Conservatives find a pipeline (Internet news)

The Internet, with its potential to assemble nearly instantaneously a self-selected panel of experts on most any arcane issue -- John Kerry's exploits and Navy operations in Vietnam and Dan Rather's apparent forgeries of George W. Bush's National Guard memos -- is the most important new media element of this and future campaigns.

On any complex story, journalists struggle to find insiders and experts. The Internet connects them. They enter and leave at will.

How else to explain the success of the swift-boat veterans, who combined a book, a few cable television ads and the Internet into a national political movement that rarely surfaced in the mainstream media, except dismissively? How else to explain the document and handwriting experts who began unmasking the suspected CBS forgeries within minutes of the "60 Minutes II" broadcast -- even as the allegations were hitting newspaper front pages?

Conservatives, especially social and religious conservatives, don't believe the mainstream media to be open, friendly or receptive. When they have ventured into the community square, their ideas, values and lifestyles are ridiculed as mean-spirited, racist or intolerant.

Liberal gatekeepers, they believe, decide which of their ideas are worthy of admission to the community square. The result is that public debate about issues such as faith-based initiatives are framed by those who are viscerally or intellectually opposed or, at best, ignorant to aim or context.

That perception that the mainstream media are not a safe place for conservative ideas has had two major ramifications. One is that conservatives have found alternatives in neglected media, such as talk radio, and in emerging technologies, first cable and now the Internet.

Evangelical Christians, who may be the least tolerated or understood voice on the public square, largely retreated to cable and to grass-roots organizing, a precursor to Internet assembly. The Internet is a phenomenal tool for organizing and information-sharing.

The second ramification is that conservative ideas evolve largely out of the public eye, at think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and among politicians such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and U.S. Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.).

When the president mentions an idea like Linder's FairTax, or champions medical savings accounts, a feature of Gingrich's positive revolution in how we use and finance health care, it's clear that conservatives have a Big Idea pipeline. It's just as clear, too, that the pipeline largely skirts the traditional news and opinion sources.

Liberals for the last 40 years have found it sufficient to expand the New Deal and the Great Society and to assemble winning constituencies every four years by frightening the old folks on Social Security and blacks on voting, as John Kerry and Democrats are shamelessly doing once again. But for us, the politicians of the welfare state, you'll be hurt, robbed or exploited, and everybody one tax bracket above you is "rich" and getting something you're not, they argue.

It's a strategy that's been tanking toward empty for years, but it's been successful enough that Democrats have seen no urgency about developing new ideas. Even welfare reform, which Bill Clinton signed, was a conservative idea forced on him.

Liberals have never thought the mainstream media hostile to their views and, consequently, have been lulled into intellectual complacency. Jesse Jackson has but to call a news conference and his ideas are out there.

Two sharply different views about America's presence and obligations in the world and about the kind of nation our children are to inherit are now before voters. The choice could not be more starkly drawn.

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Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays.

Wooten is an excellent conservative writer at the AJC.

George is in the conservative column.

The word gets out.....

***• In 1980, the South (Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma and all states below) had 26 U.S. senators — 20 of them were Democrats and just six were Republicans. • In 1980, the Senate swung toward Republicans, but then back to Democrats in 1986. • By 1994, the South had 17 Democratic senators and nine Republicans. • In 2004, the South has 17 Republican senators and just nine Democrats.

• In 2005, there's a good possibility that ratio could go to 22 Republicans and just four Democrats. So the facts are that the Republican and Democratic strength in the U.S. Senate in the South has completely reversed in 10 years. By next year, Democratic senators in the South could be one-fifth their strength in 1980. ***Source Zell Miller.

I had to read this a few times.. conservative ideas germinate right here on the internet and percolate up for all to see. The so-called 'public eye' is CBS News managing editor who set in a back room and plot fictional stories to smear Republicans. Remember the swiftees...

The loonie lefty liberals scoured FReerepublic looking for 'dirt' to smear Jerome Corsi. We are a free and open forum. Jerome Corsi is a patriot. He was here and helped shape debate. He's my hero.

Democrats use that forum to 'destroy' the character and place labels. It was Susan Estrich that called for the Democrats to go underground ... talk their talk on private conference calls.

We are motivated to be here out of love. The democrat motivation is pure hate.

Liberal gatekeepers.. guarding the gates off Hell!

Remember when W unveiled his agenda for his second term at the republican convention? He presented it immediately after he accepted the nomination. This vision was crystallized from debates and discussions held here. Faith-based indeed. Remember President Bush's first State of the Union speech. Mayor John Street of Philadelphia sat next to Mrs Bush in the gallery. Late in the last campaign for Mayor of Philadelphia it was discovered that mayor street had 'bugs' - listening devices in his office - he blamed his republican opponent. The FBI then came out and said.. 'we put those listening devices there'... so what does john street do? He blames the administration of conspiring against him... because he is african-american

The first capitol of the United States of America is Philadelphia. It was moved to Washington DC so southern politicians could bring their slaves with them - it was difficult to do that in Philadelphia being Philadelphia had anti-slavery laws.

I submit that Washington DC is nothing more than a movie set... sitting on a district carved out of Maryland and Virginia. The heart and soul of our Federal government rests where it was founded: in Philadelphia. It never left. Millions of visitors come each year to see Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell - I see them every day. I am fortunate to work right there. Right in the cradle of Liberty.

During the President's first term We have had a lot of new construction.. We have a new National Constitution Center and a new Liberty Bell Center. I can tell you that during construction up until now, the correspondences were astonishing to me. They are as plain as day. An example, we (the company I work for) had a small company that did work for us 'wiring' computers and telephones. They would move the equipment during office moves, plug them into the equipment into the network, etc. We had a renegotiation of the contract with the companies owner and he came in really high on the bid. A lot higher than the other competitive bids. The 2 guys that actually did the work are union: Bill and Bob. The owner was given the opportunity to present a lower bid, but he refused. We went with another company... who had a different union.

My friends Bill and Bob were out of a job. Their union decided to protest outside of our home office - company headquarters. They protested handing out flyers to all employees stating unbelievable things to all of our employees when they came to work. Their propaganda was over the top and they blamed our company's CEO as being anti union, etc. This nonsense lasted several weeks and finally they pulled out all the stops and showed up with a giant inflatable rat and set it up in front of the home office.

Giant demoRat tries to scare people away from liberty

They brought a tape that looped over and over blasting flagrant nonsense about how they were unfairly treated and our CEO wasn't fair because he wouldn't negotiate with him. The accused an employee of assaulting him and had the police there

All this nonsense has deep meaning to me. Put it this way: The giant inflatable rat represents the crypto-gangsters of the demoRat party and their propaganda flyers represent Dan Ratter's fake memos. Believe me when I say that how these phone-y democrats behave today in this campaign is totally transparent to me. Use your imagination.

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