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Earlier we wrote about the revelation that Forrester's campaign manager was the source of rumors surrounding Corzine's personal life. Enlighten-NJ started dropping hints of these and other rumors about two weeks ago. Finally, the last piece of the slime machine, the Drudge Report, helped push the rumors to the mainstream press. This set in motion blowback for the Forrester campaign, and dispirited the New Jersey electorate even further. Even Forrester condemned the rumors he set in motion (then later changed his mind), though he won't go so far as to fire or discipline his campaign manager Rick England or communications staffer Sherry Sylvester for pushing them.
But I'm not so interested in the smear campaign so much as what it portends for the future, and specifically 2006.
Let's start at the beginning. I wrote earlier about a blog called Enlighten-NJ. It appears to be part of a network of blogs funded to push rumors on Democrats (another one is here). This is version 2.0 of a strategy outlined here in Personal Democracy Forum: Daschle, Thune and the Blog-Storming of South Dakota... |
At the end of January, newly-elected South Dakota Senator John Thune briefed his colleagues at a closed-door GOP retreat in West Virginia about the importance of blogging in contemporary politics. Thune earned his bragging rights by defeating former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle this past November, in a race where conservative bloggers played a small but important role. But the story that Thune has to tell isn't anything like earlier political blog successes such as the Dean for America campaign blog or DailyKos.
The blogging efforts on behalf of Thune's Senate campaign didn't cause greater civic participation or bring in piles of small donations. Instead nine bloggers -- two of whom were paid $35,000 by Thune's campaign -- formed an alliance that constantly attacked the election coverage of South Dakota's principal newspaper, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. More specifically, their postings were not primarily aimed at dissuading the general public from trusting the Argus' coverage. Rather, the work of these bloggers was focused on getting into the heads of the three journalists at the Argus who were primarily responsible for covering the Daschle/Thune race: chief political reporter David Kranz, state editor Patrick Lalley, and executive editor Randell Beck. Enlighten-NJ shares the qualities of the South Dakotan blog, with one crucial upgrade. It's anonymous. The blog uses the service Blogger, and a Gmail account, so it can't be traced. Yet the bloggers seem to have a striking amount of access to opposition research and a direct pipeline into the Trenton rumor mill. And this blog was started in November, 2004, just in time to be used as a rumor mill for the Governor's race in 2005, and then for the Senate race in 2006. Virginia and New Jersey are off-off-year elections, and historically have been testbeds for new campaign tactics that are rolled out prior to the midterm elections. In other words, this blog is in all likelihood a test-bed of right-wing tactics in preparation for the 2006 cycle. No less than Senator Thune makes it clear that the Republicans see the internet as a rumor dump. And then we have this, in Arkansas:Chris Battle, who is managing Asa Hutchinson's campaign for governor, on May 3 sent an e-mail message to a presumably large number of Republican sympathizers across Arkansas.
"I would like to set up a conservative blog, or a number of them in different parts of the state, to comment on Arkansas politics as a counter to liberal media," he wrote.
Since that time, several conservative blogs have indeed been established in Arkansas, and almost without exception they hew to Hutchinson's talking points, touting his message of the day and leveling harsh attacks against his Democratic counterpart, Mike Beebe.
The blogs are anonymously managed, and even Battle's e-mail is not definitive evidence that he controls them. But it at least suggests a connection, and that is important as these blogs attempt to influence the course of the next election.
But let's be honest. The Hutchinson campaign has access to plenty of money, and it has no problem getting its message out. If Hutchinson says something notable, reporters will listen and report it.
Having a blog network at your disposal only makes sense if you want to have a way to advance charges or innuendo without directly involving the candidate.
"Any ideas on who would be good for this?" Battle asked at the end of his e-mail. "Who is somebody well connected in conservative circles, who knows Arkansas politics, but also can write well and has a good sense of humor? (Don't have to worry about the technical/computer side ... I can set that up ... very easy to do.)" This is exactly what we have going on here. Rumors. Dirt. And a press that won't report on any of it until they have to, and then, they report on the rumors and not on the strategy behind it (save the one notable article in the Star Ledger that mentions Republican staffer Rick England as spreading the rumor). Indeed, this orchestrated and well-funded smear campaign comes from the top of the Doug Forrester campaign. His campaign manager spreads around lies, and they have anonymously authored Enlighten-NJ to push these lies on the internet, through message boards and other conservative blogs and sites like Drudge. It's not really surprising considering Forrester has hired the same media team that ran the Swift Boat smear campaign against John Kerry, and this tactic has clearly chummed around in right-wing media circles.
But it's not an internet phenomenon, it's a dirty tactic that is making its appearance on the internet - earlier today, a paid Forrester operative was outed for spreading rumors on a post at Wally Edge's Inside Edge blog at PoliticsNJ.com. This is a portion of the email we received today regarding this incident: [removed],
[....] there was a comment poster on www.politicsnj.com's Inside Edge who was just outed by someone else as a paid Forrester poster. In his last post he repeated several rumors about Senator Corzine, including the video with racist comments, and [removed]. I think Wally Edge takes those things down, but its still there.
Here's the link
Thanks,
[removed] The comments at the page have since been removed thanks to Wally Edge's good sense, but you can see the comments from others pointing out that this person was indeed outed. Recall that Enlighten once ominously warned about this same video:Reporters are after a videotape of Corzine, inebriated, making statements that will damage him beyond belief with African Americans. and then hinted that it would come out within 48 hours:The person who has the Corzine tape is in intense discussions with the news media about releasing it. Whether or not the tape is released before the election, those who have seen it WILL be heard from. The next 48 hours could dramatically change the direction of this race. Where is this video? It's been 10 days since the 48 hour warning. It doesn't exist, because Enlighten is probably just a paid operative of the Forrester campaign, who like the Forrester campaign manager and the person who was banned from Wally Edge's website earlier today, are full of shit and are spreading lies and smearing Corzine. But that's not really the point - the point is that this is an attempt to manipulate the media into covering the smear using the cover of internet anonymity. And it worked. Some of the rumors were printed.
The answer to this kind of attack is sunlight. Reporters need to report on this kind of campaign as it's happening, not publish the rumors a week before the election for fear of being scooped. Barring that, and I don't expect the sophistication of political reporters to improve that quickly over the next year, the Democrats and bloggers need to realize that this play is going to be done to them over the next year, everwhere, and call attention to it themselves. |
