Viral e-mails attack Obama’s life story, Politico.

Ironically, the smear campaign represents the dark side of the Internet’s emerging dominance in American politics — a phenomenon that has driven Obama’s unparalleled grass-roots and financial campaigns. After harnessing the Web to great advantage, Obama is now struggling to beat back the viral threat from the same uncontrollable medium.

“In the old days, communication was more centralized,” notes veteran GOP ad man Alex Castellanos, the father of Jesse Helms’ famous affirmative action ad. “If you were attacked in one venue, you dealt with it there. A TV problem was dealt with on TV, a radio problem on radio. It was top-down and it was manageable.”

The anti-Obama e-mails now bouncing around the Internet have multiplied and are difficult to track, though the website Snopes.com has catalogued and debunked many of them. But the themes are similar: Elements of his biography make him too exotic, or unknown, to be president.

Republican bloggers make push to replace Rep. Cole, The Hill.

Frustrated by three special-election losses and the dour atmosphere surrounding congressional GOP candidates this year, online conservatives believe a Republican purge is in order if the party wants to salvage its long-term prospects on the Hill.

“[Republicans] can continue on this course until November and embrace disaster,” wrote the directors of RedState, a leading conservative blog, “or they can clean house and bring a new direction to the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).”

That new direction includes a new NRCC chairman and a commitment to an anti-earmark pledge, they wrote last week, after Democrat Travis Childers won in a special election the Mississippi seat held by Republicans for three decades.