Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

Political campaigns are known for mudslinging, and now, thanks to cheap digital video technologies and video-sharing sites like YouTube, voters can join the fun. In fact, they already have, as seen most vividly in a remake of Apple's famed 1984 Super Bowl advertisement that now features presidential wannabe Hillary Clinton as the tyrannical Orwellian figure on the big TV screen.

The video, which has already been viewed more than 1.3 million times, promotes Clinton's top rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, whose campaign says it had no involvement with the video.

Tobe Berkovitz, associate dean at Boston University's college of communication commented to the Boston Herald, "It's a free-for-all. There's going to be campaigning going on that almost no one has any control over."

But as such independent efforts catch fire with the public - 1.3 million views is nothing sneeze at, and the aforementioned pro-Obama video went from YouTube to the mass media as a news story - I have no doubt some candidates, campaign staffs and consultants will be tempted to secretly orchestrate similar "independent" attacks.

They should think twice. The potential is for severe blowback if the cover is blown.

However, campaigns can harness some of the potential of the world of blogs, YouTube, Flickr and MySpace to benefit their own campaign - and to undermine their rivals...

(And MySpace is a biggie: the social networking site on Monday launched a new political section, MySpace Impact, featuring MySpace pages for 2008 presidential candidates. Analysts said the site has the potential of reaching millions of people in the 18-24 age group, a group that doesn't vote in large numbers and who don't otherwise go to political web sites.)

Campaigns ought to make tools and resources available to supporters who want to create their own media in support of their favorite candidate. That includes putting raw video - downloadable and editable - of speeches and campaign appearances online on both the campaign website and on YouTube and other video-sharing sites. It also means making campaign graphics, speech transcripts, audio files and other raw materials easily available via the campaign website.

Also, campaigns with sufficient resources should also emulate Jim Webb's successful Senate campaign in Virginia as far as its use of video to monitor Sen. George Allen's campaign, resulting in the "macacca" moment caught on tape that lead to Allen's defeat.

And, finally, presidential and possibly U.S. Senate campaigns with sufficient re$ources also should consider live-streaming all of the candidates' campaign appearances over the Internet. There's no news-cycle anymore, there's just a 24/7 information flow, and the more materials a campaign makes available, the more of it can make it into the vast digital river.