Sarah (Palin) Surging! Mike (Huckabee) Pandering?

NOTE: MY MOST RECENT BLOG VISITORS CAME FROM THE FOLLOWING PLACES: Anchorage, AK; Juneau, AK; Kasilof, AK; and Fairbanks, AK.

My motto is: You can never have too many Alaskans visiting your blog -- or too many in the White House (keep that in mind Sarah, Todd, Bristol, Willow, and Piper).


I recommend highly a very pro-Palin column by Douglas Gibbs of http://politicalpistachio.blogspot.com/ Here's an excerpt: "Sarah's supporters are nationwide. A group of bloggers have done all they know how to do to introduce Governor Palin to the American Public. One such blogger is a young man named Adam Brickley, a college student who launched the Draft Palin effort for Vice President."

Also, SJ Reidhead (Cindy), who has achieved what we all seek -- that is, becoming a FAMOUS blogger -- is writing again in support of Sarah's efforts in a Sunday post at ThePinkFlamingo.

In conjunction with his remarkable efforts on Sarah's behalf, Adam Brickley, founder of the Draft Palin movement is getting a great deal of publicity. Online media guru Patrick Ruffini (see the two Saturday columns below) in his Townhall essay gives Sarah a good solid "A" grade in her performance as Governor. Ruffini also calls attention to Adam's blog (http://palinforvp.blogspot.com/) and Trish's http://palintology.com/. For some reason, he neglected to mention me, but because I like Patrick, I forgive him.

If you're fascinated by blog-driven campaigns, take a look at Mike Huckabee's blog site at: http://www.mikehuckabee.com/ Mike's efffort with bloggers is -- by far -- the best of any of the candidates. Apparently, he has more than 200 bloggers listed, and the campaign pays attention to the "care and feeding" of this group.

The problem with Huckabee's bloggers is a variation on the his campaign's central problem: that his supporters really aren't willing to let him deviate from right-wing evangelical positions. For example, when Mike suggested that racism might have played some role in the immigration debate, there was something resembling a howl from his base -- and Mike soon "clarified" his comment out of existence. His remarks that "life doesn't END at birth" put him on dangerous grounds with the small band of evangelicals -- Dr. Laurence White being one -- who often act as if they believe life does end at birth.

Huckabee's bloggers communicate mainly with one another. That means they have very little outreach to people who don't know much about the candidate. Thus, Mike's many active bloggers fail to create anything resembling viral marketing. It's something like the old line about Boston, "the land of the bean and the cod, where the Cabots speaks only to the Lodges, and the Lodges speak only to God." In short, Mike's bloggers need to get out more into the real world, where not everyone is an evangelical Baptist.

In short, Mike Huckabee exists in a cage constructed by his supporters. (Later today, I'll discuss Huckabee's recent comment again gay marriage -- and how it reinforces an image of him as something of an Arkansas homophobe pandering to the Dr. Dobson and Laurence White types.)