Washington Post plugs State-level blogs

Washington Post plugs State-level blogs

A few weeks back the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza polled readers on their favorite state-level political blogs. Cillizza mentioned that the early primary states didn't have as many state blogs, and Iowans responded with the names we all know.

Cillizza followed up today with a 50-state blogroll. The four Iowa sites (about average for a state our size) he lists?

The new Republican one-stop big box blog, The Iowa Republican, where Krusty and others have now aggregated. In a similar vein we have The Bean Walker, which Cilizza doubly notes as one of a group of Drudge-themed sites. There's also my former professional home, Iowa Independent...

And freakin' me?!? (For those of you getting here from The Fix, I'm a one-man amateur show working around a day job and a family.)

All I can figure is this thing must have been spammed Ron Paul style by Linux geeks and Packer fans. Or perhaps it's the beret. Could just be my sheer longevity; I think Poor Richard's Almanack was still publishing when I started this thing (December `02).

A lot of good sites were left off, including some of the very people who dropped my name. To make amends--or, more likely, alienate anyone I leave out--here's the places I most often click through to:

On the right, more or less, a lot has changed since the near-simultaneous launches of Iowa Republican and Bean Walker. But Grant Young at Questions Comments Insults and Iowas Newz Liter are sort of like Pat Buchanan: always interesting perspectives, not always party line, and able to laugh at themselves. And Coralville Courier (taking its name from a long-ago print paper) is worth monitoring, the same way one monitors broadcasts from behind enemy lines.

On the left, Bleeding Heartland and Century of the Common Iowan have solid analysis, while Blog for Iowa is good on the policy and action steps. And Douglas Burns' Iowa Political Alert doesn't get the attention it deserves, maybe because Doug is western Iowa based. And while Essential Estrogen's Lynda Waddington has Iowa Independent ties (like I used to), she also has interesting stuff she doesn't cross-post, along with a Republican partner in crime.

Speaking of bipartisanship, God, Politics and Rock 'n' Roll is the beeeeest of both worlds (and yes, they'll keep you up to date on Hannah Montana). And Tara and Jeff don't define "bipartisanship" as "doing whatever the Republicans want" the way Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor do.

And shed a tear for two defunct blogs, State 29 and the short-lived Patriot Skullface. They were big players back when the Iowa political blogosphere attained critical mass. I can place the exact moment: March 2006, when we were frantically posting county convention updates on the Blouin-Culver-Fallon delegate counts. (I don't think Sal Mohamed got any delegates, though I hear he's looking at the US Senate now, hot off that presidential race.)

If I left you off, slap my face in the comments and give yourself a plug.