The Politico’s Michael Calderone (h/t KingOneEye) reports:
Huffington Post reporter Ryan Grim, a former POLITICO staffer, said that after the House leadership released a video earlier this month questioning the White House on national security, a senior House Republican aide reached out to make sure he’d received it — that’s despite knowing how the site would probably play the story (and how commenters would react).
The piece that resulted — “House GOP Obama Ad Aims to Terrify” — likely appealed to liberal Huffington Post readers, while also drawing attention to the Republican clip, which is what the party wanted all along.
Such a relationship can be beneficial to both parties — while the GOP message usually won’t get a friendly reception among Huffington Post readers, there are times when it can drive wedge between the moderate Democrats in Washington and party’s activist base.
“In some cases — like oversight of TARP and transparency in Obama’s White House — their agenda is not inconsistent with Republicans,” said Alex Conant, the RNC’s national press secretary in 2008.
Conant wrote his first Huffington Post commentary last month, touching upon an area where the anti-war left and the Obama administration might differ: Afghanistan. There, Conant wrote that in some aspects, Obama is following the path laid by liberal bogeymen like George W. Bush and Donald Rumseld.
“The piece I wrote for them, I thought, was something that was appropriate for their audience,” said Conant. “It was about how Obama’s going to have problems with his base — which is Huffington Post readers — because of his Afghanistan policies.”
“To the extent that Republicans have an interest in communicating with Obama’s base,” Conant continued, “that’s going to be a good medium.”
In other words, this is concern trolling raised to a high art. Or blogger jujitsu.