[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.
As 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?
Whoever the “Secret Senator” is, he has to be absolutely livid over the string of denials (rather than “no comment” responses) from his cohorts. In fact, it seems that this may be the death of the secret hold. It’s no secret if a simple process of elimination can “out” the culprit. And should a Senator lie about it and later be caught in that lie, one could (and should!) expect an immediate call for impeachment.
Wow, TPMm had a typo in referring to N.Z. Bear (now corrected by the way). That’s some great dirt you dug up on TPMm. Look, everyone who is not in the Beltway hates pork (except possibly in their own district). It’s a bipartisan issue.
Dirt, Crust? No, more like a mild ribbing.
You\’re right about it being a bipartisan issue — and the selfishness when it comes to one\’s own district — but the progressive netroots haven\’t made much of an issue about it. I doubt they will, though I have a hard time putting my finger on exactly why.
Is anyone else slightly annoyed that a Senator from a rich but non-populated state is holding the rest of the country hostage on this issue? I never even knew there was such a thing as a “secret hold” … and Alaska is using it over the rest of us!
The site may be shooting itself in the foot, tho. I have twice sent email to the address listed on the site with a request to please, please, post a link to the site’s archives.
If I can’t access the archives of the site, what’s to allow me to further explore the contents of the site? You know, and discover what’s there? Or follow up on a comment thread for something I posted a comment to a while back? Or maybe even posting a link from my own site in order to add my own three droplets of flow to the torrent of Instapundit’s?
I’ve received no response to the emails. Nor have I seen any change to the site. So let Glenn carry the traffic. The site on its own invites no further exploration beyond the single home page (okay, and the two featured links that are currently at the top of that page.)
WWB, thanks for the reply.
Re dirt: I guess my humor sensors were off, sorry.
As for why progressive netroots / Democratic leaning blogs haven’t made as big deal of pork as the Republican leaning blogs of late: Seems pretty straightforward to me. The progressive netroots have a lot else to focus on (the War in Iraq, Katrina, etc., etc.) The right doesn’t anymore. I don’t remember hearing that much about pork from the right until last year, when the conservative mood started to turn sour on Bush, conflating Iraq with Afghanistan stopped working, etc. Even if we just focus on the financial situation, there are three main reasons for the tide of red ink that is the US budget:
1) domestic spending,
2) the cost of the war in Iraq (well into 12 digits, may yet hit 13 digits despite pre-war promises that it would stay at 11 digits)
and 3) tax cuts mostly for the wealthy.
For fairly obvious reasons, the right doesn’t want to talk about 2) and 3) (at least from the point of view of the federal deficit). So they focus on 1), especially the easiest target (earmarks). The left agrees on 1) they just also have a lot else they want to talk about it.
But really, I’d rather just celebrate the bipartisan nature of this venture, sadly so rare on the blogosphere.
Clarification: When I said “the left agrees” I meant on earmarks, not domestic spending as a whole. (I would hope that was obvious even if my wording logically said the opposite.)
(Since our host is an aficiando of typos, I feel like mentioning that I initially typed “hole” rather than “whole” which would probably be a good description of certain segments of domestic spending.)