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.




http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11ideas1-11.html

Conservative writers are often quite good and very pursuasive.

However, there is no equivalent to DU on the right. Even Free Republic isn't the same. There is little sense of community or comradeship there, I have noticed. When I first started blogging I had no concept what was right and what was left. I read a LOT of garbage.

Rough Limpballs is a drug addict, Dildo Really is a sexual harrasser, their leadership are a bunch of corrupt thieves...they need new blood, and they aren't getting any. People are tiring of hate speech and outrage. They are starting to realize that these clowns are railing against liberals, and liberals ARE NOT IN CHARGE. The jobs are going away, the prices for everything are climbing, health care is astronomical, and there is no relief in sight.

When you are in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. They are starting to figure that out, I suspect...

One thing the article notes, and I have seen here, is this:

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....

to suit the occasion...as conservative bloggers do.

Less easy when you actually have some relationship to truth...because it's sometimes inconvenient.

television and radio -- then the internet.

they use these as a tripod -- a really sturdy tripod.

then when you throw in unquestioning editorials and ''investigative'' reports from the newspapers -- you have a heavy fuckin duty coffee table.