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Free Thinkers Or Bush Lapblogs?

Liberal bloggers are giddy and their conservative rivals are defensive over the news that the Bush White House sees conservative blogs as an extension of the Republican message machine.

Former Bush communications adviser Dan Bartlett started blogger tongues wagging with an interview he gave to Texas Monthly. A few of the questions were about the White House's outreach to conservative blogs, and Bartlett answered candidly about the White House's view of them.

He called GOP blogs a "direct vein" into the party's base and said, "They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on."

Liberal bloggers jumped on the report as proof of what they've always claimed -- that Republican bloggers, unlike the netroots who see themselves as crashing the gate of the Democratic Party, are just an extension of the party's establishment in Washington.

"Conservatives do love to be told what to say. Saves them the hassle of having to think for themselves," Markos Moulitsas Zuniga crowed at Daily Kos. Eschaton, My Two Sense, Political Animal and Talking Points Memo were among the other blogs celebrating Bartlett's candor.

Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters, a conservative who as a blogger certainly hasn't toed the administration line, took exception to Bartlett's perception. He said he typically only heard from the White House communications team when he wrote something that challenged Bush's policies.

Morrissey added: "[T]he record pretty clearly shows the conservative blogosphere as a whole complaining for the last several years about the lousy job Bartlett and the White House did on communications overall, including but not especially focusing on the blogosphere. I suspect that if Dan Bartlett decides to give us anything more to regurgitate, he'll get a different kind of gastrointestinal response from conservative bloggers."

Dan Riehl acknowledged that some bloggers are guilty of parroting political talking points, but he argued that "simply regurgitating what professionals give you isn't blogging, not blogging I respect, anyway. And the best bloggers just don't do it."

James Joyner also commented at Outside The Beltway: "I get plenty of e-mails from [the White House], but they’re of the garden-variety hack press release ... and have been filtered directly into my 'PR Spam' file for months. Indeed, most of the contacts I’ve gotten from campaigns, congressional staffs, and advocacy groups are similarly worthless."

UPDATE: More reactions to Bartlett's comments at Ace of Spades HQ, Instapundit and Just One Minute. CBS News' Public Eye blog covered the story, too.

Posted by Danny | 09:15 AM

Comments

As someone who has been in media relations for many years I think I can say with at least some authority that this White House has the most inept PR/communications I have ever seen, at any level of government. It begins at the top with the most inarticulate President since the invention of recording devices (for all I know Millard Filmore might have been worse but no one ever got him on tape). How can a top communications adviser to the freakin' president think that saying something like that would look good in print? I'm frequently reminded of Casey Stengel looking down the bench at the 1962 Mets and asking "can't anybody here play this game?"

DanG | 12.06.07 11:04 AM

Bartlett is as numb about bloggers as he was on the Fair Tax proposals of Neal Boortz _ numb & uneducated.

Tom Moore | 12.06.07 12:26 PM

"simply regurgitating what professionals give you isn't blogging"

No it's not blogging - its journalism.

Stephen Macklin | 12.06.07 12:57 PM

Somebody will have to explain to me how this interviewer got out of journalism school without learning to ask the obvious follow-up question: If conservative bloggers are so servile, why were they so critical of the White House over the Harriet Miers nomination, immigration policy, and runaway spending? Bartlett repeats a typical slander of the left and because it fits this reporter's particular template Bartlett doesn't get called on it.

In one brief interview we see quickly how the White House came to be so alienated from its base in so short of a time period, and the media's biases against blogging and especially conservative bloggers. It's definitely an undigestable combo plate Bartlett and the Texas Monthly should've been too ashamed to serve.

james wigderson | 12.08.07 07:01 PM

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