Reynolds and Limbaugh and Different Internets

[Annie]

I do get tired of the 'talking points from Rush, or O'Reilly', there are different alternative media. Yeah, links. BTW, this doesn't mean that O'Reilly or Rush do not say things that need to be said, but 'talking points'? Hardly:


http://www.blogpi.net/on-different-internets

On Different Internets
Published by WWB October 19th, 2006 in Republicans, Blog fights, Instapundit, Campaigns, Leftosphere vs. rightosphere, John McCain, PorkBusters

It appears that until about this time in the afternoon Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh had never heard of a weblog* called Instapundit (even his transcriber thinks the name of the site is “Insta-Pundit”). This was news to me, but it wasn’t necessarily a surprise.

To start, here a rambling Rush reproves Glenn Reynolds:

Now, I got a couple of e-mails I was checking here during the break from people who say, “Oh, no, Rush! Don’t get in a war with conservative bloggers. If the media rips you guys apart, it’s all over.” I am not at war with conservative bloggers. I quote countless posts from many blogs on this program. I use them as resources. I’m referring to one blog post, and I don’t even know who it is. This all got started when I cringed when I saw the use of the term “premortem” on a blog site called Insta-Pundit. … Whoever Insta-Pundit is, is letting somebody else reply to whatever it was I’m saying on the program, and it’s a little one-page post that I responded to this morning in the first hour.

I’m going to tell you the blog postings that I regularly read in my RSS reader. I’ve communicated with many of the people who run them. They’re fabulous people, starting with National Review Online, then Hugh Hewitt and his Townhall blog, Captain Ed, Ed Morrissey at Captain’s Quarters. The three lawyers at Power Line. These are resources that I have added to everything else that I use for show prep which makes show prep an ongoing, never ending thing. Red State is another site.(I hope I don’t forget anybody.) Little Green Footballs. I don’t want to leave any out. A.J. Strata, Strata-Sphere. I don’t want to leave anybody out here. The American Spectator. You here me talking about these. I’m referring to two days’ worth of posts on this one site.

So Rush is on speaking terms with RSS and knows what blogs he likes — mostly well-established members of the right-blogosphere — and yet he has no apparent knowledge of just who this “Insta-Pundit” fellow is supposed to be? A little unusual, no? But the fact of the matter is, though their Democratic and left-leaning critics might be slow to realize it, Reynolds and Limbaugh are actually, in the parlance of our times, on different Internets.

I’m willing to bet dollars to puppy shakes that Limbaugh doesn’t know who he is because Reynolds really isn’t kidding when he says he’s not a Republican. I’d wager Pajamas Media’s endowment that Reynolds has never sent so much as an e-mail to the EIB Network, whereas Strata, Morrissey and the NROniks all have him saved in their Outlook.

Limbaugh’s favorite bloggers are always on message, always hitting the day’s big news or arguing with the left. In contrast, consider the podcast Reynolds hosts with his wife — sure, they’ve hosted Bill Frist more than once, but then Frist is clearly enamored with blogging; Reynolds just happens to be a friendly, a big dog, and Frist’s constituent to boot. Yet the Insta-Pundit and the (arguably more conservative) Insta-Wife have also turned over considerable airtime to Democrat Harold Ford and John McCain — who is no friend of Limbaugh’s, to say the least.

Is Reynolds anti-left? No doubt he’s wingnut enough for the moonbats to write him off. (The project of exposing him as a stealth reactionary certainly has its adherents, but that’s old news.) But he’s not pro-right enough for the serious GOP activists in the blogosphere to rely on him to push their agenda. To the extent that Reynolds is a political activist at all, he seems to prefer policy reforms to party-building (c.f. PorkBusters).

Reynolds’ preferred reforms tend to be government-limiting and market-oriented, and the Limbaugh-sphere is certainly amenable to that. But whereas their online efforts are intended to elect Republicans, Reynolds spends less time bashing Democrats and more time evaluating digital cameras.