Free Republic

Popping up on Facebook tonight, was an acquaintance flogging his blog. What was fascinating was what the liberals and netroots seem to think about how we on the Right do business. Consider it, in many ways, a guided tour through a Leftie's mindset. Included is the assumption that the Left can organize via social networks, but apparentely we cannot. As an EXTRA bonus, he even throws up a link to a group of blogs fighting "climate change" It shows me, how much has changed, and how far Blue America has gone from those of us in Red America. And what's...

'I AM a pessimist by nature, which is why I have spent my life as a journalist in stead of trying to be a leader, which requires optimism." So wrote Robert Novak, who died Tuesday, in his 2007 autobiography, "The Prince of Darkness." He surely anticipated the problems now facing President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders, optimists all. Not that Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the only optimists who have been flummoxed by the obviously spontaneous outpouring of opposition to Democratic health care bills. Among those optimists are almost all of the Washington press corps and a large...

PITTSBURGH -- A group of Republicans, looking to recoup the party's clout, is borrowing a page from liberal Democrats by beefing up Internet efforts to energize the grass roots. The conservative Americans for Prosperity has further embraced Internet activism to energize its 700,000 members and point them to dozens of town-hall meetings with lawmakers over the past weeks, leaving Democrats on the defensive on a signature issue: overhauling health care. Americans for Prosperity held their conference Right Online here last weekend. It centered on ramping up the use of Facebook, Twitter and other online megaphones to rally conservative opposition to...

Representative Eric Massa (D- NY) addressed an intimate group of Net Roots activists during their annual Net Roots Nation gathering in Pittsburgh this weekend. Mr. Massa reiterated his support for a single payer health care bill. He discussed the risks he takes for wanting to support such a measure in his "right wing Republican district." According to Swing State Project, Mr. Massa won his 2008 race by two percentage points. The voting pattern index (PVI) is a Republican +5 seat. The National Republican Congressional Committee has the upstate New York congressman in their sights for 2010 along with 69 other...

Jake Sherman reports from Pittsburgh on the Netroots convention. It wasn’t as raucous of a reception as some Democrats are getting these days. But one man wanted to make sure former president Bill Clinton heard his gripe. During the opening ceremony for the Netroots Nation convention, a gentleman in the middle of a large convention hall room stood up and scolded Clinton for his don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Clinton clarified his stance, but not without a subtle jab at conservative Republicans staging opposition at health care town halls across the country. “You ought to go to one of those...

Former President Bill Clinton will be the keynote speaker Thursday at the Netroots Nation convention being held at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center this week. Netroots Nation is a group of liberal bloggers who use the Internet and grassroots activism to promote their causes and candidates. In June, the President met with bloggers to discuss a range of topics, from the environment to health care to the role of today's new progressive era. "At a time when we're all working together to make sure we get the change we voted for, President Clinton's message is spot-on. After all, holding...

In a tweet yesterday, Amanda Carpenter alerted us to another example of the close relationship between Democrats and leftwing bloggers intent on destroying Governor Palin: "Anti-Palin blogger cites close ties with "Dem leadership in AK" while angling for a Netroots scholarship." The Anti-Palin blogger is Shannyn Moore, and here's what she wrote: " I am in contact daily with Democratic leadership in Juneau."

We often hear that the Left owns the Net. Like much of what you hear, this is not strictly true. There are no lack of right-of-center websites of all types ranging from personal blogs to influential portals and webzines. (You're reading one of those.) If the total sites of both right and left were comprehensively counted and compared -- probably an impossibility at this point -- the number of sites on our end would likely equal or even surpass those of the left. It would be more accurate to say that the Left uses the Net better. As the late...

A number of interesting observations have percolated throughout the Interweb in the aftermath of the 2008 election - arguments about the "youth vote", the "center-right versus center-left," pushing aside social conservative issues, etc. But one of the most thought-provoking topics receiving attention is the issue of the presence (or lack thereof) of the Right in the online "Web 2.0" universe. As a technology geek by trade, this topic is near and dear to my heart. Much has been made of the aforementioned "youth vote" in the post-election analysis, and within that discussion are implications that the youth were energized by...

