LA TIMES: Breitbart.com Sets Sights on Ruling the Conservative Conversation

Excerpts from the Los Angeles Times’ profile of Breitbart News by James Rainey:

Andrew Breitbart loathed the “institutional left,” and what he called “the Democrat media complex.” A son of Brentwood who cut his sharp online incisors working alongside blogging pioneers Matt Drudge and Arianna Huffington, Breitbart went on to forge an eponymous website and persona as one of the fiercest voices of the right. His mission appeared cut short March 1, when he died of heart failure. Breitbart was just 43.

But an unlikely crew of friends and associates — his oldest childhood friend, a pair of Harvard-educated lawyers, a financier/filmmaker who served in the Navy and a musician pal who reinforces the fallen leader’s voice as the website’s “minister of culture” — scarcely paused after the loss. Just three days later, with the blessing of Breitbart’s widow, Susie, they launched a redesigned Breitbart.com website.

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Regardless of size, Breitbart.com can find its way to the center of the political conversation. When aides to Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney said recently that the time had come to “vet the president,” for some observers that echoed a Breitbart.com series of anti-Obama hits, “The Vetting.” Lefty websites quickly chided that the Romney campaign had gone “the full Breitbart” — all attacks all the time.