Barticles takes a look at RK ... which begs the question, "Where is the Republican equivalent of RK?"

From On High writes:

"When I found out that the fellas behind the popular weblog Raising Kaine were paid employees (or agents) of the Democratic Party of Virginia, I quit reading it. I get the Party's press releases emailed to me; why bother?

He then includes the link to an article by Bart Hinkle at the Richmond Times-Dispatch that shows their flip-flopping on "what the Republicans should do" and says:

Read the whole thing. Mr. Hinkle cites a number of examples where the kids at Raising Kaine criticize Republicans for shamelessly pandering ... and for shamelessly not pandering. Ricocheting off the walls like adolescents who really don't have a clue.

I had been blogging for a while before I heard RK was made up of paid staff. It explained a lot ... and also made me realize we were blogging on an uneven playing field. While conservative bloggers were standing up for their candidates and causes at night, before work, on the weekends, or as time permitted ... the RK gang was being paid to sit behind a computer and gush out a continuous drill of democrat talking points.

That, in and of itself, struck me as odd. Perhaps they should be in another "political" blogosphere ... the one that is paid people ... and leave this one to those of us who are volunteers? I figured they had all kinds of research tools at hand, and talking points being fed to them, and research at the click of a finger from the democrat party.

As I read RK and some others, they sounded the same ... the same themes, the same talking points, the same anti-Republican rants. In fact, RK began to sound like some of the blogs I had come across at Daily Kos.

I'm still new at this game ... but the dots are being connected. To the RK propaganists and others (RD, NLS?) this is a job that pays money. Not bad to be paid for spending all those hours on a computer promoting your Party.

So my question is, "Where is the Republican equivalent of RK?" Where are the paid Republican bloggers? Where is the Republican equivalent of Daily Kos? Who is the "George Soros" in the Republican circles who can fund endless amounts of money to pay volunteers to get the message out?

Where are the GOP techie guys who know how to search the layers of liberal deceit such as sarahrxpkatherine and thalassaziv and all the others they use to google bomb their opponents and possibly build their own numbers?

Where is Google, which reportedly has given 98% of its political donations to democrats, to investigate? They refused ads that attacked MoveOn.org ... yet they let a google bombing of the Republican President of the United States run for several years before finally fixing it.

Where are the ethical democrat bloggers when their own attack conservative bloggers with profanity and false accusations?

Why is oppositional research done by democrats against Republican bloggers? Why is it ethical to use such research against VOLUNTEERS? Where are the ethical bloggers to stand up to this?

In my short 18 months in the blogosphere I have discovered anything goes for the democrat bloggers. Their MO is intimidation ... attack, badger, harrass, "out" by real name (there are nuts in the blogosphere and that is reason enough to be anonymous), belittle and ridicule. Their debating style is, for many but not all, juvenile and petty. They resort to name-calling and profanity.

I again ask, "Where is the Republican equivalent of RK?"

Another dirty trick from the dems ... Google bombing

"You dropped a bomb on me, baby," may have a whole new meaning.

Flora at United Conservatives of Virginia points out how the left uses domain names to defame Republicans, and certainly the ODBA's outrage at the Joe Stanley/Roscoe Reynolds dirty trick of redirecting ODBA traffic to a pedophile site that is currently taking place in the Virginia political blogosphere backs that up.

But another dirty trick used by the left to intimidate conservatives is Google bombing. And it may just be a matter of time before it becomes ground zero.

The far left bloggers have perfected the art of intimidation by engaging in a stunt called Google bombing. Google bombing works by asking a large number of like-minded bloggers to post links that point to a specific Web site so that the targeted site will appear near the top of a Google search when a particular word search is typed.

The act of Google bombing artificially inflates the relevance of the targeted site by giving the search engines a false impression of the site's importance. The best known cases are on a national level even though it has happened at the local level.

In the heat of the 2004 presidential campaign, when the words miserable failure were entered into the Google search engine, it took the user to the official George W. Bush website. When the first Google bombs showed up, complaints were filed with Google. However, while admitting the practice was offensive to some, Google proclaimed they had little or no control over it and did not act.

Google finally issued a statement saying, “We don’t condone the practice of Google bombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results, but we’re also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up."

Members of the liberal blog umbrella Daily Kos actively encourage participation in this behavior. For example, Chris Bowers, a contributor to the Kos, posted, “Call to Action: Google-Bombing the Election.” In his post, he provides instructions on how to participate in the Google bombing on a nationwide basis during the 2006 elections.

This is a must read for all Republicans to understand the extreme tactics of the left.