couple weeks ago, but only linked PorkBusters in an update, apparently unaware of its existence until then.

TPMm has given the project a shot in the arm, but it remains to be seen if the partnership will persist after this pursuit has concluded. There’s really no reason why the PorkBusters effort shouldn’t be more bipartisan. It’s true that pork has historically been a libertarian/conservative concern (this largely explains the lopsided participation) but in an era where progressives have learned to stake out a fiscal position to the right of Republicans whenever possible, more should be climbing aboard.

Indeed, the campaign is not especially partisan in nature, but fundamentally anti-insider in nature. If the PorkBusters bloggers can keep its momentum going in the next several months, with conservative blogs challenging Republicans and liberal blogs going after Democrats, it will reinforce the presumed anti-incumbent tenor of the midterm elections.

P.S. Traffic-wise, porkbusters.org has been supported almost exclusively by co-founder Glenn Reynolds. To be fair, the real campaign lives not on its home site, but on those of its participatory bloggers, again primarily Instapundit, but also Hugh Hewitt, and now TPM Muckraker. The site’s main page is essentially an RSS aggregator reposting just about anything mentioning PorkBusters about the campaign (including those who are not so happy about having their articles republished).

Update: Well, that didn’t take very long: Sen. Stevens’ office has admitted the hold was theirs. On the other hand, wouldn’t it behoove the Palm Beach Post to mention that the “much speculation” occurred in the blogosphere? Especially considering the Post reported this on their blog? That duty is left to Stevens spokesperson, who also utters these famous last words:

Going to the blogs and the media with these concerns is not the way we have ever operated.

Update 2: TPMm confirms Robert Byrd in fact also placed a hold on the bill, has now released it, and his spokesperson has succeeded in not saying something the blogs would take badly.

So the left-right coalition can count this as win, like the Kos-Krempasky testimony before the FEC last year: a rare cross-ideology collaboration (and at least in these few cases, when they team up, they do win). And now, on to the questions about what happens next. TPMm again, asks an intriguing question: Are Even Porkbusting Projects Full of Pork?