Asymmetric Warfare?

As a fan of National Journal's "The Hotline," AMERICAblog is loath to compare Hotline employees Conn Carroll, John Mercurio and Chuck Todd to terrorists. But all seem to share at least one strategic similarity: asymmetric attacks.

Hotline can strike campaigns and candidates with bitter and churlish attacks that the candidates it supports could never dream of getting away with. When the attacked candidates strike back at Hotline, Hotline's favored candidates can then feign ignorance or claim no control over what its Hotline supporters do.

The best example of this is Hotline's recent involvement in the Virginia Senate race on behalf of Republican Senator George Allen. According to Hotline writer Conn Carroll, anti-Allen bloggers act like "terrorists." Those bloggers are doing the bidding of the Webb campaign, Hotline says. And Hotline claims, while offering no proof, that Webb's denial of having orchestrated the blog attacks is "feigned."

As VA SEN sinks further and further down into the gutter, will either candidate call on the National Journal and Hotline to clean up its act, or will they take the "Hotline who?" route?