Interesting profile of Matt Drudge by Philip Weiss. Sample:

The left hates Drudge for good reason; he has helped kill one Democratic presidential aspirant after another and has started in on John Edwards this season. But as Halperin and Harris note, Drudge only gained his power because liberals so dominated traditional media that they disdained the Internet. Now that he’s opened the territory, the left is doing pretty well itself. “There’s a pretty healthy group of left-wing sites online, which tends to balance things, no doubt,” says Donna Brazile. “But Matt is in a class by himself.”

At times Drudge does sound like a conservative. He hates big government, immigration, and abortion rights. When Jimmy Carter criticized George Bush in the foreign press, Drudge questioned his loyalty. But Drudge’s ideological heart is libertarian, and many of his anti-corporate riffs would stir a left-wing anarchist. Drudge has been highly critical of partnerships between Google and state governments, and he fears corporations. He believes that people in surgery have had chips implanted without their knowledge, that the day will come when the government will “dart” a chip into you without your permission, and that DNA will be collected from spit on the street, “and then they can impose any rule, even against smiling.”

Republicans can’t count on Drudge. He praises Rosie O’Donnell and Michael Moore for their independence and fight, and seems to despise Giuliani and McCain. “Breitbart is an intellectual, dyed-in-the-wool conservative, and educated. Matt is not a book reader. I think he probably struggles to make right-wing noises,” says one Republican…

Thanks to the incomparable Arts and Letters Daily for the link.