Redstate

By krempasky Posted in Elections — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

There's plenty to say about Garance Franke-Ruta's article in the American Prospect about conservative bloggers. To put it bluntly, Ms. Franke-Ruta is the Red Queen, running in place, proving only what she already believed without evidence. Along with the substantive problems with her article, I thought I'd just point out the, er, half dozen or so factual errors.

Before we begin: In the interests of the sacred cow of full-disclosure, Ms. Franke-Ruta did, in fact, purchase on my behalf one cup of coffee valued at approximately $1.37.

Now that we've got that out of the way...let me point out the big missing link from Ms. Franke-Ruta's story - no one at RedState is paid to work on RedState. I have a political job, RedState is my hobby.

None of us get paid, and unlike so many others (on the left, especially) - our finances are public record with the Federal Elections Commission. In fact, we chose to forego a small but steady stream of advertising revenue to make sure we were as transparent as possible. It makes these charges of "shadowy operatives" cloaked in secrecy pretty laughable.  And it just gets worse from there.

"Using the cover of anonymity (many bloggers use pseudonyms), the cacophony of the relatively new medium, and the easily inflamed passions of the Web, these partisan political operatives are becoming experts at stirring up hornets' nests of angry e-mails to editors, mounting campaigns to force advertisers to pull out of news shows, and, most disturbingly, spreading outright  false information. The irony is that, at the same time this is happening, many in the mainstream media have decided it's finally time to take bloggers seriously."

It might be "most disturbingly", but her example of spreading false information wasn't done by a blogger. Joseph Steffan posted some awful rumors about Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley on FreeRepublic.com. More on her guilt-by-association with Steffan (especially my guilt) in a bit.

[describing conservative activists] At worst, they're the protégés of conservative fund-raiser Richard Viguerie and dirty-tricks master Morton Blackwell, who has tutored conservative activists since 1965...

It's tough to read this paragraph without clearly identifying yours truly as "at worst" since I'm the only person identified with both Blackwell and Viguerie. But Ms. Franke-Ruta doesn't get to make claims like "dirty-tricks master" without proving it.

What does Morton teach? Well, Ms. Franke-Ruta clearly spent some time at the Leadership Institute website, so I find it less than credible that she didn't see the actual topics and subjects taught at the schools. I can only draw the conclusion that she chose to ignore them. But the very first agenda for the very first school listed includes such nefarious and underhanded tasks such as:  The Real Nature of Politics & Elections (the more effective activists, the better), Developing Strategy & Message, Opposition Research, Voter ID/Targeting, Targeted Voter Contact - Intro, Voter Mail, Door-to-Door, Phone Programs and GOTV. Truly terrifying, world-domination stuff.

What's more, if Blackwell were this "dirty-tricks master" of such mythic proportions, Franke-Ruta could have certainly accepted my personal invitation to attend any of the schools that she found interesting instead of simply repeating half-baked rumors.

From May 1999 through August 2003, Krempasky worked for  Blackwell as the graduate development director of the Leadership Institute, an Arlington, Virginia-based school for conservative leaders founded by Blackwell in 1979. The institute is the organization that had provided "Gannon" with his sole media credential before he became a White House correspondent.

Again, this would almost be funny if it weren't so lazy. Ms. Franke-Ruta and I spoke about the Leadership Institute and I specifically told her, 1) I never met Mr. Gannon/Guckert, 2) I didn't deal with that specific program, and 3) no one at Leadership Institute vouched for Mr. Gannon in any way. But in her mind, it's all about the flowcharts.

"And if push ever came to shove, he could respond to an online dogfight from the unassailable position of being a firefighter -- and not as just another conservative ideologue"

For the record, I remember the firefighter in the class, but as I recall I said no such thing about online dogfights or conservative ideologues. I did make a point that there were plenty of news and political blogs out there so folks would have to find a niche and write about something interesting. Again, in Ms. Franke-Ruta's world, it's all a plot.

In the late '80s, Irvine had started the campaign to "Can Dan" Rather, coining the phrase "Rather Biased." Last fall, Krempasky was operating the main anti-Rather site, Rathergate.com, and using Irvine's slogan as a rallying cry to organize a vast letter-writing and e-mailing campaign "to contact CBS and express themselves," as he put it in an interview with Bobby Eberle of GOPUSA, an activist Web site founded by Texas Republicans and now owned by Bruce Eberle (no relation), the proprietor of a conservative direct-mail firm.

A few things.

• Rathergate.com was hardly the main anti-Rather site, and I went through great pains to make sure that was clear throughout the controversy. Many other bloggers did all the heavy lifting, I just tried to help. As far as "Irvine's slogan", I think she's mistaken me for Matt Sheffield, the proprieter of RatherBiased.com, which was founded more than four years ago.
• Yes, I gave an interview to Bobby Eberle, but even after specifically explaining what I knew about GOPUSA, Franke-Ruta goes and mixes things up. GOPUSA is not, nor ever was owned by Bruce Eberle (the direct mailer). To the contrary, Bobby Eberle founded GOPUSA and then later purchased a website and list of activists from Bruce.

