The Other McCain : Page 2365 : "One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up."

“Being ranked in the top 5 for something on Google and being ranked 25th or 125th can be the difference between selling your crappy website to AOL for $315 million and going out of business.”
— James Joyner, Outside the Beltway

The fact that a major corporation like J.C. Penney was willing to pay money for Web geeks to make sure they were the top Google result for phrases like “grommet top curtains” ought to tell you how important the Internet has become to commerce. Reverse-engineering the Google algorithm is the sort of knowledge-is-power formula that any student of human nature might have predicted would swiftly be hijacked to serve selfish and/or malevolent purposes.

The whole point of “How to Get a Million Hits” was to demonstrate that blogging isn’t rocket science, and to share a few simple ideas from my Underpants Gnome Theory of how it works.

That’s why, as Rule 3, I recommended Memeorandum as a source for political blog fodder. (Which is where I found Joyner’s post.) Memeorandum is an exceptional tool if the question you’re trying to answer is, “What are other bloggers are blogging about?”

They’ve got an algorithm over there, and one of the ways you make it onto the Memeorandum aggregation is by acknowledging them as a source. Because their choices are determined by an algorithm, you’re not at the mercy of some human “decided” who might play favorites.

You can use Memeorandum as a guide to where the blog conversation is heading, and also to find other bloggers you might want to link and quote. A relatively small group of bloggers who are (a) all getting blog fodder from a common source, (b) frequently linking to each other, and (c) collectively directing a fair amount of traffic to Memeorandum, can thereby become a sort of “center of gravity” in the blogosphere.

Jimmie Bise once dubbed this concept The Million Hit Squad. It is sort of a “gaming the algorithm” trick, except that it isn’t a secret and is intended to produce a kind of win-win result: Memeorandum gets more traffic, and the bloggers who use The Rules get more linkage, because they are engaged in mutually aggregating each other’s commentary. If enough bloggers follow that method, it would also give conservative sites more weight in the Memeorandum algorithm which currently tends to show more Left-leaning blogs (and their pet topics), for reasons that need not be discussed here.

Of course, to succeed with that concept, you still have to bring some element of skill and knowledge to the ‘sphere, and be able to contribute new information to the conversation. Here I would recommend a simple idea: Use Google News searches to expand your aggregation.

For example, I used Google News to find this relevant New York Times story from last week:

[A]n art and science at which The Huffington Post excels [is] search engine optimization, or S.E.O. The term covers a wide range of behind-the-scenes tactics for getting search engine users to visit a Web site, like choosing story topics based on popular searches.
Because Google is many Internet users’ front door to the Web, S.E.O. has become an obsession for many Web publishers, and successful ones use the strategies to varying degrees. But as newspapers, magazines, blogs and online-only news sites increasingly compete for readers, they are making it more of a priority than ever and adopting new techniques, like trying to maximize pass-alongs on social networks.

That article offers a revealing insight into how people who are in the business of generating page-views — whose jobs are dependent on success in that endeavor — do what they do. Even if you’re a dinky new blogger nobody ever heard of, you can adapt such advanced methods to a small scale.

Note that I have now, in a single post, combined multiple elements:

James Joyner’s quote.
Link to the article Joyner was commenting on.
Link to Memeorandum.
Link to a related news article.
My own original contributions to the conversation.

It’s the value-added concept of customer service, applied to New Media. And it’s not rocket science. You can become your own traffic-enhancement expert.

CPAC Ends, Media Lies Continue

Posted on February 13, 2011February 13, 2011Comments

WASHINGTON, D.C.
This morning, I had breakfast with Ladd Ehlinger here at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel and stopped by a computer terminal in the lobby to check in on Twitter. Matthew Newman sent me a message with a link to a Politico article by Alexander Burns listing “winners and losers” for CPAC.

My first thought: Who anointed Alexander Burns as the Decider?

Why does a liberal columnist for a liberal newspaper get to decide who are the winners and losers at a conservative conference? A little research revealed that Alexander Burns is a graduate of Harvard University, so there’s your answer. Upon receiving his disploma, every Harvard graduate acquires the right to tell the rest of us what to think. And here’s what Alexander Burns (Class of 2008) tells you to think about Herman Cain:

The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO is in a category of his own, even among the obscure candidates of 2012. Cain, who hosted a radio show in Georgia and has never held public office, has traded on his reputation as a dynamic speaker to win attention as a long-shot presidential candidate.
Cain didn’t live up to that reputation at CPAC. He had one or two memorable lines, such as: “Stupid people are ruining America.” But one or two middling zingers do not a credible candidate make.
Given his flat performance, Cain’s going to have to work extra-hard going forward to win a place in the 2012 process.

Did Harvard Boy watch the same speech Ed Morrissey watched?

If you watch one speech in its entirety, this may be the one to choose. Herman Cain, so far the only declared candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, stole the show yesterday with his speech in the late afternoon. People left the ballroom saying that he moved them to tears.

