Interesting. What are PAID opinion shapers and who pays them? You mentioned that the dims have paid opinion shapers paid by the party, does the RNC have paid OS as well?
Good grief I can barely handle my one person posts :) let alone argue with myself LOL. I guess one would have to be computer savvy to be able to have several browsers, ISP's,etc.
All political parties -- and I stress all, because we shouldn't overlook Libertarians, Greens, Reform-types (now mostly Buchananites), Natural Law, etc. -- have both volunteer and paid individuals who put out the party's message. Same with political action committees and other political groups.
Wealthy individuals (such as Soros on the Left and Richard Mellon Scaife on the Right), companies, and political groups that want to operate above board, hire their own consultants, PR people, spokesmen and women, etc. They have their own websites, and also will associate their names with affiliated groups, websites, blogs, etc.
Those who want to operate from the shadows will fund blogs and other websites, people who make good "experts" on TV, and so on, to carry the desired message. The connection to the person funding them is not transparent.
Intrigue such as this isn't wild-eyed conspiracy theory stuff. It's a fact of life, and has been probably since humans lived in caves. Political campaigns have set up and operated phone banks for generations. When someone in your locality makes a neighborly call telling you stuff pro or con about a candidate for office, they aren't doing it from their own home. They are at an office paid for by the campaign, using a phone service paid for by the campaign, reading a script written by the campaign.
Many times, such calls are paid for by some group with an innocuous can't-argue-with-that name like "Citizens for Water Purity," and you never know who is actually funding the effort.
Well, such techniques are now being applied to the new internet technology in ways both above board and not.