Back when Kos was just a "kos," he used to throw conservatives and moderates off his site. He made is very clear that he was building a "progressive website," and those who didn't toe the line weren't welcome. It made a mockery of so-called tolerance, but self-styled progressives aren't interested in debate, they're interested in power.
As the blogosphere has matured, certain types of ill-mannered commenters have used the kindness of their hosts to ruin commenting sections in the hopes of discrediting their ideological foes. We saw this with fake conservatives posting hateful speech on pro-Palin sites, and anyone who has run a site can attest to strange comments that when you track the IP, lead to sock puppets, trolls, and occasionally, astoturfing political operations.
Sometimes you have legitimate arguments, and sometimes you run into bad actors - commenters who are attempting to hijack a thread or leave comments that will discredit the author of the blogpost. If the Right is behind on one major initiative, it's recognition that all commenters are not honest. Short of starting your own "online dirty tricks" section, the only strategy is to collaborate and learn to block commenters that seek to use your blog for partisan political advantage.
This is the job of a community manager. It's difficult, but you should be able to manage a comment section to yield lively debate without squashing dissent and turning your blog into an echo chamber. Why do I bring this up? It's happening over at The New Republicans weblog. A comment thread on Michael Steele has been infested by someone with a lot of troll-like properties. Timetheos is the name, and a quick google search brings up only one Timetheos, a liberal who spends times at sites like MyDD, Firedog Lake, and thinks Rachel Maddow is just peachy. And he who just can't bring himself to stop posting negative information about Steele, all while urging Republicans to take a moderate path. When you do a search through the site, you see that Timetheos is everywhere. One of the reasons for suspicion is the way that the username Timetheos drops off blogposting in early 2008, and then reappears as a scold on conservatives sites. I've use my magic internet tools to look through his accounts, and even his Digg Profile is suspicious.
I don't know for a fact that Timetheos is anything other than a bored Seattle lefty with too much time on his hands. It's clear to anyone that's been around that he is seeking to poison the well over at The New Republicans. It's a classic example of troll-like behavior. What we don't know is if he is another example of someone paid to sow confusion on conservative blogs. There are ways of finding out, but we won't get to them until blog authors like Steven wake up to the fact that the Obama Administration considers social media to be very important, and the battlespace that is blogs, newspaper comment sections, and online forums can be used to push a message.
I pointed this out to Steven, and his response was to ban a few comments on the thread as Timetheos and I went back and forth, warning me that calling someone a troll is name-calling. I've been deluged with comment emails from Timetheos since, which has led me to disable the comment notification feature of the site. That guy isn't stopping anytime soon.
The New Republicans got a big splash when they started up, showing up on Politico, ABC, and supposedly being a newplatform to engage young Republicans. That's a tempting target for political astroturfers. I don't know what Timetheos has going on - but I do know that Steven should think long and hard about what he wants to accomplish with that site. And the rest of you ought to brush up on your troll-catching skills.
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