Crowley: Conservative blogs more effective Posted by: McQ
on Friday, December 09, 2005
According to Editor and Publisher, Michael Crowley, a writer for The New Republic, makes the argument in the upcoming NY Times Magazine that conservative blogs are more effective than liberal blogs. The money paragraph from the E&P story is as follows:
In fact, Crowley admits that his argument for conservative blog supremacy may seem “counterintuitive,” noting the Howard Dean phenomenon in early 2004 and heavy Web traffic numbers for liberal blogs such as DailyKos. (He does not mention that studies of online traffic show that, overall, there are more highly-popular liberal blogs than conservative ones.) But he explains that “Democrats say there’s a key difference between liberals and conservatives online. Liberals use the Web to air ideas and vent grievances with one another, often ripping into Democratic leaders….Conservatives, by contrast, skillfully use the Web to provide maximum benefit for their issues and candidates.”
Really? Like Harriet Miers? Spending? Medicare increases? Pork? The President's tax commission?
Those are just a few off the top of my head where conservative blogs with few exceptions hardly provided "maximum benefit" for issues and candidates. In fact they've condemned the abandonment of principle almost universally.
On the other hand, conservatives keep asking what new ideas the Democrats have and if liberal blogs contain those ideas, they've certainly been well hidden. However, liberal blogs have indeed aired grievances ... ad nauseum.
Last but not least I'm a bit dubious of the E&P claim that there are more "highly popular" liberal blogs than conservative ones. Of course that could be all about how E&P defines a blog too (DU, for instance, isn't a blog). But TLB doesn't seem to support the premise.
As to effectiveness, per E&P Crowley's argument has to do with a perception of an established network which uses blogs as a feeder mechanism on the right:
Crowley then comments that what really makes the conservative blogs allegedly more effective is the infrastructure provided by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and others—"all of which are quick to pass on the latest tidbit from the blogosphere."
Maybe it's me, but all the talk radio I hear usually uses published sources such as newspapers and news magazines and, of course, news programs on TV. I rarely hear any of them use a blog as a source. It may happen, but I've just not heard it. Instead it's the NY Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, LA Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, Fox and CNN.
Fundamentally, to me, it’s not about "Blogging" or "effectiveness". Those seem to measure means of communication and/or results. To me the reason Conservative/Libertarian ANYTHING is more effective is that the Left is morally, spiritually and intellectually bankrupt. When I say that, my moderately Democratic friends or my friend in academe get pretty hostile. And I don’t mean that is about Gay Rights or Gay Marriage, entirely at least. It is, as others have mentioned here, that our opponents simply have no alternatives except a bigger Great Society or a Bigger New Deal. And when that offering falls thru, then out comes the invective, "Racist", "Sexist", Bigot", "Homophobe", "Nazi", "Fascist", "Neo-Con."
I argue that Liberals and Progressives, not one and the same thing, are in the same place that the Right (generally the Right and Libertarians, but "Right" is shorter) was in the era 1929-1955. Morally, intellectually and spiritually bankrupt. Nothing to offer that wasn’t warmed over Hooverism or New Deal-lite, and everything that threatened the status quo, was "Communism" or "Socialism", be it Civil Rights or any of a number of issues. It took the Right 40-plus years to find its footings and begin to advance its agenda, school vouchers, ending racial preferences, lower taxes, deregulation of industries, and the like.
Now Left has only clichés and angry words, but no new ideas. The Left and its allies have become essentially Conservative. What was good in 1964-1972 is GOOD today. We may not change. So when you have no message, how can you expect your means of communication to carry you thru?
"New Coke" was hyped all to Heck and back, yet it was not a success... packaging and marketing without a viable product will not yield long-term positive results. And so, even though DU and the Daily Kos are popular, without the fundamentals or a decent product good marketing can only carry one so far.
To sum up, the Left is dour, glum, humourless, self-righteous, narrow-minded and moss-backed and depressing... it has no love, no spark, no joy, and without those positives you can attract people, in the long-term. It’s not that "conservative" bloggers are more effective, it’s that the broadly-Conservative MOVEMENT has become more effective in the last 20-plus years.
