Background: Matt Lewis noted with no little bemusement that some folks working for Team Romney had a conference call where folks from organizations from the table below were invited and were given the opportunity to ask questions, while “Townhall.com, HotAir, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, National Review, Weekly Standard, American Spectator, or Washington Times” got left out in the cold. Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air was willing enough to note that they didn’t give an invite… and I’ll chime in that – as far as I know – neither did RedState. Which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, given that Team Romney apparently… well. I will be nice.

But never mind that. Conference calls are often themselves tools of a Lower power, anyway. Instead, let’s look again at who got invited, and who got to ask Team Romney questions:

I hope that my next statement is not precisely a surprise: these people are not Mitt Romney’s friends. They’re not friends of the GOP, either – the closest one to that would be Mark Halperin, and he’s neutral at best. Half of the media institutions that they work for would respond to a Republican on fire by throwing sodium at him (or, preferably, her). Which means, among other things, that these people will not help Mitt Romney acquire more primary votes from Republicans and conservatives. It’s foolish to think that any one of the media institutions listed above will break for the Republican in the general election, of course; but it’s downright insane to think that the average GOP primary voter will give a tinker’s dam one way or the other about how, say, The Daily Beast treats Romney. Heck, a screaming match between Romney and the Online Left – or better yet, the former hauling off and smacking a representative of the latter – would only help the former Governor.

[UPDATE] Jazz Shaw got Team Romney to respond in a somewhat, ah, nuanced fashion: they’re falling back on the old 2008 standby of “We had a queue!”  Ah, yes, the queue.  Let me just save time, on the off chance that somebody from the Romney campaign wants to push back here, too: the queue is the Romney campaign’s problem.  Media outlets like TPM should not have been invited to Team Romney’s conference call in the first place.  Because they hate us, and will take the opportunity given to them by this queue to ask slanted and poisonous questions.

I put up a list that touches on this topic and others, in fact: I recommend that people peruse it.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*You will have to forgive the link via Anonymouse: it is a matter of slight personal pride to me that Mother Jones personally blocks my IP address. I’m not even entirely certain why: it’s not like the publication has ever been large enough to be worth me hitting it constantly.