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The Overnights: The Week in the Blogosphere in Review
By Adam Bitely
Health Care has dominated the blogosphere for much of the week. And it was a roller coaster of coverage.
As the week began, the top stories that were covered ranged from Sonia Sotomayor’s hearings to Medicare and Manuel Zelaya’s attempts to return to power in Honduras. But as the week progressed, Health Care became the dominant issue. Now that we are at the end of the week, it appears that the Obama Socialized Medicine plan has been stalled until September at the earliest. And if bloggers can keep the pressure high, they can stall the vote indefinitely.
On Monday, bloggers focused coverage on the flaws of the proposed plan in the House. With projections coming from the Congressional Budget Office that showed that the proposal was more expensive than Obama was admitting, the blogosphere was buzzing with coverage urging readers to call their representatives. As you can see by the chart above, coverage was building steadily over last week and by Monday, was becoming the top issue. By Wednesday night when Obama was holding his press conference, blog coverage was peaking and it looked dim for his bill to pass before the August recess.
Yesterday, Harry Reid caved under pressure and announced that he would not consider the legislation until after the recess. The center-right blogosphere has had a victory in round one!
After months of build up and coverage on the blogosphere, center-right bloggers seemed to have penetrated through the walls of the Main Stream Media and got the message out to average Americans. Through urging their readers and other activists to call, write, or fax their representatives, leadership in Congress seems to have received the message and has caved in to the demands of the public.
The center-right blogosphere still has its biggest job in front of them if they want to truly win on Health Care. When congress goes home for the August recess, they must put pressure on representatives just as they did last summer in regards to energy legislation. They were successful last year when they put on their full court press, and they must be successful this year. If they are, when Congress reconvenes in September, we will not hear a thing about Socialized Medicine.
Adam Bitely is Executive Director of NetRightNation.
