Andrew Breitbart has an interesting column in today's Washington Times where he analyzes the internet phenomenon of the Obama trolls who masquerade as conservatives trying to sow dissension in the ranks:

Uninvited Democratic activists are on a mission to demoralize the enemy - us. They want to ensure that President Obama is not subject to the same coordinated, facts-be-damned, multimedia takedown they employed over eight long years to destroy the presidency - and the humanity - of George W. Bush.

Political leftists play for keeps. They are willing to lie, perform deceptive acts in a coordinated fashion and do so in a wicked way - all in the pursuit of victory. Moral relativism is alive and well in the land of Hope and Change and its Web-savvy youth brigade expresses its "idealism" in a most cynical fashion.

The ends justify the means for them - now more than ever.

Much of Mr. Obama's vaunted online strategy involved utilizing "Internet trolls" to invade enemy lines under false names and trying to derail discussion. In the real world, that's called "vandalism." But in a political movement that embraces "graffiti" as avant-garde art , that's business as usual. It relishes the ability to destroy other people's property in pursuit of electoral victory.

Hugh Hewitt's popular site shut off its comments section because of the success of these obnoxious invaders. Breitbart.com polices nonpartisan newswire stories for such obviously coordinated attacks. Other right-leaning sites such as Instapundit and National Review Online refuse to allow comments, knowing better than to flirt with the online activist left.

Limbaugh calls them "seminar callers" because they always have a list of talking points that usually begin with the idea they were "outraged" with something some conservative said or did and were quitting the party because of it.

We get a few of them here at AT but they are usually pretty obvious about their true stands on the issues. But other bloggers have reported being inundated with these trolls and they are a real bother because they try and start flame wars between commenters and even between bloggers.

Breitbart explains why he believes the right won't do anything similar:

The right, for the most part, embraces basic Judeo-Christian ideals and would not promote nor defend the propaganda techniques that were perfected in godless communist and socialist regimes. The current political and media environment crafted by supposedly idealistic Mr. Obama resembles Hugo Chavez's Venezuela more than John F. Kennedy's America.

The Huffington Post, Daily Kos and other left-leaning sites benefit from the right's belief that there are rules and decorum in political debate and civic engagement. Of course, every now and then, a curious right-winger will go in and engage in discussion at a left-wing site, but rarely under purely disingenuous and mass coordinated means.

I believe that an oversimplification. The fact is, righty bloggers don't engage in the same kind of tactics because, 1) liberal sites vet their commenters a lot more thoroughly than conservatives; 2) the righty blogosphere is not as organized as the left; and 3) fewer conservatives even bother to read liberal blogs than liberals who read conservative ones.

Andrew is crediting righty internet users with way too much piety. If we were more organized and the interest was there, I have no doubt we would be engaging in the same kind of disinformation campaign as the left does with us - Judeo-Christian values and aping the communists notwithstanding. The reason is, it works. And in politics, what works matters more than what's right.

Cynical? Politics is a rather cynical enterprise and always has been.

Hat Tip: Ed Lasky