Matt Bai writes:
MoveOn’s management team – led by Eli Pariser, a 25-year-old Internet whiz – runs a sophisticated political operation, and its main preoccupation, beyond ending the Iraq war, is to keep growing. To do that, MoveOn is always looking for what Mr. Pariser and his team call “the message object” – the controversy of the month that will viscerally attract more liberals to sign up and write checks.
An attack on MoveOn from the Bush White House is, of course, the mother of all message objects. Six months after Mr. Bush’s re-election, when opposition to the Iraq war suddenly seemed to be breaking out like a rash around the country, Karl Rove publicly accused MoveOn and its liberal sympathizers of offering “therapy and understanding for our attackers,” and membership soared. That probably explains why MoveOn was eager to run the provocative Petraeus ad in the first place.
In a sense, MoveOn is shrewdly gaming liberal politics in the way the National Rifle Association has long gamed conservative politics; the more controversy, the more members it attracts, and the more power it has to leverage on their behalf.
Seeing how Move On leverages its power, by selling out on Iraq this year, I truly oppose the effect of this controversy. Move On has used the Netroots and the anti-war movement for its own greater glory, to the detriment of the chances of ending the Iraq Debacle. Their conduct has been deplorable.