A Democrat is poised to take the reins of power in Washington, D.C., and Fresno resident Jim Robinson is feeling a sense of deja vu. It was President Bill Clinton's 1992 election that sparked Robinson's political activism, driving him to create a Web site that made him a grass-roots leader among conservatives before Clinton's term was over. This year, as Barack Obama prepares to sweep into office on another tide of Democratic votes, Robinson and denizens of that Web site, freerepublic.com, are preparing to do battle again. "We'll double and redouble our efforts to fight for what is right," Robinson...

CALL TO ACTION! "FREEPING FOR JESUS": THE VP DEBATE by Kevinole Oct 02, 2008 at 05:51:27 PM PDT We organized a Freep List for the first Obama vs. McCondescending-Asshole debate. As far as I know, this had never been done before. We did a great job and I learned a lot that I could use in making this and future freep list diaries more effective. I fully expect "Mighty Joe" Biden to crush Sarah "I-Shot-Bullwinkle" Palin like a grape. One thing I will not take for granted, however, is the industriousness of the right-wing spin machine. They will be out...

Actually, I don't think the right has played as dirty as this. A Times article by Michael Luo this morning unveils a new netroots enterprise, Accountable America, the unabashed purpose of which is to terrify conservatives from giving campaign money to Republican causes and Republican candidates. It's actually ingenuous. You get a list of past Republican donors and send each of them one, two, many e-mails with the explicit warning that contributing to conservative campaigns may be dangerous to the donor's health. Or, as Luo puts it, "The warning letter is intended as a first step, alerting donors who might...

One thing that hasn't received much attention in conservative and Republicans circles is the ongoing conversation on the left about the possibility of Nuremberg-style war-crimes trials for members of the Bush administration should a Democratic president take office. I'm not exaggerating or introducing the Nazi analogy myself; they actually use the phrase "Nuremberg-style" when they discuss "war-crimes tribunals." And they are quite serious (although the more moderate of them prefer a "truth commission.") At the Netroots Nation gathering in Austin, Texas last month — that is the successor to YearlyKos — Dahlia Lithwick, of the Washington-Post-owned website Slate, did an...

Last week, we published Babba Zee's Anti-Obama Blogs Shut Down by Google, Obamabots. Thurday, Blogger locked our original (and still quite robust) site, DBKP at Blogger for being a spam blog. One would think Blogger would have a system in place before shutting down blogs with any kind of Google Page Rank. After all, your average spam site doesn't acquire much of a page rank. But, apparently, one would be wrong. Our original site is PR-5. Were Obama supporters behind this latest round of blog shutdowns, as they were last month? In Obama's Netroots Supporters Continue "Blog Burning", Confederate Yankee...

The online activists are angry with Barack Obama. But only a bit IT WAS summer and it was Austin, where keeping things weird is a popular civic pastime. But for the 2,000 bloggers and readers at last weekend’s Netroots Nation, the mood was more wonkish than wild. The “netroots”—the online version of “grassroots” political activists—spent hours in panels on policy and technology, and kept up running analyses via blogs and Twitter. They allowed themselves to be plied with margaritas of an evening, but made it back for a morning question session with Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of...

The Austin American-Statesman caved to pressure from the Daily Kos-Netroots Nation and pulled an article from the newspaper's website that poked fun at the liberal convention being held in Austin last weekend.The article, entitled Gore's Surprise Visit Highlights Netroots Conference was published on the front page of Sunday's paper.It was written by feature writer, Patrick Beach--meaning the article was not a straight news piece (think Dana Milbank.)Greg Mitchell, a writer for Editor & Publisher who blogs at the Daily Kos attended the conference as a panel speaker.He brought attention to the article by posting about it the Daily Kos. Mitchell...

Two years ago we here at DUmmie FUnnies documented the first annual KOmmie KOnvention (held in Las Vegas), "YearlyKos"--AKA "Blogolapalooza," because politicans like Mark Warner wined and dined the prog bloggers with chocolate fountains and ice sculptures at a Stratosphere party, in order to gain their support. Well, this year we travel to Austin, Texas, for the YearlyKos, now called, "Netroots Nation." There are MULTITUDINOUS THREADS on this in KOmmieland--you can go there and use the tag, "netroots nation 2008" to find them all. There's even a separate Netroots Nation website, with agenda, speakers, registration info, etc. There are...

With a registration fee of about $500 it was clear that no riff-raff need apply. Discussions with attendees put that in context and explained the need for so much big-money sponsorship. The attendees were largely hand-picked, with their entry and expenses underwritten by various groups in the form of paid 'scholarships' to enable them to attend. Naturally, that meant that there was a selection process in play where scholarships were directed to the most influential and most loyal partisans, giving them the opportunity to make contacts and take advantage of the extensive learning opportunities offered at the conference. Netroots Nation...

