Is Drudge over?

...It could simply be that with the GOP out of power, Drudge’s star has dimmed as well. But his decline feels more fundamental. Drudge is increasingly out of step with the times and the nation. Brian Williams of NBC once referred to Drudge’s site as “America’s bulletin board,” but these days Drudge seems an unlikely host. An academic study, released in July by Kalev Leetaru of the University of Illinois, found that Drudge’s site was less active than normal during the crucial early months of the Iraq war. That was a different time and different set of issues, but it suggests an interesting parallel to the Drudge Report’s current fecklessness. Drudge’s influence, and his role in the media landscape, seems to shrink when the stakes are high and the stories complex. Drudge has never run a tabloid; his goal isn’t to be an alluring distraction (think Gawker). Rather, he purposely takes an unserious attitude toward politics. But at the moment, politics is very serious and the consequences dire.

It would probably be too much to expect Drudge to grapple seriously with the ways in which George W. Bush’s administration damaged conservatism, but even the civil war that has engulfed the GOP since Bush left office has, for he most part, been ignored by Drudge. Instead, he reheats old conservative arguments, as if the Bush presidency had never happened. Take his undying complaints about “liberal media bias.” This past June, Drudge worked himself into a lather when ABC News nestled inside the Obama White House to shoot an evening special. In Drudge’s world, the special was another example of the too-close-for-comfort relationship between the White House and the press tasked with covering it. While it is an issue worth raising, the ABC special barely registered on the national radar. When it aired, it was the lowest-rated network program of the night. Drudge had directed his ire against a target no one much cared about.

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Thus far, the relationship between this new right and Drudge might best be understood as one of missed opportunity. The “Tea Party” protests that broke out in April took aim at two of Drudge’s favorite targets: the Obama administration and the ballooning federal deficit. Granted, Drudge was the protestors’ loyal cheerleader, turning their every move into a headline on his site. But being a cheerleader means being on the sidelines—precisely where Drudge now finds himself.

“Drudge gets so worked up every day about such petty stuff,” one New York newspaper editor told me. “That’s appropriate for carnival/campaign season, but it doesn’t as effectively fit the mood in a country that is serious about sober governing.” A nation beset by financial crisis at home and besieged around the world, in other words, has more on its mind than the length of a presidential speech or an unwatched ABC special, let alone the threat of Japanese robots. Yet it’s worth noting that this editor declined to put his comments on the record. Mark Halperin and John Harris, once among Drudge’s most prominent validators, also chose not to comment for this piece. The implication is clear: down the road, Matt Drudge could re-emerge. “He’s on a bit of a sabbatical,” explained a friend of Drudge’s. “He doesn’t care” that his influence isn’t what it used to be.

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