Monday’s NY Times finally breaks the Republican astroturf story that bloggers have been writing about for weeks. (Thanks to Paul Boutin’s blog for the link.) Unfortunately the Times reporter’s big point is that the massively funded, high-tech
Republican effort is exactly the same as what little, underfunded groups (Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is the example given) have previously done–they provided prewritten letters their members could send to local papers.
Atrios, one of the bloggers to break this story, has a link to a
more intelligent newspaper article elsewhere. Stephen Phelps’s editorial (the Google cache) gives an editor’s point of view on the situation.
The Times also fails to mention that people willing to pass the RNC letters off as their own got paid with GOPoints they could swap for merchandise. Paul Boutin’s funny Slate article made that point very clearly.