New Chapter in Daschle's Permanent Campaign

While it is a little hard to keep track of all the words flying around this weekend, here's a summary of what happened. On Friday or so, Erin started hammering on the "Hildebrand Boys" (the former/current Daschle bloggers who are aided by Daschle's campaign manager Steve Hildebrand) for how much they work together and for using her in the Nelson/MetaBank deal. Erin explained in detail how each of the anti-Thune former/current Daschle staffer bloggers kept calling her, emailing her, and trying to meet with her to gather anti-Thune information and how Hildebrand coordinated the effort. Remember that Hildebrand is being paid directly from Senator Daschle's campaign account and his political action committee. Also, Democratic blogger Todd Epp also said that Hildebrand was behind the anti-Thune blogs. After Robert Novak started looking into all this, two of the former Daschle staffers who are writing anti-Thune blogs outed themselves, ending their anonymous stage. One of the recently outed bloggers who is attacking Thune using his blog was just found to be on the Daschle campaign payroll, making another direct link between Daschle and the anti-Thune blogs. Two of the four former/current Daschle staffer anti-Thune bloggers work for Hildebrand or the Daschle campaign committee (which pays Hildebrand) and the other two won't say where their money is coming from.