Roll Call: Crashing the Gates or Life of the Party? Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Posted by Conaway B. Haskins III in Uncategorized.trackback
A comment on yesterday’s post regarding Lowell, plus the on-going blogger discussions of the future of the RPV, makes me wonder if the old “netroots v. grassroots” dichotomy has hit its expiration date. After years of throwing rocks, blogging is being accepted as a wonderful medium for both political communication and activism…at least on the Democratic side.
DPVA Chairman Dickie Cranwell gave a shout-out to blogs in his Richmond Times-Dispatch column on Sunday, saying that Democrats “engage in spirited blog debates activities a lot of people know as ‘people-powered politics.’ While online resources are not replacing typical campaign methods of engaging voters, they give us yet another tool to get people involved and give them a voice.”
Republicans are still struggling to figure out the blog world, but AG Bob McDonnell – who is Yo-Yo Ma to the blogosphere’s cello – sent out an email ahead of the RPV statewide shindig that said, “bloggers play an increasingly important role in political discourse in the Commonwealth.” Who knows the extent to which other GOP leaders (aside from Wayne Ozmore, that is), are getting the message.
When we take off the pajamas and tin foil, the the fact is that plenty of us are actually bridging the divide between the netroots and grassroots. A number of bloggers served as Webb or Allen campaign volunteers, joined or helped lead local party committees, or used blogging to facilitate a future run for office. Some of us have put the rocks away for the moment.
There is no way for me to chronicle each and every blogger’s grassroots activism, but it would be great to have a roll call of those – D’s, R’s, others – who walk the line between the blogosphere and the “normal” political world 
I have seen bloggers play a larger role and they serve a function to bypass the driveby media who reports what they want to report rather than the whole story in many cases. My concern is that, in some ways, bloggers have the same type of tunnel vision that the ‘main stream media’ has… just from a different view point. The plus side to this is that we are able to see things from different angles to ferret out the truth.
The other concern I have is that sometimes we see bloggers majoring in minors, like the illustration in the Bible of the man trying to take the splinter out of his friends eye while having a log in his own. Things extremely important to the blogger may have little or no relevance to the real world… but we are free to accept or reject what we read. In any case we will find the need to actually think.
The parties may use them, but the Ds seem to be in a situation where the tail is wagging the dog as many of the bloggers are far to the left of the rank and file party faithful. This may be troublesome for some as it was for Joe Lieberman.
On the R side, where, at least locally, we have a group that is more concerned with control of the message, etc., bloggers can be seen as especially troublesome when they don’t tow the party line. Perhaps R bloggers see the success of there antithetical counterparts and look to use the power of the blogosphere to inject some grassroots influence into their own party.
This should be an interesting election cycle coming up and those on either side who have something to hide need to be especially careful a stray blogger doesn’t get wise to them.
“The truth shall set you free!”