The Half-Vast Left Wing Conspiracy

Is one of the blathering blowhards of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy about to suffer fallout from his election year antics?

This Washington Whispers column from the current online edition of U. S. News & World Report describes the political cost of playing a one-sided game of hardball:

You might notice something missing from Hardball With Chris Matthews soon: Republicans. "Hardball may seem more like badminton during the Republican National Convention," threatens a GOP insider. What's up? The GOP thinks Matthews has gone over to Sen. John Kerry 's side and is too critical of the Bush campaign's editing of a Hardball interview with Kerry posted on the party's negative site, www.kerryoniraq.com. As payback, they've stopped urging Republicans to appear on the show. Hardball executive producer Tammy Haddad dismisses charges Matthews is biased: "We beat everybody up." So far, nobody from the White House has told her of the show's being blackballed.

Let's urge the GOP to make good on this threat. If you agree, please write to the office of RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie at Chairman@gop.com and ask him to discourage Republicans from guesting on Hardball and Crossfire during the convention.

Chris Matthews is shamelessly disrespectful to guests with whom he disagrees and even, according to the experience recounted by Michelle Malkin, manipulative, arrogant, and bullying. I could add more adjectives, but then there wouldn't be room for the following list of potential pundits and their e-mail addresses:

Jed Babbin jednro@aol.com
Michael Barone MichaelBarone@MichaelBarone.com
Tony Blankley tblankley@washingtontimes.com
David Brooks dabrooks@nytimes.com
Tammy Bruce heytammybruce@yahoo.com
Mona Charen mcharen@compuserve.com
Linda Chavez comment@ceousa.org
Rod Dreher rdreher@dallasnews.com
Larry Elder sage@larryelder.com
David Frum dfrum@aei.org
Frank Gaffney info@centerforsecuritypolicy.org
Jim Geraghty j.geraghty@starpower.net
Paul Gigot wsj.ltrs@wsj.com
Jim Glassman jglassman@techcentralstation.com
Jonah Goldberg JonahNRO@aol.com
Victor Davis Hanson author@victorhanson.com
Hugh Hewitt hugh@hughhewitt.com
Laura Ingraham suggestions@lauraingraham.com
Jeff Jacoby jacoby@globe.com
Michael Ledeen mledeen@aei.org
David Limbaugh david@davidlimbaugh.com
Kathryn Jean Lopez klopez@nationalreview.com
Rich Lowry comments.lowry@nationalreview.com
Cliff May info@defenddemocracy.org
Deroy Murdock murdock2000@ibm.net
Kate O'Beirne comments.obeirne@nationalreview.com
Jim Pinkerton pinkerto@ix.netcom.com
John Podhoretz Podhoretz@nypost.com
Dennis Prager tpp@dennisprager.com
Glenn Reynolds pundit@instapundit.com
Peter Robinson RbnsEggBlu@aol.com
William Safire safire@nytimes.com
Mark Steyn mark@steynonline.com
Emmett Tyrrell editor@spectator.org
Armstrong Williams arightside@aol.com
Walter Williams wwilliam@gmu.edu
Byron York byork@nationalreview.com

I will be e-mailing each of these commentators to thank them for their constructive contributions to political discourse and encourage them to avoid Spitball, a.k.a. Hardball, and Crossfire during the Republican National Convention and until November 2, 2004.