Remember Webb Hubbell, Bernie Nussbaum, Mike Espy, Henry Cisneros, Roger Altman blah, blah, blah? And let's not forget that they spent 70 million taxpayer dollars trying to hound Clinton out of office. He just refused to go. The only difference now is that the target is the long-hated liberal media and bloggers have joined the assassination squad.
If liberal bloggers' record of scalps is Trent Lott losing the leadership post that Bush wanted him out of anyway then we aren't even in the same league. The Right Wing Noise machine is a group of seasoned professionals made up of bloggers, newspapers, FOX, talk radio, and a direct pipeline to powerful Republicans in the government. We are Kos and Atrios et al. We are not equivalent.
I would add right-wing think tanks, evangelicals and paid political talking heads to the group. Eventually, the "scroll" and "delete" buttons will become the equivalent of the tv "mute" button, and the Right will be left reading themselves and preaching to the choir.
The left-leaning media, including bloggers, being more focused on issues, injustices and fund-raising for Democrats, will gain new followers through netroots activism. Ultimately, the right will be reduced to wallowing in its own slime.
Update: Instapundit weighs in on the scalp-collecting issue:
....it was the stuff about Gannon's personal life that led to his resignation, and that there's something rather sleazy about that. Backstage or not, targeting parts of people's lives that don't have to do with the story -- like, say, Eason Jordan's love life -- seems inappropriate to me, and likely to lend support to the bloggers-as-lynch-mob caricature.
I made a similar comment about the Gannon outing here . Whether the guy had access to secret documents about Valerie Plame is a legitimate issue and should be investigated by Congress as well as the mainstream media. Speculation about his sex life, and trying to justify airing it on the basis that maybe he committed or endorsed prostitution because of domain names he bought, is not.
