Politico bows to Drudge. Yet again.

It's no secret that Politico's editorial guidelines basically revolve around trying to figure out how its stories can land Drudge links, which is why Politico often simply manufactures controversial headlines that have nothing to do with the actual articles.

Another way to curry favor with Drudge is to just kiss up to him and write, over and over, about how influential he is. Witness Ben Smith, who announces that it was Matt Drudge who put the birther story in play last week [emphasis added]:

But a smart colleague pointed out something else to me about the sudden flood of attention: It's (yet another) piece of evidence for Matt Drudge's power to decide what everyone else is talking about. Dave Weigel and I, among others, have been following the Birthers as a curiousity and more for quite a while, and Dave had already posted an interesting piece on Republicans having to deal with Birthers, and followed last Monday morning with a link to video of Rep. Mike Castle confronting a woman convinced that Obama isn't legitimate.

Drudge, whose judgment for the riveting, relevant, and bizarre remains unmatched, posted the video later Monday. And he propelled the (riveting, and weird) scene into the bloodstream -- he alone sent 255,488 viewers -- onto cable, and thence into, among other places, finally the Times (twice), which reported that ... everybody was talking about it.

Which is all just a particularly clear glimpse of the central role Drudge plays in the media ecosystem.

Not only is the ring-kissing unsightly, but in this case it's total nonsense. The idea that because Drudge posted to a single YouTube clip the birther story went huge last week is just absurd. The reason the story went big was because a high-profile CNN anchor, Lou Dobbs, decided to jump on the birther bandwagon and tossed all common sense aside by championing a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory. Drudge was, at best, a birther spectator last week.

Why would Politico want to pretend otherwise?