So House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is about 40-odd minutes into her "Ask the Speaker" session Saturday at the Netroots Nation confab here in Austin,TX and about to field a question about energy and the environment, when she says she's got to call a friend. Offstage is heard the voice of Al Gore. No, wait he's actually here and the Netrootsters in the airline hangar sized hall greeted him with a nearly a minute long standing O. It was like a surprise guest showing up to jam at a Bridge School Benefit Concert. -- if you're a political geek, which we...

Al Gore steals the show at Netroots By Lilly Rockwell | Saturday, July 19, 2008, 11:01 AM Former Vice President Al Gore stole the show from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s fireside policy chat at the Netroots Nation conference in Austin on Saturday. Pelosi spent 45 minutes talking about abortion rights, efforts to bring the troops back from Iraq and why she didn’t think the Senate version of the FISA bill was appropriate. Some questions seemed to take her off guard, such as when one audience member asked about care packages being sent to troops, and if Congress should pass a...

With the general election a long way off and much of the general public still tuning out the presidential race, you'd think the online activist corps that have injected unprecedented amounts of cash to fuel this campaign season might want to take a few weeks off. You'd be wrong.

When former Sen. John Edwards dropped out of the presidential race, the progressive Netroots took their affections to Barack Obama, defending him against attack from Hillary Rodham Clinton and others. But with his support of a government surveillance bill that offers retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies — a bill that he vowed last year to filibuster — the honeymoon has ended. Disappointed over his position on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the online activists feel jilted and betrayed and have taken to questioning his progressive credentials. One prominent blogger, Atrios, has even given him the moniker “Wanker of the Day.”...

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's ascendancy comes with a popular affirmation: "Yes we can." Maybe it should be "Yes we click," as his presidential campaign takes online politics to new levels. Obama became the front-runner for the Democratic nomination this month after a string of primary and caucus victories, and his inspirational appeal and effective campaign organization are getting most of the credit for his stunning success. But there is another major factor: smart use of new technology, from record-breaking fundraising to Facebook widgets attracting new supporters and mass texting to keep his backers connected. While every candidate in this year's...

By and large, the online left hates Obama. It's one of the underreported ironies of this political season. Obama has more in common with the netroots than Hillary. He's to the left of her on the war, on corporate issues, on social welfare issues – even on life issues Obama appears to the left of Hillary. But the online left does not like him. There are a few reasons for this. For one, Obama is no Ned Lamont. He's a dazzling, rising star of the left, but unlike Lamont, Obama is not a product of the online left. He has,...

The official presidential portrait of John Fitzgerald Kennedy tells quite a story. His pensive expression, curled shoulders and folded arms are not mere emblems of the physical ailments he so manfully absorbed; they help cut the figure of a northeastern liberal -- a Democrat -- who through inspired oratory and steely resolve faced down Soviet communism. This, at a time when many were resigned to the inevitability of its expansion. But Kennedy -- historic though his presidency was, and beatified though it has become -- in his time was not breaking the mould of the Democratic party in the United...

If there is a phrase more closely associated with both Hillary and Bill Clinton than "the politics of personal destruction," it does not come to mind. All the others -- "It's the economy, stupid," for instance -- belong to one or the other, but "the politics of personal destruction" is a phrase both Clintons have used repeatedly -- so much so, it seems, that for Hillary it has lost all meaning. When, for instance, Gen. David Petraeus was slimed as "General Betray Us," Hillary Clinton looked the other way. This was the politics of personal expediency. The swipe at Petraeus...

The biggest news yesterday came before General David Petraeus or Ambassador Ryan Crocker uttered a single word in the hearings on progress in Iraq.And it came in the form of a newspaper ad, paid for by MoveOn.org. The ad, which accused Petraeus of "cooking the books for the White House", was roundly condemned by Republicans who time and again in the hearings held up the ad in the New York Times and called on Democrats to condemn it. The statement from RNC spokesman Mike Duncan was typical of the rhetoric: "Will Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the rest of the...

