BLOGOMETER REPORTS on the latest PorkBusters effort:

8/16 is yet another example of the trend as a broad coalition of conservative bloggers and other established institutions join forces to promote an anti-pork spending project that, since the GOP’s in power, ought to bring embarrassment to GOP lawmakers in the midst of a tough cycle. With their current belief in partisanship at all costs (see CT SEN), would lefty bloggers ever put forward such an effort that had the potential to hurt so many Dems?

In a word, no. The Sunlight Foundation, however, is not on the right, but the left, lest anyone be confused.

UPDATE: Randy Walker emails: “What? After Joe just lost a primary? What are you smoking (can I get some)? Exactly how many Republicans have been kicked out of office because of Pork Busters? When it comes to political pressure on your own party, I believe the score is left 1, right 0. I love pork busters but your are way out to sea on this one.”

Hmm. Well, that’s fair, I guess — except that the Blogometer point, and mine, was not about individual elections, but rather about things that give one side or another a structural advantage. As Josh Marshall and Mickey Kaus noted on Bloggingheads.tv, the “K Street strategy” seems to be working for the Republicans, but a lot of GOP-leaning bloggers are still attacking it. That’s a bit different from trying to replace one Democrat with a different Democrat.

That said, I hope that by 2008 — it’s too late for this election cycle, alas — we’ll see anti-pork forces supporting anti-pork primary challengers.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oops, I gave Randy Walker too much credit. Reader Kurt Dykstra emails:

Um, perhaps Joe Schwarz (MI-7) counts? At least the Club for Growth
(www.clubforgrowth.org) folks — which is identified as among the group of “Other Porkbusters” on the porkbusters.org website — seem to think it had something to do with this incumbent’s loss in the Republican primary . . .

That had slipped my mind, somehow.

MORE: Randy Walker follows up:

Thanks but I had missed Joe Schwaz too. Lets see, left wing Sunlight Foundation working the same soil as right wing Pork Busters, incumbents on both sides getting defeated in primaries, cats and dogs living together…..

If I did not know any better I would swear something big is going on. From now on I am going to be very suspicious of anybody who tries to spin this election in terms of “left vs. right”. This is “us vs. them”.

I’d like that to be true. I hope it is.