Respectfully, Ambinder Grossly Misunderstands Righty Blogs

I like Marc Ambinder's blog, it's a good one I often read. Unfortunately, this piece of his suggests that he doesn't understand Right-side blogs, or talk radio.

Huck = Harriett Miers?

A conservative counter-revolution is breaking out in the talk radio universe and on prominent conservative blogs.

The same forces that joined to force the White House to withdraw Harriett Miers' Supreme Court nomination, a tender by the president that was as explicitly grounded in Miers' identity as a born again evangelical as Huckabee's presidential campaign surge is based on his choice of career and religious affiliation.

Mier's identity may have been grounded in being born again as far as Bush was concerned, I have no idea. In fact, while I opposed her, this is the first I learned anything about her religion. She was opposed because she was mostly a cipher when it came to the Law and no one was comfortable in the belief that she would somehow represent a conservative ideology on the Supreme Court. That was it, pure and simple. There's no there, there as regards Marc's assertion as regards her religion and all that sort of sentiment does is create a divide on the Right which doesn't actually exist. I read legal blogs and listened to Mark Levin in formulating my opposition to Miers, neither of those sources ever mentioned her religion, so far as I recall. It is irrelevant. But this below by Marc is the most troubling of all:

So far, these bad feelings haven't filtered down the chain of tissue to Iowa Republicans, but is there a cause, in recent memory, that the conservative echosphere hasn't influenced?

"Echosphere"? "Influenced"? "Filtered down"? If Marc thinks that Allah at Hot Air or Ace influence my opinions, or I theirs - or Rush any of ours - he's just plain wrong. I suspect we all agree on much, but far from all. Read around. And that concept holds true for talk radio and its larger number of conservative listeners, as well. People read right-side media and listen to talk radio because they mostly agree with it going in, it isn't a top down affair.

It's insulting to suggest it, though I imagine that wasn't Marc's intent. But he doesn't understand what is happening as regards Huckabee, who is already flattening in the polls, by the way. I predicted it a week ago and it didn't require Rush Limbaugh or blogs to make it happen, though they certainly facilitate his fall by introducing him to people more quickly than would happen were it only being done by opposing campaigns.

Huckabee could have the same background, religion and the same career and were he a solid conservative with the record to support the claim, ... add in his charisma, Damn! I'd almost kill to have him carry the Republican nomination in the Fall. On that score, it's perhaps only a few of his more extreme past statements, on gays, for example, that give me any pause. He seems a bit intolerant, frankly. But I doubt very much all Evangelicals are.

Still, Huckabee isn't being opposed based upon his religion. He's being opposed for his record. Granted, his blatant religiosity is a rough edge, something the consultants would have had to smooth out for the general election if he weren't obviously doomed as soon as he arrived. But I could live with that.

He was doomed when he arrived because he's wrong on immigration, taxes, foreign policy and criminal justice when his political record is explored. The only difference between bloggers and those Iowa voters is that bloggers are political junkies, so we pick up on such things right away. As conservatives, we don't at all like what we see in Huckabee and we aren't going to fall for a newly drafted position statement when his actual record tells us something else. That's how I knew a week ago he'd bust. It had nothing to do with Religion, I can't stress that enough.

The Huckaboom was the result of one good night in a debate and, immediately after-wards, the media casting him as the second coming of Reagan when it wasn't really true. He only appeared to be what everyone on the Right was looking for. The media ran with it, but not the blogs. We like to read - to come to know.

Huckabee is good in the sense of media presentation. And many Iowa voters expressed that attitude in those early polls. I pegged him for the first tier that night and even posted it. Two days later, after reading the background, I was over him. The voters on the ground in Iowa simply don't get around to such things that fast. He "boomed" because they didn't really know him that well for those early post-debate polls and were going with what they felt - and probably hoped a bit watching all the positive, yet superficial media coverage.

The blogosphere isn't so much a teaching instrument as it is a bellwether. And the same is true for talk radio, except for the objective information they each put out. Our opinions don't matter in that sense, only the facts we post or talk about do. We don't try to tell people what to think. We try to tell them what we see and let them decide for themselves. And because, from radio host, to blogger, to Iowa voter, we are mostly conservative, we tend to both look for and see the same things, as well as react to them the same way.

As for bloggers, we really are just voters out here, Marc - just like those folks in Iowa. If you wanted to know where Huckabee was headed a week or two ago, all you needed to do was read us. It isn't a revolution, it's an evolution as people get to know Huckabee; it just happens more quickly in blog time,than it does upon the ground. And please don't presume that as some "echosphere," which I freely admit we can sound like at times, we have all that much power - you could end up making us just like you. You'd be giving us far too much credit and providing a real disservice to all the good people of Iowa perfectly capable of thinking on their own - just like radio hosts and bloggers, as a matter of fact.

The media has been making the mistake above for years, thinking it can influence people on the ground. It's a mistake I hope the blogosphere doesn't ever fall into. If we do, people will become as disgusted with us as they are with a media that has always over-estimated its power and lost touch with the average person, including that Iowa voter on the ground.

The mainstream media made the Huckster almost overnight and the people are not and will not buy it, Evangelical or no.

But then, that kind of thing happening shouldn't really be much of a surprise, assuming you read blogs, or listen to and genuinely understand the phenomenon of Right-talk radio.

Comments

[lonetown]

You nailed the difference between right and left:

"We don't try to tell people what to think. We try to tell them what we see and let them decide for themselves."

Fact based vs advocacy.

BTW, I don't remember anything about Harriet Meyers being an evangelical either, but I only slog around right leaniing blogs.

[jj]

It's a good thing the Bali meetings didn't get the carbon tax approved, Dan, or you would have been doing quite a bit of deficit spending with this post. Good Lord, this is much ado about nothing. I, for one, already know what your position on Huck is. You've made that clear on 3,923 posts about the subject in the past few days. Enough, already.

[seekeronos]

/agree with jj

I think that posts like these that call attention to Huckabee's lack of consistency as a conservative are much more informative and helpful than the ones that pick at his faith.

That he might be a bit of a blowhard by advertising his faith loudly on the hopes that it will swoon the average Joe might be a tad annoying and even off-putting to some, does not reveal WHY we should NOT vote for him.

The charismatic "christians" and others who are easily entertained by religious speech and displays of imagery will probably vote for the guy unless they can clearly see that his weakness of fiscal policy, immigration, and law enforcement/punishment outweigh his outward religiosity.

Attack his sloppy record, not the "religious theater" he seems to revel in.

[ajacksonian]

When putting together a recent post on the R-side field I ran across this final report card for the Governor's of 2006, and it has wrap-ups of the two in the race for their entire time as governor and some of the post-script to them:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6724

Since I am not a Republican my own views are biased... but I'm not on the D side, either:

http://ajacksonian.blogspot.com/2007/12/looking-at-republican-field.html

So, where is the real Republican party hiding these days?