Joe’s got it pretty much nailed. You can see it’s true by asking the following question: Who are the major thinkers on the right? On the left?
On the right, there’s Buckley, Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman and his plethora of disciples, the guys at Cato, Bruce Lindsay, Victor Davis Hansen, libertarians such as Rothbard, foreign policy thinkers such as Robert Spencer and Lee Harris, and on and on. Even such people as Ben Stein come out with thoughtful commentary. Pure web essayists such as Steven den Beste and Bill Whittle have had wide influence.
There are a number of people in that list that believe things I disagree with. But they make a serious intellectual case for their position.
On the left there’s Peter Singer, Noam Chomsky, and, uh... gosh I hate to taint them with Paul Krugman, who fit’s Joe’s description to a tee. There’s a few thoughtful bloggers such as Brad Delong, I guess. Who else? Do lefties think of Michael Moore as a deep thinker? I hope not. And I don’t count folks such as Ruy Teixiera, who primarly write about the logistics and tactics of politics, rather than ideas. Do I just not know enough about the left to know who are their deep thinkers are? Or do they not exist?
If you throw out those in academia on both sides, it knocks out a lot more lefties than righties. That also says a lot about the relative lack of diversity of thought on the left side.
The left would disagree with at least part of your comment ... that about serious thinkers. From Ezra Klein’s blog, in the comments (from someone named Dadahead). This is in reaction to a assertion by Ezra that serious arguments from the right (and, of course, serious thinkers) deserve serious responses:
The problem is that at this point, there are no ’serious thinkers’ who are still defending the administration. I don’t read Townhall, but can it be that much more stupid than what’s coming from Instapundit or Power Line? (Or Will or Hitchens, etc.?)
I try to ignore the wingnut-o-sphere as much as possible. Only the die-hard true believers are left, and they have nothing else to say.
All the questions are settled. The invasion was wrong; the occupation is wrong. The tax cuts were wrong. The judicial nominations were wrong. Etc. etc. on just about anything you can think of.
Politics just isn’t as complicated as we sometimes make it out, or perhaps not enough to sustain a daily blog when it’s not election season. Bush and co. are intent on doing things that we know are foolish and immoral. A few ’dead-enders’ (to borrow a phrase) are still fighting the not-so-good fight, and I don’t know that there’s much to be gained from engaging them.
But we have blogs that must be fed. So we mock. Because at this point, what else is there to do?
Tell me ... how do you discuss something who’s somehow decided that everything on the right is wrong and that there are no serious thinkers on the other side?
Rhetorical question of course.
But I think this person’s comment is fairly typical of what I mostly see at the extremes on both sides of the blogosphere. So I guess it is up to those more toward the center to take up the slack. I sometimes wonder though whether the blogosphere really attracts that sort of a person in enough numbers to actually make a difference in terms of serious discussion.
Something else you’ll find in the comments of that thread is the pure delight many of them find in mocking their opponents.
If you hear more and better thinking coming from right-leaning blogs, well, you can just dismiss it as right-wing smear merchants spreading RNC talking points in the right-wing echo chamber. Just ignore that not everyone agrees and the links are to bring up a point of disagreement more often than not.
And contrast that with Atrios, of the one word or one phrase link-posts. How much debate of ideas is he fostering again?
To sum up, the Left is dour, glum, humourless, self-righteous, narrow-minded and moss-backed and depressing... it has no love, no spark, no joy, and without those positives you can attract people, in the long-term. It’s not that "conservative" bloggers are more effective, it’s that the broadly-Conservative MOVEMENT has become more effective in the last 20-plus years.
And pray tell, what is that movement? And what does it stand for? And what in the world is the evidence that it has become more effective?
I ask these questions, because today the conservative movement seems less effective than ever. And it seems to stand for less than ever. As I have said before and will say again, liberals have already won the war. Conservatives surrendered a long time ago. Not that they put up much of a fight.
