Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is not popular with many conservative bloggers and their readers. How will this play in his 2008 aspirations? CBS News observes that Presidential campaigns, even in their infancy, are already working on building rapport with political blogs — the constantly updated, often highly-partisan Web sites where authors post news updates, opinion pieces and everything in between. From CBSNEWS.com:
The relationship between candidates and the blogosphere is an important one, but sometimes uneasy. If bloggers and their readers feel slighted or ignored by a candidate, retribution can be harsh. But blogs will also help candidates they favor with organization and fundraising.
The candidates’ outreach efforts vary. Candidates will sometimes serve as guest-bloggers on more popular sites. Other campaigns, like those of Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, have hired popular bloggers to work for them.
But those strategies can sometimes backfire, as evidenced this week, when Edwards faced questions over comments two of his bloggers had posted on an outside Web site that criticized the Catholic Church, drawing the ire of conservative groups. The story, of course, has been the hot topic on political blogs of all stripes for the past two days. Edwards decided to keep the bloggers on his staff and both issued apologies.
Republican John McCain’s campaign faces a different problem: Despite leading in polls of GOP primary voters, many conservative bloggers don’t like him and don’t trust him.
In particular, they take issue with the campaign finance overhaul law he co-sponsored in 2002. A frequent complaint on blogs is that the measure curtails free speech and — hitting closer to home — contains provisions that threatened to severely restrict the activity of political blogs.
McCain also took heat from blog readers when he joined a bipartisan group to prevent a Senate rules change that would have ended filibusters on judicial nominees, and many are wary of him because, they say, he is too friendly with the “MSM” — mainstream media.