Reply #85: Funny about Drudge isn't it? [View All]

[stillcool]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/22/america/drudge.1-156891.php?page=2

The Drudge Report warms to the Clinton camp, or is it vice versa?
By Jim Rutenberg
Published: October 22, 2007

WASHINGTON: As Senator Barack Obama prepared to give a major speech on Iraq one morning a few weeks ago, a flashing-red siren alert went up on the Drudge Report Web site. It read, "Queen of the Quarter: Hillary Crushes Obama in Surprise Fund-Raising Surge," and, "$27 Million, Sources Tell Drudge Report."

Within minutes, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's fund-raising success was injected via Drudge into the day's political news on the Internet and cable television. It did not halt coverage of Obama's speech or his criticism of her vote to authorize the war in 2002, but along the front lines of the campaign - the hourly, intensely fought effort to capture the news cycle or deny ownership of it to the other side - it was a telling assault.

Clinton's aides declined to discuss how the Drudge Report got access to her latest fund-raising figures nearly 20 minutes before the official announcement went to supporters. But it was a prime example of a development that has surprised much of the political world: Clinton is learning to play nice with the Drudge Report and the powerful, elusive and conservative-leaning man behind it.

That man, Matt Drudge, came to national prominence a decade ago as a nemesis of the Clintons who used the Web to peddle, gleefully, the latest news and rumor generated by the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
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Clinton's communications team, led by Howard Wolfson, is not leaving Drudge to the Republicans. Five current and former Democratic officials said Clinton has on her side the closest thing her party has ever had to Rhoades in Tracy Sefl, a former Democratic National Committee official. The officials said that Sefl had established a friendly relationship with Drudge and that Clinton's campaign often worked quietly through her to open a line of communication with Drudge.
Though liberals say Drudge's ideological imbalance remains plain, Republicans, who viewed the site as theirs in campaigns past, say they are noticing what they believe to be more Democratic driven, often Clinton driven, items on it.

And, as New York magazine reported recently, it has escaped no one that Drudge has sometimes mentioned Clinton favorably on his syndicated radio program, even if no one really knows whether his comments reflect admiration for her or simply a recognition that keeping her in the news is good for his business.
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Former Republican Party and Bush campaign officials said that in 2004 they considered Drudge's site so central in their efforts to undermine Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign that they systemized their approach to him. Senior aides in the Bush war room, run by Steve Schmidt, a veteran Republican communications aide, insisted on vetting any information to be fed to Drudge so as not to annoy and overwhelm him with items he might find unworthy. And, these officials said, when the approval was given, the main point of contact was usually the Bush aide who then had the closest relationship with Drudge, J. Timothy Griffin, currently a consultant to the campaign of Fred Thompson, the former Republican senator from Tennessee.
Through that system, Bush's aides funneled embarrassing tidbits about Kerry in which mainstream news reporters had initially shown less interest. From time to time, those former aides said, an item's appearance on Drudge would drive it into mainstream news coverage: A video clip of Kerry contradicting himself, or a photograph of him wearing a protective germ outfit.