If the conservative movement is so effective, how is it that the federal government is expanding at a record pace? How is that abortion is still a constitutional right? How is it that affirmative action is still legal? How is that the Department of Education still exists? How is that the federal government is more involved than ever in how local governments educate children? How is it that support for the death penalty is waning? How is that a budget busting prescription drug plan was recently enacted? Highway bill? Energy bill? How is that the budget deficit is in record territory, including relative to GDP? How is it that the discussion of illegal immigration is turning to discussion of a guest worker program? How is it that Social Security is the same as it ever was?
Yes - liberals are self-righteous. Because we won. You don’t need big ideas to win a war that you have already won. You just need to keep the peace. And conservatives find this frustrating. They want to lash out at a "big-government" liberal idea. But Dems aren’t offering them any.
And you know Consevatives have lost their collective mind when they ridicule Dems for having no big ideas. Isn’t it the conservative position that government is not the answer to problems. It’s almost as if conservatives are upset that Dems are not coming up with dramatic new entitlement programs of their own.
Remember when conservatives belittled nation building? Well what do you think George Bush is doing now? And remember when conservatives took a hard line against communism? Well, now George Bush pratically makes love to the Chinese.
From all I can tell, conservatism today stands only for corruption and cronyism. From Libby to Cunningham, from Ney to Abramoff, from Delay to Burns, from Reed to Safavian, and on and on and on.
McQ, I know the left would disagree. I’m wondering if someone that doesn’t have a leftist ax to grind would disagree.
As I said, perhaps I’m just too unfamiliar with leftist thought, though I do make an attempt. The stuff I see tends to be of the "isn’t it terrible that the Iraq War is a failure and Bush is such an idiot" genre.
The guy you cited is a typical example - he thinks it’s all settled just because he says it is. No evidence or logic needed, and certainly no provisos. Consumers like that don’t want challenging thought - they want something that confirms what they feel is correct. And I use the word "feel" instead of "think" consciously. (Admittedly, some on the right are the same way, but not all of them.)
I visit both Free Republic and Democratic Underground on occasion, and they are good indicators of the problem with the left. FR has too many partisan Republicans for my taste, and they cheerlead for Bush too much. But engage them in a thoughtful argument, and you won’t usually be tossed off the thread. I used to argue on drug warrior threads over there (under a screen name), and they were knock-down-drag-out debates. Both sides got their licks in.
By contrast, DU seems to have very few areas where one can disagree with the "party line". Unless they’re arguing about how best to beat Republicans, they brook no disagreement. They don’t want to have a debate about philosophy or political positions. They’re not interested in convincing anybody. They just want to win so they can implement their obviously-superior policy.
The threads about the Ohio electoral vote controversy were some of the worst. If you were not prepared to buy into the most bizarre conspiracy theories, then you didn’t belong.
I recognize that some of the problem is that I don’t take leftist "argument" seriously. This goes all the way back to taking Honors Economics in 1975. We had to read Milton Friedman and John Kenneth Galbraith, and then compare and contrast. I always thought Friedman made logical sense, and I thought most of what Galbraith had to say was balderdash. Yet Galbraith was long considered one of the most serious thinkers on that side of the political spectrum.
In 1975, preferring Friedman over Galbraith was unheard of. It was the height of Keynesian economics (Nixon’s "We are all Keynesians now"). Ten years later, Friedman had gained the ascendency, and now most Keynesian analysis is viewed as quaint, as public choice theory has turned the discipline upside down. So I guess I trust my own logical intuition about what makes sense, rather than what’s fashionable, and most leftist "argument" simply doesn’t make sense to me.
But at least Galbraith tried to put forth serious argument. He had charts and graphs and everything! What I see on the left now is mostly "argument by assertion". They seem to think their conclusions are self-evident. How can you debate with someone whose conclusions are also their assumptions?
So I guess I trust my own logical intuition about what makes sense, rather than what’s fashionable, and most leftist "argument" simply doesn’t make sense to me.
I think that sums me up best as well Billy. Perhaps it was because I really didn’t engage in political debate that much until my early 40s and then when I did, I had enough life experience to recognize what would or wouldn’t work in reality. It was then I began a serious study of both sides of the spectrum and the more I studied the left leaning philosophies the more I found them wanting.
