Dispatches From The Wilderness

I've referenced Dave Weigel's articles over at the Washington Independent for some time now.  This morning, Dave starts his new gig over at the WaPo's blog section chronicling the conservative movement.

But what do you want to know about the movement? There's more coverage of the right -- by activists, by journalists, by seething critics who can't believe that the party that lost Indiana to Barack Obama is on the verge of a comeback -- than there ever has been. Democrats, who've won their largest and most liberal congressional majorities since the 1960s, cede news cycle after news cycle to second-term members of Congress and half-term former governors. Tea Party activists, who used to mock the media for ignoring their rallies, have become sought-after, endlessly quoted political players. (At the National Tea Party Convention in February, the ratio of Tea Partiers to reporters reached three to one.) The liberal institutions that were built to entrench a permanent Democratic majority -- Media Matters, the Center for American Progress, the netroots -- spend as much time on shocked and shocking reports about conservatives as they spend promoting their agenda.

So there's no shortage of news about the right. There is, I think, a shortage of coverage that puts the movement in context. This is where "Right Now" comes in. I've spent most of my reporting career covering the conservative movement, from the we-had-it-coming midterms of 2006 through the "Ron Paul Revolution" of 2008 through Sen. Scott Brown's (R-Mass.) upset victory this year. If you stayed close to conservative activists and strategists throughout that period, you knew that something like the Tea Party movement -- some massive rejection of George W. Bush's legacy, some force that drove the GOP further to the right -- was inevitable. You weren't surprised to hear people once again bashing the Federal Reserve rhetoric or talking about how the 10th Amendment could give states some defense against liberal policies.

The goal of this blog will be to explain what the right is doing, thinking, and planning as it hurtles toward the possible salvation of the 2010 midterm elections. That's going to mean a lot of on-the-scene reporting, interviews with the people driving this movement, and close reading of the arguments making headway among the people trying to bring the Obama era to the quickest possible end. 

In other words...actual journalism.  Good to see Dave moving up in the world:  his take on the right is a voice that badly needs to be heard.   Needless to say, adding Dave Weigel's Right Now blog to the roll.  Knowledge is power, and it's good to know what these guys are up to.