Bloggers 4 Huckabee
December 21st, 2007 at 9:16 pm . by nukeRecently over at the Huckabee Forum, someone asked an excellent question regarding negative media attacks aimed at the Huckabee campaign…
“How do we counter that?”
How, indeed?
The attacks from the Right have come from A-list blogs, as well as well-funded interest groups, and media outlets and pundits generally sympathetic to conservative causes. These first-generation centers of influence in the Right Blogosphere, along with talk radio, have comprised the lion’s share of opinion-molding and issue-framing of conservatism ever since Rush Limbaugh and the EIB Network changed the way America thought and spoke about Conservatism. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 had a similar effect on the growth of A-list blogs, notably on the Right, Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, Michelle Malkin, Instapundit, Powerline, Captain’s Quarters, and Hot Air.
How do we counter that? If it is possible, and I believe it is, we need to find a way to change the playing field.
I’m not saying anything that hasn’t already occurred to the netroots of the political Left. They are years ahead of us in this arena, and quite frankly, anything we do isn’t going to have much effect on them at all. The only one on the Right that even comes close to competing with them is the Libertarian candidate. His grassroots success, for which the candidate himself claims no personal credit, is positively netroot-ish in its attitude, passion, and ability to manipulate second-generation tools and strategies.
The Huck campaign is doing some of this already. Raising 5 million dollars on line is nothing to sneeze at. Plus, the grassroots forum is another step in the right direction. In fact, I saw an article praising the Huck campaign’s use of the internet over at MyDD.com, comparing the campaign to Dean ‘04. High praise, indeed. But, to counter the influence of the attacks from the Right, we need to use a few more tools, and make a concerted effort to influence the news cycle.
Try this: Take a quick look at popurls.com and see the news of the day from social networking 2.0 perspective. It’s almost a chicken-egg type situation: does web 2.0 drive reporting of the top news stories of the day, or do the news stories of the day drive the social networking sites? The news cycle is a daily occurrence, even on “slow news” days. On those days, headlines from social networking sites may be 3 of the top 5 stories of the day, as reported by the main stream media. A-list bloggers and talk radio can drive 1 or 2 stories, but unless there is a breaking current events story, the left controls 60-80% of the news cycle by default.
Responses to campaign slurs and negative articles can achieve widespread visibility by a significant increase in friendly blogger “authority.” Authority is generally measured by incoming links to other blogs and overall traffic. Ranking services such as Technorati, TTLB, and Alexa use linkage and traffic to rank websites. Stories and web searches are often ranked by authority, with search engines providing access to the higher authority blog as the default choice. Another criterion for blog ranking is the number of RSS subscriptions from services like Bloglines. Blogs which consistently have the highest number of links, traffic, and subscribers are considered generally credible sources, and are often quoted by other providers of original content. A response linked by a large number of blogs goes to the top of the list of stories at Tailrank.com, and combined with a significant number of votes at Digg.com, has an opportunity to greatly influence coverage.
There are currently close to 800 bloggers on the Bloggers for Huckabee blogroll, many who are registered users in the grassroots forum, growing daily. Linkage to the rest of the grassroots would very quickly put friendly blogsites in the top percentiles of each of the ranking services. Authority assures that responses to negative reports are circulated and heard. Strategic linking of favorable articles and posts will give specific articles of interest an opportunity to rise to the top of the 2.0 sites, as users are constantly scouring news sites for popular articles.
There are enough motivated grassroots users to have a significant impact on targeting articles of interest for circulation.
Click this link to add the Bloggers for Huckabee blogroll to your website.
See also: When will the Right recognize the cost of conceding web 2.0?
cross-posted at Nuke’s
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Nuke, you know me well enough to understand that I don’t follow anyone’s lead. But my personal belief is that while I like Huckabee, he has made a series of ghastly mistakes best captured by a commenter at Marc Ambinder’s blog.
“Huckabee and his crowd aren’t being all that careful when they fire their shots. Let’s see, in one week, he or his supporters have dismissed National Review as the “chattering class”, criticized Bush in terminology straight out of the Kos and Moveon.org playbooks, dissed Condoleeza Rice, took on Rush Limbaugh and quoted scripture comparing those that oppose Huckabee to those facing God’s wrath (right out of Isaiah). Can’t wait to see what next week brings. Is this who you expect to unite the party and face the Dems in the general election!?”
While I have not formally endorsed anyone (not that anyone care’s about the endorsement of an eighth-tier blogger, mind you), I feel that an honest assessment puts Mitt Romney as the most likely to beat Hillary or Barack in the general.
Well, down here on the 25th tier, I don’t disagree at all that Romney will be a formidable candidate. His stated positions on the issues are so close to Huckabee’s that I am comfortable with either of them getting the nod. As a matter of fact, the entire Republican field is stonger this year than I’ve ever seen, and it is certainly exciting to watch.
I’m not too concerned about Huck giving some back to NRO. They’ve hounded him for weeks. Ditto Club for Growth, WSJ, American Spectator, et al. In fact, it is their attack on Huck that has put me in touch with my “inner redneck.” The old populist language is very familiar to me, and many Southerners who have witnessed the quadrennial exercise of gubernatorial lunch-bucket politics, working man rhetoric, and defiance toward moneyed interests. I know it sounds trite, and in a way, it is. But, the establishment candidates and their suporters are daring him to run a populist campaign. I hope it doesn’t happen, but I am expecting it before Super duper Tuesday.
Thanks for commenting, Doug. It’s good to hear from you. Merry Christmas, my friend.