Blog P.I.

Call me crazy, but the blog launched today under Tom DeLay’s name — he said tonight on Hardball that he’s not actually writing it (”I’m not a very good writer”) — is not half-bad. I’m not saying that it’s great, or that it will even be accepted by the rightosphere at large (DeLay has many detractors on the right), but that whomever set it up clearly knows what they’re doing.

Its chances for real success are iffy, and politicans’ blogs are notoriously bad. Wizbang’s Weblog Awards understandably dropped its Best Campaign Blog category this year, for want of worthwhile entrants.

But then, one could argue that Tom DeLay is no longer a politician, just another conservative activist, so perhaps he’ll be willing to take on opponents in a manner sitting officials never are. To wit, the latest post at the time of this writing bashes Jimmy Carter for his “apartheid” book, and another post applauds Michelle Malkin for slamming Kofi Annan — just like a regular old conservative blogger.

His blogroll rings true, including just about every standard big-name blog of the rightosphere save Instapundit, and even includes Mickey Kaus (incorrectly listed as “Kaus Files”), the favorite liberal of many a conservative blogger.

Blogger “carnivals” — edited round-ups of self-submitted entries — are a mainstay of the blogosphere, and DeLay is promising a “Carnival of Conservatives” every other Friday. We’ll see exactly what that means, but it certainly sounds like a commitment to being an active participant in the political blogosphere.

What’s more, the content management system appears to be either WordPress or Movable Type, and even if not, it sure looks like a site powered by one of those traditional blogging platforms. It even claims to be protected under Larry Lessig’s Creative Commons license — which is somewhat amusing; DeLay does not strike me as a typical adherent of copyleft provisions.

Best of all, liberals are allowed to comment, at least so far. Holden of First Draft, the the owner of many ponies, has the third comment in this thread. Comments by new users are moderated, and Holden was critical but polite. One assumes that profanity is a red flag [Update: Yep] — an issue liberal and conservative bloggers do not see eye-to-eye on — but if DeLay’s team continues to let dissonant views through, the site will be the better for it.

What’s more, Holden is listed as unregistered, and as yet one need not even provide an e-mail address before commenting — something many traditional blogs do not allow.

Not that the site is entirely praiseworthy. It’s not such a big issue that he’s not actually writing his posts — few politicians do — but this disclosure does not appear on the site, though some posts do go up under his name. Even a shared byline would be nice, to give some idea of who is responsible for word choice.

For example, one contributor goes by the moniker NJ Conservative. No indication whether that person is the same as this NJ Conservative. Another is billed as NH Conservative, so the odds are these are merely anonymous contributors named for their state of residence. Will nobody post under their own names?

Meanwhile, if you want to sign up for his new political action committee, GAIN (Grassroots, Action, and Information Network), you’ll have to download a MS Word DOC, provide references, pay $52 “at the time of acceptance” and e-mail it back or upload it to the site. That’s not as bad mailing it back, but it is cumbersome. And if you’re posting this to the Internet in the first place, why require references?

Additionally, Jackie Kucinich of The Hill (and yes, daughter of you-know-who) reports that GAIN is supposed to be like a conservative MoveOn.org. I’m not sure if the analogy is hers alone — the organization’s about page doesn’t make that comparison, not that you’d expect it to — but I do know that MoveOn.org doesn’t require a membership fee upfront.

These parallel institutions, activist group and community blog, currently operate under two separate ethoses, and chances are one will eventually prevail. Time will tell which one supersedes the other. DeLay being a hardened Washington power player, I’ll predict that the blog’s best days are right this moment — one vitriolic blogswarm and the comment section could become as closed as DeLay’s former political operation.

But he is also the consummate politician, willing to go on Hardball on the day he resigned, and if he can keep smiling through the blog fights that surely lay ahead, he just may have something here.

Update: Ahem. Well, it seems that the original first post has been deleted from the website, or at the very least altered. A scandal? John Amato at Crooks and Liars seems to lean in that direction. The original DeLay post was saved and has been reposted here, with the first 111 comments available here.

It doesn’t appear that DeLay wrote anything compromising in the first post, but when you read those comments, you can see why it might have come down. Warning — “language” follows:

YOUR ARE A FUCKING DISGRACE TO THE IDEAS OF GOLDWATER. CRAWL BACK INTO A HOLE YOU TURD!

And:

Tom DeLay is a pussy-ass faggot moneygrubber.

Plus:

When you’re locked up, will you smuggle blog posts out in your visitors’ rectums?

Also:

die you fucker die

An unregistered user claiming to be DeLay writes:

Fuck you all, i am the greatest assfucker ever.

A lone voice protests:

Everyone already assumes bloggers are unemployed losers… thanks for reinforcing that stereotype…

Okay. Again, call me crazy, but it sounds like the problem here was that they didn’t have their comment moderation system ready to go at launch. That’s a blunder, to be sure, but this is not a case of DeLay’s team removing an embarrassing or erroneous post of their own (although I am confused as to why the original text of that post was removed). Lefty bloggers say civility is overrated, and while there are circumstances where they have a point, this is not one of them.

Amato implies that Democratic voices are censored from the site, but as I’ve demonstrated above, that isn’t true. But it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.