Karl Rove Invented the Internet
The Moose avers that Karl Rove is more devious than you thought.
Increasingly, the Moose is of the opinion that the only thing that it is going well for the Republicans is the left wing blogosphere. Ultimately, it may be the GOP's saving grace.
As much as there is an ideology of the netroots it is that raw partisan polarized politics is the path to power. Fight, fight, fight is their cure to what ails the donkey.
There is some truth to that notion. When a party is in the opposition, it must be able to muster an effective opposition. However, the dilemma for the Democratic Party is that in America liberals are hugely outnumbered by conservatives and moderates.
Consequently, the donkey must persuade as well as mobilize. This year may be the exception to that rule because the Republican Party is in a state of collapse. However, 2008 will likely be another matter altogether.
The net effect of the blogosphere is that is moving the party to the left. On national security issues, the lefty bloggers have far more in common with the party of Michael Moore than that of JFK. And Democratic politicians are increasingly pandering to the netroots. That pandering may gain them access to money and some activists, but it is not where the voters reside who they will need to become a majority party.
It is no accident that the only Democrat re-elected in the past sixty years was a New Democrat centrist. But, the blogosphere is littered with those who would debase the only winning legacy for the Democratic Party.
No doubt, a smart Democrat will figure out that the blogosphere is not all that it is cracked up to be. And that donkey may have a serious shot at becoming the next President of the United States.
Here's the confession of a self-loathing blogger - I could easily do without the blogosphere, however I couldn't give up the New York Times, Washington Post and the rest of the flawed, but essential MSM. Bloggers (including yours truly) are simply deluded if they believe are anything more than unedited and uncredentialed keyboarders with strong feelings. The left wing blogosphere is a place where bile passes for wisdom.
McGovern had direct mail - the contemporary McGovernites have modems. The medium is nothing more than a method of communication for a very narrow slice of the electorate.
Moreover, a couple of the most influential left-wing bloggers are crude, crass, humorless, and annoyingly predictable. Jonathan Chait aptly likened them to the New Left,
"It's a paranoid, Manichean worldview brimming with humorless rage. The fact that the contemporary blog-based left, unlike the McGovernite New Left, lacks a well-formed radical program is some measure of comfort. However, I think there's lots of evidence to suggest that this style of thinking is suggestive of a tendency to move in more radical directions over time. That, of course, is exactly what happened to the New Left, many of whose members starting off as relatively sensible liberals, or left-liberals before veering into the abyss."
The left wing netroots - an infantile disorder. --