But I agree with your general assessment. In fact if you look at that thread you’ll see comments from a couple of women who have a liberal blog, one of whom remarks that it is easier to mock and ridicule the right ... you don’t have to put too much thought into it.
I thought it was very indicative (and frankly I identified with it as well since I’ve fallen prey to the same thing here at times). It’s easy to mock, ridicule and play to the crowd. It’s much harder to think things through to a logical conclusion and risk seeing your ideas trashed.
Many just don’t want to deal with the inconvenience of seeing their long cherished assumptions and ideals destroyed. So they don’t engage in serious argument and rationalize such behavior by claiming there are no "serious thinkers" on the other side and, as you point out, claiming everything is settled and the other side is just flat wrong.
I mean would you say it is less effective than say, oh I don’t know, the "progressive" movement today?
Again, if conservatism had some definition to it, I could answer your questions. Many wingers say Bush is a conservative. An equal number say he is not.
I think what you are seeing here is that conservatism is undergoing an identity crisis. It does not know what it is. So instead of undergoing critical self-examination, those who claim to be conservatives lash out at liberalism. In essence, the one thing "conservatives" can agree about is that they are not liberals. It’s what used to unite them when they were in the minority. So now, they have fallen back on their old ways
Remember this? This is what conservatism seemed to me to be. Cautious realism.
I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we’d have had to hunt him down. And once we’d done that and we’d gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we’d have had to put another government in its place.
What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi’i government or a Kurdish government or Ba’athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?
I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it’s my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq.
Guess who said this?
Now, I know, 9/11 changed everything. But the one thing it didn’t change is Iraq. But it did change conservatism. Or did it? Or didn’t it? Who knows?
On the right, there’s Buckley, Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman and his plethora of disciples, the guys at Cato....
Here is what one of those guys at Cato had to say about conservatism:
Today’s Conservatives Support Government Managing Other Countries by Leon Hadar
September 14, 2003
Hadar is a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.
If there was one thing that used to define American conservatives, it was their skepticism—if not hostility—toward the role of government in the management of human affairs. According to traditional conservative philosophy, the state and its political class have neither the moral right nor the administrative capability to direct people’s lives, here or abroad.
Yet today that’s all changed. American conservatives—traditional or "neoconservative"—apparently want government to manage everywhere, especially abroad.
American conservatives seem to have become born-again government interventionists and social engineers when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance, and to millions of foreigners and other distant societies whose values are alien to most Americans.
Indeed, there is a certain touch of the theater-of-the-absurd in watching spokesmen for a White House controlled by a political party that had been a proponent of "states’ rights" in the South not many years ago, now proclaiming the need to advance the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. in Iraq. (Which kind of begs the question: Did the CEOs of Bechtel and other big American firms flocking to Iraq these days take part in the civil rights marches in the 1950s?)
Most Americans believe that government can play a limited role in the process of improving race relations in the United States. And most conservatives would agree with that. Yet a conservative administration is now suggesting that all you need is, yes, government—a few days and nights of aerial bombing, 140,000 U.S. troops, bureaucrats with good intentions and economic aid from Washington—and, voila! we have "nation building."
And next to come? Religious freedom, individual rights and democracy among members of a society that is just starting to enter the Age of Enlightenment. Give government a chance and thousands of years of deep-rooted hatred among tribal, ethnic, religious communities in Iraq will come to a happy end.
The same conservatives who have warned us in the past of the harmful, unintended consequences of government projects seem to ignore concerns that America’s nation-building venture in Iraq could fail but could also destabilize Iraq and the entire Middle East. Further, they apparently don’t see that it could ignite more anti-American terrorism, not to mention the harmful impact it would have on the growth of U.S. government power and the effect it would have on the economy and civil rights in America.
I concur. So c’mon conservatives - before you start telling the liberals what they are not, why don’t you tell us what you are.
Again, if conservatism had some definition to it, I could answer your questions. Many wingers say Bush is a conservative. An equal number say he is not.
The way I’ve mostly seen it defined is less government, less spending and less government intrusiveness.