You can go watch the entire 28-minute speech on YouTube and decide for yourself what you think.

As for the “winners/losers” question, permit me to make a suggestion: Wait until April, when we will see the first-quarter Federal Election Commission filings for Herman Cain’s presidential exploratory committee, and see how many donations he got Feb. 11-12.

Someone told me at a reception Saturday night that during and after the CPAC speech there was a “surge” of contributions big and small to the Cain campaign. And you can go give a donation to the Herman Cain campaign right now.

Or you can let Harvard Boy do your thinking for you.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Despite his Yale Law degree, Professor Reynolds somehow manages to avoid believing that his job is to decide what everybody else should think about everything.

CPAC Day 3: Everybody Write-In Your Straw-Poll Favorite: Ann Coulter; UPDATE: Rejecting My Advice, CPAC Attendees Vote for Ron Paul, Mitt Romney

Posted on February 12, 2011February 12, 2011Comments

They saved the best for the final day of CPAC: Ann Coulter followed by Allen West.

UPDATE: Awesome!

Security at CPAC recognized me when I rolled down to the front row to get a picture. Pretty freaking cool. Ann ended her speech with what every Southern Baptist would recognize as her testimony, and it was 31 flavors of awesome. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”

UPDATE II: Getting ready for Allen West’s keynote speech. My daughter Kennedy and her husband Martin have joined me in the Blogger’s Lounge.

UPDATE III: CPAC straw poll results: Ron Paul 30%, Mitt Romney 23%, everybody else in single digits, including Newt Gingrich 6%, Tim Pawlenty 4%, Michelle Bachmann 4%, Sarah Palin 3% and Herman Cain 2%. Note the names below Cain in the straw poll: Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, John Thune, Jon Huntsman and Haley Barbour.

UPDATE IV: A few more photos:

Donald Douglas of American Power with 2011 CPAC keynote speaker Rep. Allen West.

Dana Loesch with her favorite blogger.

Fingers Malloy, Alyssa Farah and my young journalist protege, Josiah Ryan.

Javier Manjarres, Sarah Rumpf and Ed Morrissey.

UPDATE V: Total straw poll results at Human Events, via Memeorandum. I’m on the VIP list at the Reaganpalooza. so I’ll be catching you on the flip side.

UPDATE VI: Young Americans for Freedom has expelled Ron Paul from its national advisory board.

We Have Always Been The Party Of No

Posted on February 12, 2011February 12, 2011Comments

By Wombat

This was originally going to be a response to one of the comments in Stacy’s post Hecklers In The Big Tent, but it got a bit long and complicated, so I’m going to throw this up as a regular post without all the linkagery I normally specialize in here.

I think everyone is missing a fundamental truth about the GOP that has pretty much defined the party since the New Deal days. Unlike the Democrats, who have always been about getting and keeping power (and more nakedly so since the New Left took over the party in the 70s), the Republicans have always been a party defined by what it’s against. During FDR’s New Deal, the main thing we were against was the socialism of the New Deal. When the Cold War started, this receded into the background and was replaced by a fairly solid anti-communist stance that left us somewhat rudderless when the Soviet Union collapsed, until the War on Terror came along. This is one of the reasons the GOP has traditionally been supportive of the military and vice versa.

The social conservatives, especially the Catholics who mostly hang out at National Review, didn’t always represent a major factor in the party. They first became a major bloc in the party as the Reagan Democrats of the 80s found themselves marginalized by the radical Democrats’ insistence on legalized abortion with as few limits as possible, and switched over to the GOP. This is not to minimize the role played by evangelical Protestants or Mormons by any means; all social conservatives were and are important to the success of the GOP, and Republicans who ignore them get what John McCain got in 2008: lots of voters staying home instead of being foot soldiers and reliable voters.

Until W’s second term, the fiscal conservatives and deficit hawks have had their concerns given lip service at best, and the back of the hand at worst. Now the spendthrift socialism of the New Left, untempered by a Republican Senate or President, has been made fully operational, and in response the GOP has found another Big Idea to be against. Libertarians, social conservatives and yes, even gay conservatives have found something they can all agree on: the free-spending Democrats need to be expunged, the national debt needs to be reduced, and Uncle Sam’s credit card needs to be taken away. As with Communism, anything that distracts from tackling the Main Enemy needs to be shoved into the background until we have defeated the unholy trinity of New Leftists, public sector unions, and crony capitalists who are driving the country into a pit of over-regulation, hyperinflation, and economic stagnation.

