March 31, 2008

Let's blame John McCain on Ann Althouse (bloggers helped McCain?)

Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times offers "Blogger outreach boosts McCain" (link), an uncharacteristic attempt to blame the resurgence of John McCain on bloggers rather than where it mostly belongs: on constant MSM puffery:

Even as talk radio was brutalizing Sen. John McCain in the Republican presidential primaries, conservative bloggers reached a respectful truce with the Arizona senator over touchy issues and gave him what the campaign called a "tremendous positive psychological" boost.

The main reason: Mr. McCain's blogger outreach, the most extensive of any presidential campaign in either party, helped keep him afloat in the dark days last summer when the major press was sizing up his campaign grave. During those times, Mr. McCain got attention and digital ink from the bloggers he invited to biweekly conference calls, and got a chance to talk policy.

McCain's resurgence was more likely due to the MSM, which did things like smear his opponents and those who support our laws (for instance, from Joel Achenbach) or which lied about his immigration stance (examples from Bennett Roth, Elisabeth Bumiller and John Broder, and Ron Claiborne and Peter Canellos).

However, that doesn't leave hack bloggers who participated in those conference calls off the hook, who completely failed to ask McCain anything approaching a real question. Those bloggers include Ann Althouse, someone who's constantly promoted by Instapundit despite having little to say. After a couple of her reports of conference calls I left comments with suggested questions and instead, if she asked a question at all it was extremely lightweight. I continue to be amazed that she's an actual law professor.

Others include "Captain Ed" Morrissey. Despite asking a better question recently, every other question that I'm aware of him having asked politicians in the past is something that even Politburo hacks would consider too obsequious. Others apparently taking part in the conference calls were Jim Geraghty from the National Review, PowerLine, one or more people from Townhall, one or more from race42008.com, and Robert Bluey of the Heritage Foundation and affiliated in some way with RedState.

Posted to Bloggage at March 31, 2008 10:53 AM