Her First Post Was a Humdinger

Mr Bob Comments today on our list of Republican Blogs:

Here is a new one - http://coloradocharters.blogspot.com, but judging from your comments, I am guessing if she doesn't post at least 6 days a week you won't cover her.

I've been posting about 5 days a week for 4 years, last couple weeks have been slim though so I don't rate. However, I don't cover Colorado very often anyway, I am a national Miliblog.

Your posts are great, glad you have a lifestyle that allows you to blog everyday significantly, some of us get to it when we can.  Mr. Bob

We are trying to do several things, and we are learning as we go.  We would like bloggers to post daily because they lose their audience if they don't.  We had a wedding in February and stayed in a place where there was no internet of any kind.  Our blog lost one-half of its audience in those four days and it took almost two weeks to get our numbers up to close to where they had been.

We can't force bloggers to post, and most do not post daily, which is one of several reasons Republicans are so far behind the Democrats.  Because they don't post daily, their readers check them only intermittently, and it becomes one big destructive cycle.  We thus take posts where we can find them.

Some of our bloggers have been destructive of Republican blogging.  People don't want to see negativity about Republicans all of the time.  We were recently told by the wife of a politician who holds a major office that she refuses to look at blogs because of the negativity toward her husband. 

Think about that for a moment.  What could be a great organizing tool at the county and state level is valueless because our own people refuse to look at our blogs.  It is also valueless because some blogs spend all of their energy attacking Republicans and none attacking Democrats, and those few times when they attack Democrats, they do it so generically that it does them no harm.

Any blog that will spend its energy on effectively attacking Colorado Democrats or their media will get encouragement here, even if they post once a week.  Blogs that mindlessly attack Republicans and have a Republican hate list will be criticized. 

There will eventually be a primary and blogs will choose sides.  That's fine as long as when the primary is over, they put away their knives and figure out how beat the Democrats.  That didn't happen in the last election which is why the Republican blogging effort is so fouled up. 

As to your milblog, yes we want to learn about it and post its name.  We are trying to do a census and eventually network them.  The Democrats in the legislature are about to shoot themselves in the foot by calling on Congress to bring the troops home.  You could, if you wish, follow that story and criticize the Colorado Democrats involved.  It would be helpful and it would be followed here.

Your complements are welcome.  The posts being written right now are being carefully wordsmithed.  We want them to be examples of how to attack Democrats and their allies and plant the attacks where they will be seen. 

As for our lifestyle, we didn't come to blogging out of choice.  We are mission driven and became mission driven when we discovered that both the media and the politicians were unwilling to acknowledge a severe problem with the legal ethics system.  It is designed to protect unethical lawyers and judges from the public, not the other way around.  The Democrats are too beholden to the lawyers to fix it and the Republicans can't fix it until they take back the legislature and the governorship.

Time will tell if we can encourage enough party unity to impact future elections, but we're going to try.

We are switching subjects to an amazing first post on the Colorado Charter Schools site.  Those bloggers who have been blogging for months or years would do well to to look at the internet hooks in the post.  This post will do the Republicans mentioned some real good, and the Democrats some real harm.  Most importantly, this is a post that will be SEEN.  We are not confident that many posts of our other ernest bloggers will be seen because they are not putting hooks in their text.

If we really were running a school, this post would get an A +, and nothing else we have seen this week would do better than a C in terms of internet hooks.  This post is that good.

At the risk of making the best the enemy of the good enough, the author might ask the following questions as she looked through the essay before posting it.  1)  Is the title as hard hitting as I can make it?  2) If someone searches on the major player's full names only (most common search), would this article meet the search criteria?  3) Is there a tag line associated with the first use of the names of the major players that will DEMAND that a search result on their names be opened up?  The Representatives are the major players here.

As a suggestion, next time consider inserting a second paragraph that goes like this:  At a recent hearing, Representative FN LN gave his word to a witness and at the unethical request of Representative FN LN broke it.  The incident so angered Republican Representative FN LN that he lead a walkout that included Representative FN LN and Representative FN LN.

As long as this is the first time their names and titles are used, that structure should ensure that the strongest negative language possible comes up against the Democrats.  Searches on the Republicans will make folks curious as to why they walked out.  Use singular titles if possible.  This may sound like nitpicking, but it isn't.  The goal is to entice as many people as possible to read what you have written, and they only have a few words to go on.  Good search engine hook writing isn't necessarily good writing unless you think it through.

This is a great first post, but the job is not done (unless you want it to be).  You can have fun with this all summer.  Think up a set of questions about the incident that are impossible to answer without embarrassment and send them to each Democrat, one at a time, about two weeks apart.  Tell him you have a blog and want to write a story.  If you construct the questions correctly, you will never hear from them, and you can innocently say in your individual blog entry "I sent him the following questions and he did not reply." 

LLP found a damaging quote by a Democratic legislator.  Even though it isn't by any of the folks involved, it can make for some interesting unanswerable questions.

These Democrats are so full of themselves that they allow really dumb comments to appear on the internet.  You need to spend an hour doing multiple searches on the target legislator before you compose your questions.

We have a similar project going with the Democrats on Judiciary, and this essay is a part of it.  There will be another installment this Sunday.  Lawyers don't realize it yet, but they are really fat targets because they expect jurors to treat their clients fairly but don't want to treat you fairly.  It's not unfair to make that comment.  It's not unfair to mention their law firm (but not their partners) when you make that comment.   If you can make them a little paranoid, they will be much more reluctant to act against the public interest next time.  Just take care about how you do it.

Edited to add.  If you proceed down this path, don't fall to the temptation to make threats, or to negotiate, or even talk to the folks involved.  You might slip up in what you say and it be construed as breaking the law.  Remember that the Democratic party has a history of criminalizing politics.  Just a polite, carefully crafted letter will do.

Note that we went out of our way not to put search engine hooks in this essay.