Oh Please Stay by Me, Diana

Golly—for a blogger who's "pretty disappointed in the Republicans now," Glenn Reynolds makes an effective promoter for Republican candidates. In less than 24 hours he's had three posts about Diana Irey, a Republican challenging Rep. John Murtha in Pennsylvania's 12th district. First he noted a "sudden surge of enthusiasm" about the long-shot candidate (she's raised less than $30,000 to Murtha's $1.5 million). Then he announced Irey's appearance on Fox News this afternoon. After the appearence, he helpfully linked to a video for readers who missed it.

There's nothing terribly interesting about Irey, outside of the support she's getting on the blogs. She's a sacrificial lamb in a seat that Murtha has never won with less than 58% of the vote. Her Fox appearance followed in the form of an angry press conference she gave after Murtha took the lead pushing the Haditha story—pro-war boilerplate about "defending the troops" and how America will win in Iraq as long as our army stays there forever.

But then there's that blog support. What makes Instapundit, among many other pro-war (or at least pro-GOP) blogs, so obsessed with defeating Murtha? Conservative pundits like (former Reason intern!) James Taranto often complain that Democrats work especially hard to defeat black Republican candidates, because the party's afraid of a dependable voter base seriously evaluating the party and finding it less appealing than the opposition. I wonder if there's a similar factor in play that makes Republicans apoplectic upon spotting Democratic veterans who oppose the Iraq War.