I wrote this as a response in the "BREAKING!!!!! DKOS INFILTRATED BY REPUBLICAN DIRTY TRICKSTERS!!!" diary, and thought it was worth reposting as a separate diary. The entry itself (with some revision) is below the fold. Basically, someone said that it wouldn't be worth Rove's time to bother reading anything on this blog, and I thought, "But of course it would be. If I were Rove, I damn sure would."
Rove is probably the most intelligent of the Bushistas. Rove is about politics 100% of the time, awake or asleep. He's damnably politically savvy: the Savaranola of our time. If I can figure out how potentially powerful the political ferment on the Kos is, then Rove has long since figured it out for himself. He's too smart and too paranoid to let this place go unwatched and unreported on. If I were Rove, I'd have an intern or two keeping tabs on things and writing daily reports on what's being discussed, what topics are being repeatedly addressed, which prominent Dems are posting here, what connections between Kossacks and prominent Dems are being touted, anything and everything that seems important either today or down the road.
Example: if, say, Feingold seems far more popular as a potential presidential candidate among the Kossacks than the common wisdom gives him credit for, then I'd mark that and keep a weather eye on Feingold as having possibly more legs than conventional wisdom gives him credit for. And this is just the first example that pops into my head. You can scour the front page any time you like and find several tidbits for yourself that, if you were a little Rove troll, you'd want to trot over and lay at the master's feet.
There are probably ten thousand or more --way more -- leftist political blogs out there, but you and I can easily name the ten or twenty that are really active and viable (as opposed to virtually private forums between a few friends, or smaller blogs that don't get much attention, or nutjob blogs that work the crazy fringe). If Rove has any sense at all, he's keeping tabs on all of them.
Is he trying to influence these blogs, or direct them towards self-immolation? Actually, though it's probably a tempting idea to think that he's trying to create a stink on these boards, I doubt he is. If I were Rove, I'd let them alone for now and see where they're going and what's brewing. As we all know, the act of observation can change the dynamics of a phenomenon and turn it into something else entirely. While it might be relatively easy for a raft of Rovian plants to turn a blog such as this one into a cannabilizing flame pit, it would ultimately be pointless -- the people he's most interested in would go elsewhere, possibly somewhere he would be less able to keep tabs on, and the ideas and trends he's interested in observing would form elsewhere, possibly under his radar. He wants to know what's going on and what trends are forming, and to that end, "freeping" this blog, or Atrios or TalkLeft or any of the other bigtime lefty blogs, would be counterproductive at this point. My guess is that we've got some lurkers taking notes and never, ever posting. He probably gets a good chuckle out of the internal strife such as the pie fight, but didn't have someone start it. (Let's admit, lefties are just too good at self-immolation to blame Rove or Freepers for starting fights among ourselves. We do that to ourselves quite well.)
So that's my possibly paranoid take on this issue. What does this mean for us? Perhaps nothing in particular, except that we have to understand that anything we manage to create, any possibly transforming ideas or procedures that we come up with, are being watched and noted. I'm not suggesting that we go underground, just making an observation that, to my mind, is worth making.
We are not operating in a vacuum, and we are not alone. And what happens as the 2006 and 2008 races approach is anyone's guess.
As they like to say in those Cold War sci-fi flicks, watch the skies....