My brother told me about the Blogs for Bush Blog getting press in USA Today the other day, and my immediate (with admittedly no evidence as of yesterday) response was that it was done not as a Bush campaign strategy but by other bloggers who happen to support Bush.

My point is that the Bush campaign itself, while no dount appreciative of the blog support, is not “internet savvy” in the way the Dean campaign is. It was the Dean campaign who has leveraged the “bottom up” , blog-enabled strategy to unite a movement; and a movement that includes several who oppose certain stances of Dean, but who are in the community because it is a conversation.

I looked today, and saw this post which immediately made me reminiscent of Flame Wars, using somewhat juvenile imagery like “Recent attacks by his Democratic rivals have caused Howard Dean to whimper like a small child running to his mother about the neighborhood bullies”

The article then outlines several pet Republican arguments and uses them (and the fact that Dean opposes them) as if they are evidence that Dean is in trouble. He’s preaching to the choir (which I guess any blog usually does).
This blogger is apalled that Dean doesn’t fall in line with the Bush administration’s prounouncements of a “safer America” now that Saddam has been captured. Considering that there has been NO evidence found that Sadddam was involved with Osama, what are we to conclude? Recent attacks after Saddam’s capture would seem to bear out the opinion that maybe his capture is irrelevant, perhaps even more provocative, as still-free terrorists seethe with anger over arrogant US prounouncements that we are “winning the war on terrorism”.

The blogger credits Bush’s tax cuts with “turning around” a failing economy. I suppose he didn’t do the same with Clinton in 92 to 2000, since the “other factors” (the tech boom) were obvious boosts….but are there not other “boosts” today. And isn’t an “upswing” inevitable after such a dip? And who was president then? The market has yet to reach the heights to which it had scaled during the Clinton administration, so is this evidence to pull the rug out from “crediting Bush” withthe recovery? It seems we’ve merely had a roller coaster ride. But hey, it makes for good blogging doesn’t it?

He also criticizes Dean’s oppostion to the attack on Iraq, ” despite the fact that Saddam Hussein was in violation of multiple U.N. Resolutions” , echoing the arguments used by the PR campaign carried out by the Bush administration, even though they ignored the fact that the UN itself did not find any evidence of the weapons used as the major argument and “call to arms”. If e want to talk about hypocrisy, how about the tactic of using the violations cited by the UN prior to the investigation of these violations, and then ignoring the advice of the UN when they did not support the Bush administration’s preferences on how to handle it? The UN has long been a “prooftext” for the U.S., as resolutions are used as damning evidence, and then the very recommendations of that U.N. are soundly criticized by the Bush administration as being “weak-kneed” and “gutless” when they fail to take the hardline stance and support the call to arms on the Bush timetable.

This was but the TOP post on the Blogs for Bush weblog when I visted it for the first time today. Not much of an incentive to revisit. But I probably will, much for the same reason that I subscribe to a weblog done by Al Mohler. I get a charge out of exploring some of the typical arguments of the right-wing.