Political stance aside, I don't get how Instapundit gained that level of recognition when he doesn't even write anything.

Timing is important but that's not the only reason. The high quality automated aggregators (like memeorandum) are actually pretty recent. Before those there were link aggregator bloggers and Glenn is the leader of that pack in the political blogosphere.

I voted for the Lizard People.

Dang PD.... you know that'll be counted for Franken.

For example you have the ability to write a sentence longer than "Check out the whole thing".

Seriously. Political stance aside, I don't get how Instapundit gained that level of recognition when he doesn't even write anything. His blog looks like he was twittering before there was Twitter.

I'm clearly not in the same class as Instapundit

For example you have the ability to write a sentence longer than "Check out the whole thing".

Embedding the poll should increase your conversions.

I'm clearly not in the same class as Instapundit

You can say that again.

Look at it this way, James; You got nominated.
A huge accomplishment of itself, the way I see it from down here.

It's been a few years. Part of the problem is that my "authority" is much larger than my readership. I'm clearly not in the same class as Instapundit, or, apparently, the mommy blog in question in terms of traffic. We're a hard blog to characterize, for that matter, in that we're neither hard right nor even a purely political blog.