FreedomTalks

In Washington, one of the greatest divides amongst the young and old is whether or not new technologies are viewed as positive or negative additions to the political arena.

Naturally, an overwhelming majority of young people see the potential in online social networks and bookmarking sites like Digg, Facebook, Reddit, Propeller, etc, but when it comes to many who belong to the “old guard,” there seems to be great fear and resentment, most likely because they don’t know how it can be used against them.

Based on what has happened over the last four weeks with just a modest online push, I wouldn’t be surprised if even more members of the “old guard” developed a genuine fear over the power of the internet and those who know how to use it to seek change in Washington.

On June 19^th, a provision was discovered buried deep inside a 613 page piece of housing legislation that had absolutely no relevance to the nature main bill. However, since the bill was one that was “high profile,” there seemed to be an assumption by many Washington insiders that it would get pushed through quickly, so why not kill a few birds with one stone.

This provision, submitted by Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), essentially would have required that various bits of credit card information and transaction activity be reported to the government so that they could use it to generate information that in the end will help them raise $9,802,000,000 over the course of ten years.

For just under $10 billion, this Senator from Iowa was willing to put the security and privacy of America’s small businesses in jeopardy simply to raise what is by government standards, a miniscule amount of money.

As soon as a press release with the details of this hidden legislation was released, it quickly appeared on sites like Digg, Reddit and Slashdot. Within hours, members of these communities saw exactly what Senator Grassley was trying to do and used those networks to bring more awareness and perspective to the issue and take action.

Within 5 hours of submitting the press release to Digg, Senator Grassley’s attempts at playing big brother made the front page. In less than 24 hours, this story received over 1,000 diggs and was quickly making the rounds to various blogs.

Over the next two weeks, various other articles and images depicting the heinous actions of Senator Grassley were also submitted and made popular by other users who saw what was at stake.

What’s even more unique about this story is what is happening now, just over 3 weeks later. Because of the outrage generated by his actions, as well as a variety of other positions that are unpopular with most Americans, Senator Grassley has been feeling the wrath of these actions back home in Iowa.

In a post by Townhall.com blogger Matt Lewis, the following was reported from a source in Iowa this past weekend:

“According to a reliable source, some conservatives (believing Sen. Grassley has lately been drinking too much water from the Potomac), decided to punish the sitting senior senator by not including him as a national delegate for the Republican National Convention.”

Keep in mind, as recently as December, Senator Grassley’s approval ratings were well over 60%, ranking him as one of the more popular members of the United States Senate.

While high marks might have been the case in December, it’s quite conceivable that in the last six months, Senator Grassley has alienated such a large portion of his base, that the people of Iowa simply don’t want him representing them anymore.

Even though there is no updated polling data available at this time, I have no doubt whatsoever that a huge factor in his inevitable decline is the power of the internet and the dedication of those who are using it to seek change.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 9:49 am and is filed under Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.