At the Republican National Committee yesterday, conservative online writers and bloggers who arrived to meet with Romney were also shown a chart that seemed to explain the Romney campaign's new warmth toward them. The chart (resembling, a source said, the one produced by Twitter above) illustrated the role a hyperactive conservative Twitterverse played in turning Hilary Rosen's jab at Ann Romney into a great campaign moment for the Republican.
The event, two bloggers told BuzzFeed, was organized by Patrick Hynes, a veteran online GOP consultant. It featured some friction on issues like health care, but a broader sense that ranks are closing against the common enemies of Obama and the liberal media.
"It was facing reality -- what are we going to do?" asked one attendee. "Everybody agrees with Romney that, policy-wise, Obama is a disaster and a threat."
The meeting, which included writers from RedState and Breitbart.com as well as a list of conservative publications reported by Huffington Post — National Review, Daily Caller, American Spectator, Washington Examiner, Powerline, Townhall,, RiehlWorldView, White House Dossier, and PJ Media (though not, as an early report had suggested, the conspiracist site WorldNetDaily). RNC chairman Reince Preibus also attended.
Notably, the meeting also included some grassroots bloggers with no real institutional ties to the Washington Republican Establishment, including the Twitter virtuoso Ace of Spades and John Hawkins of Right Wing News.
"It was mostly enemy territory for [Romney], until recently," a participant said. "He may not win us over, we may even fight some things if he's elected. But reaching out is the best thing he could have done under the circumstances."
The conservative new media writers reacted with some amusement last night, one said, when Huffington Post last night broke the news that some 60 of them had held a long, private meeting with Mitt and Ann Romney.
That's because the discussion preceding the meeting with Romney included warnings about the hostile liberal media — a category in which Huffington Post was mentioned.