Which, of course, would leave most of the present crew out, including Bush.
The Right seems to call bullshit on their side (like you just did)—when needed—a little more often than the Left. It strikes me that any wacky view is okay with the Left as long as it’s anti-Bush. At least North Dakota Rep. Earl Pomeroy told Howard Dean to "shut up" today. That was nice to hear coming from somone on the Left.
They act like cops that protect one another, right or wrong, crooked or straight up.
Neither "wealth transfer liberals" or "small government conservatives" have won. These groups use so much effort to whine at each other, call each other idiots, work through a whole mantra of denigrating each other that they can’t even see that both sets of ideals have been rejected where it matters.
Borrow & Spend (Neo-Keynesian?) Economics is in control of Congress and the Whitehouse, give lots of money away now and pay for it with debt. America borrows cheaply and spends in it’s own economy - it works growth is very good.
Here is what one of those guys at Cato had to say about conservatism:
You’re proving our point here, MK - that the right is not a monoculture of thought, and that there are people making thoughtful arguments that sometimes oppose one another.
I pointed out that I don’t agree with all the people I listed. (You do actually read the posts you respond to, right?) Arguments about what conservativism really is are evidence of the strength of debate on the right, not of weakness.
Unlike the left, where (1) there’s really not much deep thinking going on, and (2) it’s considered somewhere between gauche and blasphemous to deviate from the politically correct position.
Gotta agree with Joe’s first post, All the new Ideas and reform movements are now on the Right, even right leaning libertarians and moderates. All that the left have is slogans, obstructions, and hatred. It is all the more satisfying to me because I remember what all these baby-boom hippies thought about themselves, they were so damm full of themselves. Thinking that they invented everything.
Be careful, MK. You have ventured away from straight liberal agenda talking points. That’s good. Baby steps. But be careful. Pretty soon you are going to begin having dangerous thoughts, such as: “Hey, Iraq might turn out all right, even though the Bushies made mistakes. Hey, common sense tells me that when almost everyone who has been there says one thing and the media tells me another… Hey, even I don’t believe what I just wrote.” Just in case, make a new friend who is an ex uber-liberal. They can help you through the worst of it.
Jon: If that’s the case, then conservatism is definitely losing. Badly. I’m talking Georgia Tech VS Cumberland territory here.
Sadly, I have to agree with Mr. Henke’s assessment.
I also agree with McQ’s definition of conservativism, and I also think it’s pretty apparent that ’conservatives’ aren’t running the GOP right now. The GOP has had almost six years with a complete monopoly over our government, and what have they actually done to advance the conservative agenda? Six years with control of all three branches of the USG and they have nothing to show for it.
To me it seems that there is little difference between the tactics of the GOP and the Democratic Party: both want to increase government intrusion, increase spending, intervene overseas, encroach on individual liberty, preserve as much pork as possible, etcetera. Sure, each party wants to do those things in different ways, and to reach different end states, but what does that really matter?
I only hope that a thorough trouncing in the 2006 elections can serve as a wake up call for the GOP. They probably need that in order to get back in touch with what and whom they are supposed to represent. Hopefully, they can snap back to reality before the 2008 elections, and field a good conservative/libertarian presidential candidate.... Not likely, though. What the party really needs is an extensive house cleaning.
It seems to me that a big problem for the left is that they are trying to win arguments rather than win elections. There’s a BIG difference!
They win all the arguments (or think they do) because they claim for themselves the moral and intellectual high ground, shout alot, all but foam at the mouth, and call anyone who disagrees with them names. That may be very soul-satisfying in the short term, but doesn’t change people’s minds (or votes) in the long term. The focus on winning arguments blinds them to the fact that they have no agenda, no vision, no ideas. They need to decide what America’s role in the world is, and everything will flow from that. That way they won’t have to "vote for it before they vote against it."
In that vein, can anyone on the left explain why going into Bosnia/Kosovo and getting rid of Melocevic was OK, and going into Iraq and getting rid of Saddam wasn’t? A consistent policy should make them both OK or both wrong.
