Working for the Man

It seems pretty obvious from the content of their posts but Tom Flanagan confirms that Stephen Taylor and perhaps Steve Janke are the handmaidens of the PMO in the blogosphere. Flanagan, one of the key leaders on three of the four campaigns Stephen Harper has been engaged in over the last five years, writes (I have added the hyperlinks):

A final innovation [in Election 2006] was something we had not even considered in 2004 — links with the blogosphere…there was now a group who called themselves the “Blogging Tories”. Not being a blogger myself, I wasn't even aware of them until Adam Daifallah gave me the news at the May 2005 meeting of Civitas. I called Stephen Taylor, whose “Conservative Party of Canada Pundit” vies for prominence with Steve Janke's “Angry in the Great White North,” to get things started. Doug Finley subsequently appointed people to monitor the blogosphere and to get out stories that were not quite ready for the mainstream media… (p 232)
…In [the] most recent election, we also made a start on working with bloggers to amplify and diversify our message. (p. 288)

From: Tom Flanagan, Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007 (p. 274-289)

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