This is why I can’t get too excited over the GOProud flap. As a Catholic traditionalist, I don’t agree with a lot of their positions, but on the other hand, they’re willing to argue about those issues at the state level (where arguments about society and culture belong) while standing shoulder to shoulder with us in the trenches of fiscal conservatism. Considering the treatment usually handed out to political apostates from the GLBT community, I think we should cut them a little slack and accept their support. Especially if we can get them to quit taunting the more thin-skinned social conservatives. 😉

The RINOs have always been with us. There are a lot fewer of them now than there used to be, but we have always had Republicans who liked the power offered by public office (the Washington insiders) or who were more liberal in the fiscal or social sense due to the nature of their state or district. Conservatives and libertarians need to decide on a case-by-case basis whether having somebody on your side 60% of the time is good enough or whether we want to purge them in favor of a possible 75- or 90-percenter who maybe can’t get elected. Yeah, we should always have somebody in the wings ready to threaten them in the primaries if they get wobbly on spending and taxes, but we should pull together in the general elections against the greater enemy — and if they won’t return the favor, we need to run them and their supporters out of the party and keep them out.

CPAC Day 3: Fear and Loathing and
Tri-Corner Hats in the Kruiser Cabana

Posted on February 12, 2011February 12, 2011Comments

Every year, there are two CPACs: The one I attend, where conservatives get together and have a wonderful time — as at the scene (above) inside the late-night “Kruiser Cabana” party hosted by Stephen Kruiser of PJTV — and the (allegedly) divisive and controversial hatefest reported by the liberal media. How more transparently biased could the media possibly be? Pamela Geller calls attention to the lede of a Time magazine feature about CPAC:

The Conservative Political Action Conference, a three-day carnival of Republican ladder-climbers and red meat throwers, convenes Thursday in Washington.

One of the reasons I spend most of my time covering the behind-the-scenes fun at CPAC — rather than chasing the pack of media jackals in pursuit of a “gotcha” quote from the speakers on the big ballroom stage — is because their coverage provides such a warped funhouse mirror distortion of what this event is really all about.

Yes, there are would-be 2012 GOP presidential contenders speaking at the conference. Yes, there will be controversial things said from the main stage in the ballroom — “controversial,” that is, by the standards of liberal reporters who find any blunt expression of fact to be controversial. But CPAC isn’t about the political stars up on the stage, it’s really about the thousands of conservative activists in attendance. And this year, there are a record 12,000 of those, including more than 5,000 college students for whom this event is a rite of passage.

When they aren’t merely distorting CPAC, liberal reporters do not hesitate to lie about it. Michael Shear of the New York Times:

Egypt Captivates World’s Attention — Except at CPAC
Three weeks of historic protests in Egypt upended President Hosni Mubarak’s regime on Friday with the world looking. But here at the Conservative Political Action Conference, no one took any notice. . . .

There is a word for that kind of reporting: Bullshit.

Egypt: Mubarak Resigns

That’s the headline on an item I filed from CPAC moments after Mubarak’s resignation was announced. And here’s a headline that apparently the New York Times didn’t see fit to print:

Ron Paul: U.S. ‘propped up’ Mubarak in Egypt

So how is it that one of the biggest draws at CPAC can address the Egyptian crisis from the main ballroom stage and yet the New York Times insists that “no one took any notice” of the crisis?

We could ponder that puzzle at length, but why bother, when we can just ignore the liberal media and have fun? Speaking of which: What’s crossing the mind of this man in a pirate hat?

That’s DC new media legend Matthew Keller, but things aren’t always what they appear. That’s not actually a pirate hat, but a festive colonial tri-corner, and the woman reclining on the bed behind him? Continue reading CPAC Day 3: Fear and Loathing and
Tri-Corner Hats in the Kruiser Cabana →

CPAC Day 3: ‘Flu-Like Symptoms’

Posted on February 12, 2011February 12, 2011Comments

Skye at Midnight Blue describes herself as experiencing “flu-like symptoms” which can only mean she’s contracted the dreaded CPAC Fever. This disease is caused by a rare virus known as schmooze and is spread through the promiscuous exchange of business cards.

Some have blamed CPAC Fever on Dana Loesch’s leather pants — ?!?! –but we know that a major contributing factor is weakened immune systems, caused by the excitement generated by Herman Cain:

As to the impact of Cain’s speech, I quote Ed Morrissey: “[Cain] stole the show yesterday with his speech in the late afternoon. People left the ballroom saying that he moved them to tears.” Cain drew 10 standing ovations.

Join the online grassroots army at Citizens for Cain.

CPAC Day 3: Winning the Future

Posted on February 12, 2011February 12, 2011Comments

Friday evening, I was a guest at a reception hosted by a group of College Republicans, including Jonathon Snyder of Ohio State University. Jonathon is state chairman of Ohio College Republicans and is now a candidate for the chairmanship of the College Republican National Committee. He was kind enough to consent to an interview:

My apologies that I ran out of memory on my camera and cut off the end of Jonathan’s sentence. His Web site is InnovateCRNC.com and he is also on Twitter. You should keep an eye on this promising young leader.