Back in 2004, one of the founding members of the political blogosphere managed to blog his way out of the good graces of many he had inspired to take up Blogger accounts in the first place. That was Andrew Sullivan, and while he undoubtedly remains an A-lister, he’s probably already proved a kind of blogosphere peak traffic theory.
Another popular veteran blogger has been steering wider and wider away from his peers in the rightosphere, and unlike Sullivan, it’s one who has called himself a Republican. This is John Cole, the West Virginian Army vet and Pajamas Media signatory who writes Balloon Juice. His site is a rarity in the sense that the chief blogger identifies as right of center, but the readership (as demonstrated by its loyal commenters) leans decidedly to the left. For some time now, Cole has featured a co-blogger, Tim F., who is even more critical of the contemporary right than himself.
Both Cole and Sullivan have voiced greater concerns about the direction of the Iraq war and the war on terrorism, and about the Republican Party’s priorities regarding social issues than most mainstream conservative bloggers (and more than avowed non-conservative Glenn Reynolds, at least until the “pre-mortem” post). Unlike many of their peers, they’ve lost all respect for the Bush presidency and reclaimed/redefined conservatism enough to justify staying on the same side of the fence.
The very fact of their disagreement isn’t so much the issue — they could have drifted apart and largely ignored each other. Instead, the animosity really has to do with Sullivan and Cole coming around to openly fight with their erstwhile allies. These arguments look like personality conflicts, and they certainly are, but are also so contentious because an ideological fight underlies them.
The fights they pick are not without merit, though it’s sometimes hard to decide which side is thinking about it more clearly, if anyone — and so I’ll punt and just say “follow the links”: a non-definitive summary would note that Sullivan has clashed with Glenn Reynolds and with James Taranto and become an inside joke among numerous other bloggers. Cole is currently in the middle of a blog fight with Dan Riehl, just concluded one with Red State, and before long will probably go another round with Michelle Malkin.
As far as I can tell, it seems Cole usually aims to stand up for decency, Sullivan for his principles. This also seems to mean Sullivan-engaged arguments often revolve around himself — and hey, that’s just what Time is probably hoping for. To use a phrase more commonly associated with the leftosphere, they’re like concern trolls* in the wider conservative blogosphere.
Such blog fights can be either great fun or excruciatingly dull, depending on how much you have invested in the squabbling parties. And considering the war’s prominence in these splits, there will probably be more. Assuming Iraq gets worse before it gets better — that being one thing supporters and opponents of U.S. Iraq policy might agree on — we’ll see more bloggers reach a breaking point, lambasting their spherical allies for failing to understand what they do now, while the stalwarts kick them to the curb and renounce them as apostates.
It’s hard to say what this means for the 2008 White House scrum, currently still in training camp (pre-season begins with the first post-election early primary state straw poll). Both the left and right blogospheres will fracture, sometimes with acrimony and sometimes amicably, as they all back different candidates for president.
Since its post-2002 midterm formation, the leftosphere has been an anti-Bush monolith, and his eventual departure from Washington (and our eventual withdrawal from Iraq) will create new tensions for Democrats and the bloggers who favor them, along with the expected opportunities. If Democrats win the White House in ‘08, we could see the blogospheric equivalent of a geomagnetic reversal — on both sides, existing bloggers would realign, some veterans might lose readership, and newcomers could pick up big traffic.
It seems plausible that Sullivan and Cole could support a Republican for president alongside their erstwhile compatriots, but probably not until after the primary is decided. But I have to wonder, when Cole has been putting his “Republican Stupidity” category tag to much greater use lately compared with his “Democratic Stupidity” one, even though the latter category was once created 10 places before the former.
Of course, if a Republican takes the oath of office in January 2009, things certainly won’t remain static. 9/11 created the right-blogosphere and the Iraq war defined it, but as domestic (social and economic) policy has been inevitably regaining significance compared to foreign policy (which again, they don’t always agree on) things have gotten — and will continue to get — more interesting.
So, let’s settle for a hypothesis: The longer an individual participates in the blogosphere, the likelihood of a political shift dividing said blogger from his or her allies along new lines approaches one.
Note: Additional text and argumentation provided by OXR.
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