A Nutroots blogger whines about the right-wing noise machine (yes, again) in Salon.com, and advocates that “bomb-throwers” like Pandagon stay apart from campaigns, so that Democrat candidates can benefit from the Nutroots’ deranged personal attacks and smear jobs without getting any Nutroots goo on them: Why I refused to blog for Edwards.

And without paying anything either! It’s a win-win situation.

In general, because of the candidate’s popularity, and because of the relationships it had cultivated, the Webb campaign was able to benefit from much rowdier surrogates than Amanda Marcotte without paying for them. In addition to the “macaca” storm, pro-Webb blogger Mike Stark actually got arrested while covering an Allen campaign rally. The incident made national headlines. The video of Stark being carted away in handcuffs reinforced Allen’s image as a bully in the last days of the campaign. It’s unclear whether Stark’s self-assigned political theater ultimately helped the Webb campaign at the polls, but it didn’t hurt.

The Edwards campaign wants decentralized people-powered politics. Ironically, by hiring well-known bloggers to manage a destination Web site, it was actually centralizing and micromanaging. Every campaign needs a blog, but the most important part of a candidate’s netroots operation is the disciplined political operatives who can quietly build relationships with bloggers outside the campaign. And the bomb-throwing surrogates need to be outside, where they can make full use of their gifts without saddling a campaign with their personal political baggage.