Hillary + Drudge ≠ Romney + Drudge

An extraordinarily inside baseball piece in Monday's NYT, exposing the fact that the Hillary campaign sometimes releases minor scoops to Matt Drudge. Shock horror.

The only news here is that a Democrat finally has as good a press team as the Republicans have for the past few cycles. And yet, the Dems are still less, well, shady. It's one thing to leak something like this:

As Senator Barack Obama prepared to give a major speech on Iraq one morning a few weeks ago, a flashing red-siren alert went up on the Drudge Report Web site. It read, “Queen of the Quarter: Hillary Crushes Obama in Surprise Fund-Raising Surge,” and, “$27 Million, Sources Tell Drudge Report.” Within minutes, the Drudge site had injected Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's fund-raising success into the day's political news on the Internet and cable television.

It's another thing to leak something like this:

As the Bush political team dispersed among the Republican candidates this year, some of Mr. Rhoades's former colleagues came to regret his special relationship with Mr. Drudge. ...as Mr. Drudge ran a series of photographs making Mr. McCain look old and other items, like one wrongly raising the possibility that a bump he took to the head in Iraq was cancer.

Fundraising totals are, you know, news. Cancer scares are the new Kerry intern.