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Romney Thinks Some Bloggers Are More Equal Than Others

Mitt Romney held his first conference call with bloggers yesterday, following in the footsteps of rivals John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Romney’s campaign chose to connect the candidate to bloggers — at least a select few — just as the Republican presidential race reaches a critical moment.

The campaign’s director of online communications, Stephen Smith, organized the call for about a dozen mostly pro-Romney bloggers Friday morning. But as soon as it was over, the buzz among bloggers was not what Romney said, but who got left off the invite list.

I was among the unlucky ones who didn’t make the cut. I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge my disappointment. It’s not that I had a craving to talk to Romney; I got to do my own one-on-one interview about a year ago. But I’d never been deliberately excluded from one of these calls.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who was miffed. Matt Lewis of Townhall told me that he wrote to Smith and press secretary Kevin Madden questioning the campaign’s decision. Jon Fleischman of the Flash Report had just interviewed Romney a day earlier and couldn’t believe he was left off the call.

“I think this must be a case of the left foot and the right foot not talking,” Fleischman said. “When running for president, you have to avoid missteps like this, especially this late in the game.”

And Jennifer Rubin of Commentary, who reports daily about the presidential race, thought Romney’s outreach to bloggers stood out in stark contrast to McCain’s operation. McCain holds calls every other week, invites a variety of bloggers (some of whom openly disagree with the candidate) and usually takes every last question.

“It seems apparent that McCain’s team has a far more sophisticated and more inclusive new media operation,” Rubin told me. “The frequency of the McCain calls, the length the calls, the opportunity for substantive follow-up questions and the number of invitees dwarfs anything the other campaigns have done. Perhaps it has something to do with the results McCain is achieving.”

In fairness to the Romney campaign, I asked Smith to explain the campaign’s rationale for limiting the number of participants on the call.

“The selection process was more art than science,” Smith said, “but we considered factors such as the size of the blogger’s readership, the geographic location of that readership, and the amount of influence that each blogger has within new media generally or within more particular audiences (former supporters of Mayor Giuliani or Senator Thompson, for example).”

The result was 14 bloggers who called in to chat with Romney: Reid Wilson of Real Clear Politics, Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters, Patrick Ruffini and Amanda Carpenter of Townhall, Phil Klein and James Antle of the American Spectator, Dean Barnett of the Weekly Standard, Paul Mirengoff of Power Line, Jim Geraghty of The Campaign Spot, Michael Illions of PoliPundit, John Hawkins of Right Wing News, Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, Bryan Preston of Hot Air, and Dan Riehl of Riehl World View.

Smith told me more bloggers were invited, but some couldn’t participate. Of those who did, it should be noted that most have either endorsed Romney or are publicly working against McCain. Romney’s outreach strategy appears to be somewhat similar to the approach of Huckabee’s blogger calls. The last time I attended one, I was the only blogger who wasn’t backing Huckabee.

Here’s how Soren Dayton of eyeon08.com described the Huckabee calls: “Every question, except mine, started with an expression of support or love. This is not how it works for Rudy Giuliani or John McCain. The people on those calls are high-traffic national blogs focused on politics. The people on the Huckabee call were, at least, local blogs, often focused on things other than politics.”

Romney’s campaign was apparently trying to find something in the middle: high-traffic blogs favorable to Romney. Apparently, it worked. Smith told me “the invited bloggers asked meaningful questions and gave fair reports of the call.”

Kudos to Romney for finally doing a call with bloggers. It’s just too bad the campaign limited its impact by selecting such a small group of participants.