OBAMA STAFFER, ROMNEY OPERATIVES GO TO WAR OVER NEW MEDIA

Sic Willie over at FITSNews broke the story yesterday that Laurin Manning, a staffer for presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and one of the premier bloggers in South Carolina, “helped create the Palmetto State’s most aggressive pro-Mitt Romney website.”Romney – Obama The site, called “A Daily Shot,” is currently managed by a pair of Romney operatives. The duo also runs “Under the Power Lines” – a site used to operate much of Romney’s “new media” campaign within the state.

The FITSNews post noted that, “it was the Romney campaign’s affiliation with this company which caused the National Hotline to sever its relationship with the pro-Romney bloggers back in February of this year.”

Since that post, The Palmetto Scoop has obtained an e-mail addressed to Wesley Donehue and Michael Rentiers in which Manning says she’s “highly disappointed” in how the website has devolved into “immaturity” and that she not only taught Donehue and Rentiers how to operate new media, but that they have taken credit for some of her ideas. Further, she says, she still owns the rights to “Under the Power Lines” and much of its design aspects on both websites.

Manning also references The Shot’s coverage of Rep. Thad Viers’ recent legal troubles and her attempts to refute certain statements made on the site.

Read the e-mail in its entirety:

http://www.palmettoscoop.com/2007/06/21/one-two-three-four-here-comes-a-blog-war/