(updated below - Update II - Update III)

As was discussed earlier this week, right-wing bloggers (along with Frank Gaffney) created "The Victory Caucus," artificially pumped up its traffic statistics by collectively and repeatedly linking to it, and then excitedly pointed to that traffic as evidence that they had tapped into latent though powerful pro-war sentiment among Americans which was spawning a new online movement. That ruckus, in turn, caused easily manipulated reporters to write articles and broadcast stories touting this new, exciting, surging Pro-War online Phenomenon.

Last week, Tucker Carlson welcomed as his guest Victory Caucus "Board of Governors" member Frank Gaffney, and Carlson began the segment by announcing:

Last week's antiwar resolution in the House saw 17 Republican members vote against the president's position. As with any vote of consequences, there is a political price to pay, in this case, for the GOP congressmen who broke from their party.

A new conservative group, the Victory Caucus, aims to hold politicians accountable for their positions, serving as a counterpoint to organizations like MoveOn.org.

The Politico article also described the Victory Caucus as "designed to counter the anti-war Moveon.org" and included passages like this:

In the meantime, the Victory Caucus hopes to shame Republicans into sticking with their leaders on upcoming votes on defense spending. "This is a means of getting out a message," said [Townhall/Hugh Hewitt blogger] Dean Barnett, a member of the Victory Caucus Board of Governors. "We're letting the political class know there's a huge chunk of people out there that want victory."

So, how is the right's MoveOn.org doing now? How "huge" is the "chunk" of pro-war enthusiasts eager to punish Republicans who turn against the war? Here is the Victory Caucus's Site Meter chart, showing its daily visit numbers for the month, current through today:

That doesn't look much like a Victory Arc. What it actually looks like is that someone found a corpse, hooked it up to an EKG machine, injected it with a single high-powered electrical jolt, screamed about the resulting miracle of the moving corpse's re-birth, tricked gullible journalists into writing about the miracle, and then immediately abandoned the corpse again, allowing it to return to its peaceful, quiet death.

Tucker Carlson and The Politico's Patrick O'Connor might want to do a follow-up to their stories of last week. Suggestions for possible story angles can be sent to Carlson here, and O'Connor here.

Perhaps it is worth exploring whether the Victory Caucus will make Internet history by becoming the first website ever that has negative traffic numbers. Or perhaps the rapid and complete failure of the right-wing's pro-war Internet movement -- even in the face of extraordinary support and promotion from the right's largest blogs -- is reflective of the true state of pro-war sentiment in this country (i.e., that, contrary to prevailing media conventional wisdom, it is not the "antiwar left" that is America's fringe group).

UPDATE: Diana Powe, a periodic (and always excellent) commenter here, and a long-time police officer in Texas, sent the following e-mail to Tucker Carlson:

Dear Mr. Carlson;

Please let me join the number of others who have suggested to you that you do a follow-up story to the complete collapse of the silly Victory Caucus over the first few days of its existence. The lazy meme in much of the mainstream media is that there is some sort of radical anti-war left that is preventing the recognition of the mainstream of people who crave victory in Iraq.

Apparently, the fringe includes me, a 30-year serving Texas police officer, my oldest brother, Col. Marc B. Powe (USA ret.) who served two tours in Viet Nam, was a military attache in Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war and was in the Pentagon itself on 09/11, my brother, Christopher L. Powe, who was an artilleryman in Viet Nam, and my brother, Stephen F. Powe, who was a distinguished military graduate from Texas A&M University and served as an Army infantry officer in the mid-1970s.

We are widely recognized for being completely out of the mainstream of political and social thought as you can easily imagine.

Perhaps a follow-up story could contrast the "pump-and-dump" traffic figures at the Victory Caucus website with the steadily increasing majority of Americans across all political lines who tell mainstream pollsters that they want our involvement in Iraq to end soon.

Diana J. Powe

Richardson, Texas

Those are the type of people which Hugh Hewitt, Frank Gaffney and their fellow tough guy Victory Caucusers and other pro-war comrades like to refer to as being pro-Surrender cowards and traitors, and which the media likes to depict as being part of the fringe "anti-war" left.

UPDATE II: Atrios notes that each Victory Caucus member who joins creates a profile in which they indicate how they'd "like to participate." None of them have indicated -- at least among the ones online (all five of them) -- that they would like to participate by volunteering for military service in order to fight for Victory (though many are eager to "act[] as a researcher to find and post content" and "contribut[e] my own writing").

In fact, the form they fill out when they join the Victory Caucus provides several options to select for how one can participate in bringing about Glorious Victory, yet none of the options even includes volunteering for military service:

Given that one of the core beliefs of the Victory Caucus is that "victory is necessary in [Iraq and Afghanistan] for America's self-defense"; given that the AEI architect of the surge himself, Frederick Kagan, has warned in the most urgent terms that our mission is endangered by a lack of necessary military volunteers; and given that (as Atrios documents) this troop shortage has caused "the Pentagon [to] alert[] National Guard units in several states [that] their soldiers may be returning to Iraq sooner than expected," shouldn't the Victory Caucus at least offer "volunteer military service" as one its options for how one can participate in achieving Victory? What kind of Victory Caucus doesn't encourage volunteer Warriors to fight for Victory?

Offering that as an option might help the military identify potential willing recruits, and would also enable us to know how many of these True Believers are willing to do more than write blog posts and call people White Flag Surrender Traitors in order to achieve the Victory that they claim is so imperative. For reasons I've described before (including in the Kagan post linked above), I do not subscribe to the generic "chickenhawk" argument, but it seems there would be many benefits from at least offering that option on the Victory Caucus membership form and then disclosing how many Victory Warriors check that option and how many skip over it.

UPDATE III: Gen. J.C. Christian highlights the moving plight of one Victory Caucus member (Concerned Man) who was publicly admonished by a Victory Caucus official for the infraction of mentioning the horrific conditions for the wounded troops at Walter Reed facilities. The same group which scolded this member also lists as one of "Our Beliefs" the following:

We support the troops, and those organizations which assist the wounded in their recoveries and support the families of those who sacrificed everything.

The Victory Caucus claims to support the troops who are wounded in the wars it cheers on, but formally prohibits any mention of the mistreatment of those same troops. As is true for most of these pro-Bush warmongers, troops are mere props, and "support for the troops" an empty slogan, for the Victory Warriors to exploit in an attempt to manipulate public opinion and advance their dying agenda of endless wars.