Another voice in the internet wilderness

As I was checking my e-mail this evening after a long day of work, something interesting to me caught my eye. It comes from the TEA Party Express:

The Tea Party Express is excited to announce the debut of “On The Campaign Trail with Tea Party Express,” a weekly podcast that features interviews with House and Senate candidates as well as Tea Party leaders to provide voters with a regular discussion of important political issues and campaigns.

The podcast is hosted by Tea Party Express Communications Director Mark Standriff, a 25-year talk radio veteran who has interviewed high-profile political figures from across the nation and was selected by the White House to be the master of ceremonies for President George W. Bush’s first official state visit with Mexican President Vincente Fox.

The primary focus this year will be to present the various major U.S. Senate candidates seeking to win key competitive races around the country. A key objective of the Tea Party Express is to defeat enough Democrats in Senate races so Senator Harry Reid can be removed as Senate leader and replaced by a conservative. Both endorsed and non-endorsed candidates will be given the opportunity to present their views to the Tea Party Express audience.

“On The Campaign Trail with Tea Party Express” begins its weekly podcast schedule with an interview featuring Nancy Mace, the first female graduate of The Citadel and candidate for U.S. Senate in South Carolina, taking on incumbent Republican Lindsey Graham.

Funny thing is that a) I actually know who Mark Standriff is because he was a radio host in Toledo for several years, and b) I was at the event referred to in the bio, that being where Standriff served as master of ceremonies for an event involving President Bush. It was held just five days before the 9/11 attack, in Toledo on the campus of the University of Toledo.

So now that I’ve done my name dropping, I have to comment on their choice of venues. It’s great they got a professional but I would have thought they would go the internet radio route as well as podcast; then again, the initial effort is only 13 minutes long and her end sounds like it was recorded in a cavern. When I did my Ten Questions series, the interviews I had to transcribe usually ran between 20 and 25 minutes so I’m not sure one can glean a lot of information out of less than 15.

The other aspect I’m curious about is whether they thought the idea through by limiting it to Senate candidates. After all, there are only about 35 seats up nationwide (Maryland is idle this cycle) so I suppose in theory there will only be about 20 to 25 serious challengers – seems like that’s too limiting on the potential.

But on a day I was already a little melancholy about the city of my birth (because it’s my late brother’s birthday) it only seemed fitting that I ran across that reference to a familiar voice.