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October 23, 2005BELTWAY BLOGROLL
A Back Seat For Bloggers
Every two years, a new crop of lawmakers storms Capitol Hill with a determination to change the way Washington works. With few exceptions, it doesn't take long for Congress to put the underclassmen in their place. The newcomers get the least influential committee assignments, the most remote and least ornate office space, and little time in the spotlight.
This year, bloggers are the figurative freshmen of larger Washington. They have won enough respect in certain pockets of America to claim occasional seats at the policymaking table -- but they are definitely back seats.
That reality has been abundantly evident the past couple of weeks, as conservative bloggers have been showered with ever more attention from the Republican powers that be -- yet have nothing substantive to show for it.
The battle over Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers illustrates the point well. Many bloggers oppose her nomination -- a poll at The Truth Laid Bear puts the opposition-to-support ratio at more than 4-to-1 -- but President Bush seems determined to stand loyally by his lawyer.
Although the opposition from bloggers spurred the Republican National Committee to hold its first-ever exclusive conference call with bloggers, the event was more about wooing bloggers than inviting them into a conversation, which is what bloggers want. The same was true of a second call about a week later.
Bulldog Pundit at Ankle Biting Pundits praised the outreach by the RNC but said the general message -- wait until Miers' confirmation hearings, and you will become more comfortable with her selection -- has been unconvincing. "[M]y thought goes to the Seinfeld episode where they kept saying 'Yada, yada, yada.' ... The best she can do (and likely will) is offer general bromides about the court 'not legislating from the bench,' which sounds good but tells us nothing."
It is also plausible that without mainstream conservatives like David Frum -- a blogger for National Review but, more importantly, a former Bush speechwriter -- leading the charge against Miers, the RNC would be less determined to influence bloggers.
Mark Tapscott, a blogger and media expert at the Heritage Foundation, said columnists like George Will crystallized the opposition and hold more sway in Washington than bloggers.
The outcome of last week's Senate debate on pork-barrel spending is even more telling of bloggers' limited leverage in the capital.
The debate marked a significant milestone in that it seems to have been inspired at least in part by the conservative blogosphere's ongoing PorkBusters campaign. It also was endorsed by popular blogs on both the left and right, a rare occurrence.
But in the end, no more than 15 senators sided with the bloggers in a series of floor votes. One blogger dramatically called the issue "A Hill To Die On," and that is exactly what happened.
Ironically, the debate occurred on the same day that a few mostly GOP backbenchers in the House hosted a carefully orchestrated "bloggers row." Bloggers understandably appreciated that unprecedented access, and they asked some tough questions of the lawmakers. But the failure to get results on the other side of the Capitol, despite a full-blogosphere press, speaks volumes about the current power of blogs in Washington.
The bottom line is that on the big issues, bloggers are batting zero. Their only significant policy claim to fame this year occurred at the Federal Election Commission. The blog swarm against that agency arguably forced it to draft a less sweeping plan for applying campaign finance law to bloggers -- but even that war is not over yet because the FEC has not finalized the rules.
Bloggers are not powerless in policy circles and actually are gaining influence. Otherwise, official Washington would pay them no mind whatsoever -- no conference calls with political chieftains, no question-and-answer sessions with lawmakers, and no other forms of outreach. But bloggers today are not as persuasive or as intimidating as they might like to believe.
For now, they are a lot like an unruly, reform-minded pack of zealots who won election to the House a decade-and-a-half ago and became known as the Gang of Seven. As Republicans in a Democratic-dominated Congress, that rabble-rousing minority within a minority, including one lawmaker who once wore a bag of shame over his head on the floor, had little impact on policy. But they did make enough noise to expose scandals and force change at the House bank, restaurant and post office, and they prepared the way for a GOP takeover four years later.
The as-yet-unanswered question about bloggers is whether they also are sowing seeds of change today that will yield fruit tomorrow.
Posted by | 10:20 PM
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» Are bloggers on the back of the bus inside the Beltway? from Pundit Review
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» Are Bloggers Having an Influence Inside the Beltway? from Concurring Opinions
From the National Journal’s Beltway Blogroll Blog, Daniel Glover takes a skeptical look at the influence of blogs: This year, bloggers are the figurative freshmen of larger Washington. They have won enough respect in certain pockets of America to cla... [Read More]
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» Blog Round-up - Tuesday, October 25th from SCOTUSblog
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Comments
As I pointed out, Daniel, I believe you miss the point. Blogs may not yet exibit direct influence on politicians per se, but we do enjoy direct influence on the mass media, which does directly influence our lawmakers.
Bill Quick | 11.03.05 02:43 PM
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