A Brief Detour . . .
The incredibly smart political analyst Michael Barone doesn't disappoint with this column about the blogosphere's influence on politics. He concludes:
So what hath the blogosphere wrought? The left blogosphere has moved the Democrats off to the left, and the right blogosphere has undermined the credibility of the Republicans' adversaries in Old Media. Both changes help Bush and the Republicans.
And, as usual, he's absolutely right.
It's also worth wondering how much of the Republicans' good fortune is owed to timing. The blogosphere first came into its own during the Bush presidency and in an age of Republican political dominance. Certainly, the MSM would always be in the cross hairs of the blogosphere's right side, but it's possible that -- had Clinton been in office and Democrats controlling the Congress when blogs first blossomed -- the blogosphere's impact could have been precisely the opposite, in political terms. Ah, the blessing of timing.
So what hath the blogosphere wrought? The left blogosphere has moved the Democrats off to the left, and the right blogosphere has undermined the credibility of the Republicans' adversaries in Old Media. Both changes help Bush and the Republicans.
And, as usual, he's absolutely right.
It's also worth wondering how much of the Republicans' good fortune is owed to timing. The blogosphere first came into its own during the Bush presidency and in an age of Republican political dominance. Certainly, the MSM would always be in the cross hairs of the blogosphere's right side, but it's possible that -- had Clinton been in office and Democrats controlling the Congress when blogs first blossomed -- the blogosphere's impact could have been precisely the opposite, in political terms. Ah, the blessing of timing.
posted by LadybugUSA at 1:09 PM
1 Comments:
Interesting point: not so much the timing of which Party dominates the national stage, but rather the fact that there was no place in MSM for center-right thinkers.
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