I’m one of the few Twin Cities conservative bloggers who bothers, occasionally, to try to stomach reading Twin Cities leftyblogs.

The battle of the blogs has been a rollercoaster for the past decade.  From 2002 through 2005, it was no context; conservative blogs owned the field.  After 2004, liberals with deep pockets – most famously but not only George Soros –  began pumping huge money into building an instant alt-media infrastructure (including, locally, the deliciously-ironically-named Minnesota Independent) designed mainly to pass chanting points down a virtual “chain of command” from the Soros-funded “Media Matters For America”, either explicitly or via the monkey-see, monkey-do mob social dynamic of the left.

But as Erik Telford notes, it’s just not working:

I’d told you three years ago that conservatives would be leading the left in the realm of online politics, I would have been laughed out of the room. Now we’re dominating so thoroughly that the left is running scared — literally.

One of the key drivers of the left’s online dominance used to be the Netroots Nation Convention, an annual gathering of several thousand left-wing bloggers. Started in 2006, the convention provides attendees with networking opportunities and trains them to more effectively organize and mobilize “progressives” through the Internet.

Telford is, of course, one of the organizers of “Right Online”, which since 2008 has been accompanying Netroots around the country.  And this year, the contrast couldn’t have been more stark.  More in a bit.

This year, The New York Times declared the conservative side victorious, saying: “judging by the fervor for one’s favorites and animosity toward the opposition, the passion of bloggers seemed to have swung toward conservatives.” The Washington Post noted “the only chants of ‘Yes We Can’ seemed to be at RightOnline.”

Let’s go back to that “animosity” bit for a moment.  Conservatives are used to having to react civilly to dissent; most (by no means all, but a crushing majority) of conservatives are fine with, or at least accept, the fact that we share a society with people with differing opinions.

But here’s your leftymedia in action, at Netroots:

VIDEO

Clearly, the tables have turned in a dramatic way…In fact, the president has found himself embattled in the new media sphere — with attacks from both his left and his right. Call it reverse triangulation.

Just a few weeks ago, the White House acknowledged its shift from an offensive to a defensive posture with the addition of Jesse Lee — who, as the “Director of Progressive Media & Online Response,” is charged with the unenviable task of defending the president from critical bloggers and online activists from both sides of the ideological spectrum.

At the same time, Tea Party groups are using technology to organize and mobilize in unprecedented ways. Republican members of Congress are better than their Democratic counterparts at using Facebook and Twitter to inform and motivate their constituents.

The roller coaster can certainly turn again; Soros has a lot of money.  Perhaps he’ll invent a computer program that can generate content more efficiently than this current army of flacks.

But for now?  All good.