Score one for the blogs

The Left Coaster: Top Republican Tells Post: Laura Has Taken Away Bush's Swagger

The Left Coaster quotes herd animal WaPo, which, mirabile dictu, is following the herd now tugging at Bush's entrails:

(A) growing number of Republicans inside and out of the White House have noticed an administration less sure-footed and slower to react to the political environment surrounding them.
A top Republican close to the White House since the earliest days said the absence of a "reelection target" and pressure from first lady Laura Bush and others to soften his second-term tone conspired to temper Bush's swagger well before Katrina hit. "A reelection campaign was always the driving principle to force them to get things together," said the GOP operative, who would speak candidly about Bush only if his name was not used. He said the "brilliance of this team" was always overstated. "Part of the reason they looked so good is Democrats were so discombobulated." Since the election, this official said, White House aides reported that Laura Bush was among those counseling Bush to change his cowboy image during the final four years.
William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, said the psychological turnabout started with the failed Social Security campaign, billed as the number one domestic priority six months ago. "The negative effect of the Social Security [campaign] is underestimated," Kristol said. "Once you make that kind of mistake, people tend to be less deferential to your decisions." This coincided with a growing number of Republicans losing faith in Bush's war plan, as Republicans such as Sens. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) openly questioned the president's strategy.

When I talk with friends who do not spend large slugs of time in our corner of the blogosphere, I find myself having to explain and justify what we do. Beyond talking to ourselves, it is not always obvious what we accomplish. The WaPo won't come right out and say it, natch, but to me, this is pretty dramatic evidence that what we did made a difference.

The Bush plan to destroy Social Security required that they be given free reign to once again define black as white and have carte blanche to control the terminology and tenor of the debate. As with the invasion if Iraq, these criminals can get what they want only by using language and visuals in a giant game of 3-card monte. But this time they failed. The left hemiblogosphere was relentless in hammering the MSM every time they parroted White House talking points and used misleading or false statistics. Stars like Josh Marshall did important work in holding the feet of every individual Senator and Congressperson to the fire -- if they so much as waffled, we all knew about it, and the feedback loop was very effective in helping Harry Reid keep the Dems in Congress in line. And as the Rovians are now admitting, those small deflections started an unraveling that is spreading to everything else this cancerous cabal touches.

Individually, I am a gnat on the ass of an elephant. Together with a multitude of other pests, we are dragging down their malignant dreams of empire.