"As far as the Internet goes, conservatives have largely been ahead of the left."

I've already dealt with this complete misrepresentation of what I said, especially considering it completely reverses my sentiment.

Certainly there were some citizen-bloggers involved in the anti-Jordan effort. Easongate founder Bill Roggio, 35, is a computer-software analyst in Medford, New Jersey.

It's very generous of Ms. Franke-Ruta to give a hat tip to "some citizen-bloggers" over Easongate.com. Unfortunately, what she doesn't print was my detailed explanation (and in part, in writing) that Bill Roggio was the force behind the site, and I had just been asked for some advice. Nevermind that Jordan resigned a whopping  two days after I joined the site as a contributor. Now, while I would be most flattered to be credited with such an accomplishment in just over 48 hours, methinks Ms. Franke-Ruta goes too far. The credit is due Bill Roggio and his citizen-blogger colleagues. But it's just sooo much easier to portray those upset with Eason Jordan as just a professional right-wing mob.

Now, onto the slime.

Joseph Steffen's online mudslinging toward Mayor O'Malley followed a more old-fashioned strategy...But in 1985, Steffen worked on a campaign by Viguerie, Krempasky's current employer, for the lieutenant governorship of Virginia.

Guilt-by-association, and a pretty pathetic attempt at that. I can only presume that by mentioning enough liars cheats and crooks in the article (or paragraph) with yours truly, that maybe some of that stink would rub off.

I've never met Joseph Steffen, I first heard of him through the Baltimore Sun. It's my understanding that Steffen isn't even a blogger - by any informed definition. Not to mention, I was blogging long before I went to work for Viguerie. But what's far more glaring is the sheer tenuousness of this connection. We're talking a campaign TWENTY years ago, in which Steffen was in charge of field organizing one congressional district in the far southwest part of Virginia. I've been told he was a young twenty-something campaign staffer, and before that he worked a brief stint at NCPAC. TWENTY years ago - twenty freaking years! Would the Prospect like to be held accountable for everything done by its interns for two decades after their departure?

But the point remains - a Republican operative who crossed EVERY line in campaign politics and I share a previous employer - as do thousands of people that have worked for Viguerie in his forty years of political activity. If this is the best case Ms. Franke-Ruta can make (being the one without any actual germane facts), the Prospect ought not to have published it.

...previously, Blackwell trained a generation of young political operatives in the black arts of politics as the executive director of the College Republican National Committee.

Of interest - Ms. Franke-Ruta repeatedly asked me for official quotes about the Leadership Institute. As I don't work there anymore nor have any authority to speak for them, I declined to speak of anything not readily publicly available - and referred her to call Morton herself. I even grabbed a staffer from the Institute who happened to pass by, and asked him if he could get a spokesperson from LI to speak to Ms. Ruta. She declined. But then, she's the one who gets paid to be a journalist.

For the life of me, I'm stunned by the fixation by some with these terms: "black arts", "dirty tricks", etc. If anyone at The Prospect took a moment to actually learn what LI does teach, it might do them some good. Their readers certainly deserve it.

The day Jordan resigned, Krempasky joined the online liberal discussion group Personal Democracy Forum, creating a new category, "The Dark Side," to discuss the new potential of online "Open Source Opposition Research." A sample:

   In the wake of the Dan Rather affair and the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert story -- political campaigns should take notice -- you cannot and will not hide anything anymore. You cannot assume that your opponent simply won't find that embarrassing picture or boneheaded quote from the bombastic column you wrote in college -- and the most important part? Your opponent won't have to dig it up themselves. If they have even a semblance of a netroots community close to them, the enterprising Googler will ferret it out, just for fun.

That warning came to fruition just days later, in the Gannon affair.

Suffice to say, she got this one wrong - and badly twisted what I wrote. I'll let PDF editor Micah Sifry field this one. See for yourself.

But unlike traditional news outlets, right-wing blogs openly shill, fund raise, plot, and organize massive activist campaigns on behalf of partisan institutions and constituencies

When reading this, a good friend of mine sent me an email which simply said, "I laughed when I read "Republican operative."  Yeah, Krempasky was so in bed with the Republicans that he was a central part of the coalition fighting against Republican Bush's top domestic priority of the first term." He's talking about my very first political blog - RxDisaster.com. That came up in our interview as well, but oddly didn't make it into the article.

And instead of taking these bloggers for the political activists they are, all too often the established press has accepted their claims of being a new form of journalism. This will have to change -- or it will prove serious journalism's undoing.

Ah, the grand closing. The darkening clouds on the horizon. Ironic that someone of Franke-Ruta's political persuasion sees a catastrophe brewing - presumably avoidable only if we start reducing, as opposed to increasing, the sources of information and news.

Doubly ironic is that those who celebrate the "netroots" and the professionalizing of online politics seem incensed that their opponents might have a little bit of background or talent to bring into this arena as well.

Ms. Franke-Ruta should get an "A" for effort in her attempts to paint a right-wing partisan boogeyman. But the picture she paints leaves everything to be desired. This is nothing more than light reading for the denizens of Democratic Underground - and if this is an example of "serious journalism" - then there's no "undoing" left to do.