We don’t usually use TMV as a classified ad section for bloggers, but here’s a tip for our conservative blogger friends, courtesy of The Hotline:
Burned by a blog-induced firestorm over an an off-hand comment at a campaign rally, Sen. George Allen’s campaign is seeking a conservative blog maven who can blunt future attacks and help rally conservatives in the state and elsewhere behind Allen’s campaign.
Let’s see…who can rally conservatives?Kos! Oops! He rallies them in the wrong way. Read on:
The search is one of several steps Allen’s brain trust will take in the next few weeks to retool his campaign. Several Republicans close to the campaign said Allen was deeply frustrated at what one Republican called “the inept response and lack of ability of his team to handle crisis management in an effective and professional manner.”
On the other hand, it’s not easy for a staff to remove a foot embedded so firmly in a candidate’s mouth that it emerges out of the candidate’s posterior and onto the highways in three states. AND:
Today, Allen’s campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, sent allies an e-mail memo blasting the media for refusing to accept Allen’s apology. The memo suggests that that the campaign may try to focus support for Allen by portraying him as a victim of a liberal media elite.
That always works: if you make what is widelyl seen as a racist remark and get lambasted for it, and offer several explanations as to what was really meant, go after the “liberal media” for being at the root of the problem. (TMV doesn’t qualify because we’ve been accused of many things but never of being “elite.”) AND:
“Apparently the media’s standard for candidates is now that they must be perfect, not human, and that no mistake or verbal gaffe is to be forgiven, no matter how much the candidate apologize,” Wadhams writes in the memo. “Will the Washington Post hold it’s candidate for the U.S. Senate to the same standard? We will see, but I’m not holding my breath.”
That’s called a “straw man.” Senator Allen: no one has ever said a candidate must be “perfect.”
If that’s the case it rules out for future office Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Al Gore, Rudy Giuliani, and a host of others. It would exclude most bloggers (except for TMV).
And here’s a teeny-weenie hint: it helps if when a candidate makes a mistake that (a)he immediately and totally apologize, (b)explanations from his staff are 100 percent consistent and not contradictory, (c)GOPers aren’t later quoted as saying what the Senator REALLY mean to call the guy was a (excretory expletive)head.
The real truth is that your staff handled this poorly and unless the “liberal media” is what staffs your campaign, this one can’t be blamed on the the liberal… but on inadequate crisis management response from your political team. MORE:
Later, [Wadhams] writes, “You are the secret weapon that Senator Allen has always confounded the pundits with.” The memo ends with an exhortation to “show the liberal interest groups that by coming to Virginia, they have gotten more than they bargained for and that they need not bother us ever again!”
According to an e-mail circulating among conservatives, Chris LaCivita, Allen’s longtime strategist, and other Allen aides believe that the campaign has so far failed to appreciate the generative role that bloggers can play — and the consequences that pertain when the GOP Netroots aren’t mobilizied on behalf of candidates.
LaCivita is looking for a prominent conservative online strategist to join the campaign’s staff. Chad Dotson, a Virginia prosecutor who blogs as Commonwealth Conservative, is helping LaCivita with the recruitment effort. Since Dotson is an elected official and is soon up for re-election, it’s unlikely that he’d be cleared to join the campaign as a paid staff member.
So if you’re a conservative blogger, there’s a job out there waiting for you.
Just make sure if you get it that you educate members of the Senator’s staff about the importance of a single, cohesive response in the case of a gaffe (and that having allies say he MEANT to call the guy a pooh-pooh head isn’t exactly the textbook way to cut your losses and put a crisis behind you).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.