| Ah, right-wing laments over the 2006 Googlebomb campaign. I fondly remember that time when I was regularly receiving death threats over email and calls from every major media outlet in the country who wanted to know why I was engaging in dirty tricks. Really, you would be surprised how many right-wingers wish that a terrorist would crash a plane into West Philly. This article in the National Review really brought back fond memories of that time:
A good case study is Kansas Congressman Jim Ryun, who lost a narrow election for his seat in 2006 and was one of the candidates subject to the netroots Google-bombing attack. "When a campaign goes wrong and a five-term incumbent loses, there are a whole lot of things that have gone wrong. So was the Google bombing the sole reason we lost? No. Was it a part of it? Yes, but how big a part I don't know," said Drew Ryun, the former congressman's son and himself a former deputy director in the grassroots division of the Republican National Committee.(…)
Regardless, the liberal blogosphere, and Bowers in particular (who did not respond to a query for this piece), remain actively engaged in Google bombing and seem to have few if any ethical qualms about the lack of transparency. "If you look at Bowers writings on this, he refers to this as SEO - "Search Engine Optimization" - but it's not. They are really trying to game search engines," Beutler says. "It's not making the pages better, it's not doing the organic things that Google is supposed to do."
Hahahahahaha! Yeah, of course the Googlebomb campaign hurt Jim Ryan's re-election chances. Usually when people are directed to a story linking him to a child predator, that can happen to any politician. But the best part is that I am accused of a lack of transparency after the National Review quotes extensively from the entire plan behind the campaign, which I posted online and in public. To top it off, the article then quotes William Beutler, who works (or at least worked at one time) for Fred Thompson's Presidential campaign, even though the article never indicates that William Beutler works or consults for the Fred Thompson campaign. There is some transparency for you.
For the record, let's refresh everyone's memory on the Googlebombing campaign:
- I conducted every aspect of the campaign online, and in public.
- It resulted in a minimum of 564,000 in-district, voter contacts in 49 key House and Senate districts during the final two weeks of the 2006 campaign. The actual number of voter contacts was probably much, much higher.
- The total cost of the campaign was under $600. The expenditures in the adword side of the campaign were disclosed by BlogPac in appropriate FEC reports.
- It only pointed people to news stories already published by established, local news outlets.
- It isn't actually Google bombing, at least in the strict sense of the term.
- Right-wingers tried a counter campaign. It just didn't work as well.
To be frank, while I was reading the National Review article, I wasn't sure if the right is more disgusted by, or envious of, the campaign. Either way, I am still proud of the campaign, although I remain quite cognizant that even one million voter contacts in the final two weeks of the campaign is a drop in the bucket. Overall, the in the 50 districts I targeted, there were probably over 250,000,000 voter contacts in the final five weeks alone. In the end, I am just an independent activist, not a major organization or party committee. Still, I was glad to contribute, and extremely grateful to all the wonderful online activists who made the campaign work (special shout-outs to Lucas O'Connor and Bob Brigham). I only hope that in 2008, I can think of something half as clever, effective and irritating to right-wingers. |