Call it ActRed. There’s something of a competition brewing between three new Republican groups angling to cut into the online fundraising advantage enjoyed by Democrats and their Internet money machine, ActBlue. Rightroots, Big Red Tent and Slatecard.com are the latest in a series of as yet unsuccessful efforts by GOP operatives to close their party’s Web-cash gap with Democrats. All three will allow visitors to their websites to contribute to Republican candidates running for federal offices, plus in Rightroots’ case a few who aren’t – namely might-be presidential candidates Fred Thompson, Newt Gingrich and Chuck Hagel. The committees will forward...

O’Reilly really couldn’t have stacked these two Factor segments any better. First he has Sen. Chris Dodd on to talk about the DailyKos and the YearlyKos and that Photoshop he keeps showing that came from Kos. If you haven’t seen it, you’ll see it in this segment, don’t worry. Once he and Dodd go a few rounds shouting at each other, O’Reilly brings Dennis Miller on to deliver the coup de grace. Or, several of them. Since neither segment works as well alone, I’ve given you the entire Dodd segment and the choice cuts from Miller Time. Video at link

Last month, in a straw poll on the popular liberal blog Daily Kos, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the front-runner for her party's presidential nomination, won only 9 percent of the vote, lagging far behind former senator John Edwards (N.C.) with 36 percent and Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) with 27 percent. She couldn't make it past 4 percent for most of the year. But as the who's who of the progressive blogosphere -- the "Net roots" -- gather in Chicago for the Yearly Kos convention, which started yesterday, Clinton will be there. Her attendance underscores two seemingly contradictory realities: the...

Last week, top-down campaigning collided with bottom-up netroots organizing when Barack Obama's web team wrested control of an unofficial Obama MySpace page from its diligent proprietor. The power play resulted in the loss of 160,000 MySpace friends for the presidential candidate and one very disillusioned organizer. Twenty-nine-year-old Obama enthusiast Joe Anthony, a Los Angeles paralegal, created MySpace.com/BarackObama long before Obama's presidential bid began, and maintained it—with the campaign's knowledge and encouragement, he says—for more than two years. But as Obama's popularity grew, so did his MySpace profile, and as the page neared 200,000 members, the campaign became increasingly uneasy about...

Soon after Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her bid for the presidency on the Internet, her campaign was boasting of its success in one of the most important new presidential battlefields: the Netroots Primary. Within hours of launching her bid Saturday, her campaign Web site had attracted 10,000 messages of support, 2,200 submissions for its blog contest and had signed up people to its email list at the rate of 100 a minute, the campaign said. Mrs. Clinton's embrace of the Internet shows how seriously candidates are taking the power of the online activist community. Bloggers and other Netroots activists...

NEW YORK In an article in the upcoming Sunday edition of The New York Times Magazine, frequent contributor Matt Bai looks at the aftermath of the recent midterm elections. Yet he suggests that things may not be all that rosy for Democrats as voters seem suspicious of anyone who gains power in Washington, D.C. In Bai's view, the Dems have another possible problem: the very same liberal bloggers that helped make them the new majority in Congress. The party's leaders have vowed to put together an agenda and work with the president and other Republicans to implement it. But Bai...

National Democrats have abandoned their anti-war Senate candidate in Connecticut, say liberal bloggers who earlier this year were heavily courted by top Democrats in their quest to take over Congress. Democratic nominee Ned Lamont -- darling of the left-wing blogosphere -- now trails Sen. Joe Lieberman by 10 points or more, and the highly energized bloggers who helped win him the nomination in August blame the national party. Matt Stoller, a District-based blogger, wondered this week why Mr. Lamont is getting trounced. "Well there are a number of reasons, but among the most prominent is the total abandonment of Lamont...

"The Democratic Party, and even the centrists within it, must sever all ties with Al From and the DLC. They must not be allowed access to Democratic Congressional leaders. They must not be allowed a role in the nomination process in 2008. They must not be allowed a presence at the Democratic convention. By supporting Bloomberg, Al From and the DLC have indicated they no longer are interested in participating in the Democratic Party and we should see to it that they get their way."

JONATHAN Tasini has less than a month to become New York's Ned Lamont. The Democratic primary is on Sept. 12, he's at 13 percent in the polls and he's just had his best fund-raising week ever online. However, as Primary Day approaches, the "netroots" have yet to make the Tasini campaign a cause célèbre, with all the money and press attention that doing so would mean. This, despite the fact that the centrist, Iraq-War-supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton, presumptive frontrunner for the '08 Democratic presidential nomination, should by all rights be a much juicier target for the "progressive" Left than the...

