What It Feels Like to Be Proven Correct ...
Back to that "talking points" meme regarding the Republican wing of the blogosphere. Maybe I was all wrong about it.
Or not ....
Trickle Up Blogging
Waldo Jaquith (waldo.jaquith.org)
The Democratic and Republican blogospheres have entirely different approaches to message distribution, with Republicans significantly more unified in their themes than Democrats.
The Echoing GOP
Chad Dotson (vaconservative.com)
As campaign professionals, the articulation and dissemination of a defined message is of the utmost importance. Blogs are wonderful tools for helping campaigns push a unified message ......
In the end, the difference between Waldo's column and this one comes down to activism versus idealism. winning elections is our goal. Blogs functioning as echo chambers help to rally the troops and push the themes of parties and campaigns. That puts us on the path to victory on Election Day.
Dotson, the Republican blogger of this conversation in Campaigns & Election magazine, pretty much confirms what I've been saying all along. Not that I expect acknowledgement from the usual suspects who take such umbrage to me pointing out the obvious (and even worse, calling them out with same). After all, that would require acknowledging reality, which we all know has a clear liberal bias. Oops, there I go lifting talking points now ;-)
Still, I don't think Jaquith's column is necessarily spot-on. It'd be nice to think that a perfect difference exists, but it doesn't. I think there's something to his thesis that Democratic and progressive bloggers operate more independently than our Republican cohorts (at least to a degree), but I think it's a function of operating over a longer period of time as a functioning community of bloggers in an out-of-power environment. Were the tables reversed, I think the reverse situation would be in existence. Which only makes if funnier that our Republican friends take such issue the catcalls of "talking points." I mean, it pretty much confirms another point I'm prone to making when the mood strikes ... that conservatism has devolved and morphed into a movement towards the accumulation of power moreso than enacting any semblence of a defined agenda or platform. Power, after all, usually seeks to preserve power.
What do I know, though? I'm just kicking it here in Realityville.
You're right, a perfect difference surely doesn't exist. That's the sort of line that Chad and I draw in the sand for the purpose of a pair of columns that fit the mold of Democrat vs. Republican, and within our 450 word limit. The respective partisan blogospheres are so large, so disorganized, and so disconnected that there's really no (useful) unifying statement that can be made about their commonalities. On the whole, I think my description of the differences fits, but there are a lot of shades of gray in there. :)