...while liberal bloggers haven't had as much success as conservative bloggers at breaking big stories, they have done one thing extremely well: raise money for liberal candidates. Granted, they don't have much of a win and loss record, because more often as not they seem to support candidates that don't have any chance to win, but that doesn't change the fact that they are funneling lots of lucre into Democratic coffers. So, why have the liberal bloggers been able to raise so much money when conservative bloggers have been unable to do the same thing? Well, as RNC eCampaign Director...

It may have been frequently described as a referendum on the war in Iraq, but last night's Connecticut Democratic primary battle could also be considered an indicator of the Internet's future as a political tool. Buzz about the political blogosphere and its potential power reached the national scene during the 2004 presidential race, when former Vermont governor Howard Dean made a name for himself with a campaign that was largely run online. Dean's defeat in the primaries, however, led many to believe that perhaps the Internet's potential as a campaign tool was overrated. But now that 18-year incumbent and one-time...

LIEBERMAN LOSES: Connecticut's 3-term senator concedes in Democratic primary -- wealthy political newcomer seized on his support for Bush and Iraq war - Ned Lamont's upset victory over incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary Tuesday is an electoral lesson about the power -- and potential liabilities -- of bloggers and online organizers, a growing liberal political force collectively known as the "netroots." From the initial support of Lamont by influential bloggers like Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos to the cash and volunteers supplied by the online progressive hub MoveOn.org to the 11th-hour accusations on Tuesday that vandals...

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on August 9, 2006 - 08:06. Howard Dean's 2004 presidential primary run was largely fueled by internet-driven support orchestrated by campaign manager Joe Trippi. That campaign fell famously short in the echoes of Dean's Iowa caucus-night scream. But with Ned Lamont's win, the left wing blogosphere can this morning claim perhaps its first major victory . . . at least in a Democratic primary if not in a general election. And that, in turn, raises the real question. Does the same left-wing blogosphere that can influence the outcome of Dem primaries foist on the party candidates...

Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion – for who can search the human heart? – but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican...

David Brooks of the New York Times has been on a quite an anti-liberal blogosphere roll of late. After eviscerating Markos Moulitsas Zuniga – the proprietor of the Daily Kos – in a June 25 op-ed entitled “Respect Must be Paid For,” Brooks again ripped into Kos on Friday night’s “The News Hour” on PBS (video link courtesy of Crooks and Liars). Brooks followed this up with another op-ed tangentially on this subject Sunday. On Friday evening, the discussion between host Jim Lehrer, Mark Shields, and Brooks centered around Joe Lieberman’s problems in Connecticut. Lehrer asked Brooks how Lieberman is...

After months of fierce attacks against her on the Internet, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is ready to meet her Web enemies head-on - by hiring a political-blog guru who worked on John Kerry's presidential campaign. Clinton tapped Peter Daou, Kerry's director of blog outreach and online rapid response, to rehab her battered image among left-wing Internet surfers. Clinton has been pummeled in the liberal blogosphere for her centrist stance on the Iraq war, for backing a pro-life Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania and for being the co-sponsor of a GOP measure to ban flag-burning without amending the Constitution. Daou is...

SAN ANTONIO--More than one political venture has met an unseemly end in the hardscrabble landscape of South Texas. It was here, in 1948, that Box 13 gave Lyndon Johnson a dubious 87-vote primary victory, crushing former Gov. Coke Stevenson's Senate aspirations. It was here, two years ago, that a bitter primary fight for a House seat shattered a friendship between two Hispanic Democrats. And it was here, this month, in a rematch of that contest, that a blogger-led quest to defeat a mainstream Democrat and drive the party further to the left smashed head-on into the realities of local politics....

One of the major suprises of this past election was the strength of Paul Hackett in the eastern rural counties of Scioto, Adams, Pike and Brown. Conveniently, Brown has a website with numbers and past election results. Some interesting factoids about Brown County Ohio: Registered Democrats 4,612 Registered Republicans 3,763 Bet you didn’t know that. November 2004 Bush: 12,647 votes, about 65% Kerry: 7,140 votes, or about 35% June 14th 2nd district primary: Republicans received 2,287 votes, of which Jean only received 392 specifically Democrats received 1,217 of which Hackett received 762. August 2nd general election turnout doubled to about...