Gee, remember the days when politicians used to complain about the restrictions of sound bite journalism? Now they want to educate the public 140 characters at a time. Given recent Repub babblings, it may be an improvement.

Has anyone seen a well-used twitter site? All the ones I've seen (not many) seemed like something Britney Spears or the Jonas Brothers would do -not particularly informative, useful or interesting. In fact they mostly seem sort of stalker friendly in an icky kind of way.

When are the media, other politicians, etc, going to get after Pete Hoekstra who spilled beans about a trip to Iraq? (It would have been good, Steve, to remind readers of that here.) What would Bachmann, Malkin, or Hannity say if a Democrat had done that?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/06/gop-congressman-breached_n_164809.html?show_comment_id=20573858

3 postings all touch on the same underlying theme: the california gop is insane. rep. bachman is insane. and republicans in general are buffoons (that would be this one).

it's what happens when you spend 45 years increasingly drawing upon authoritarian personalities who rely upon cliches in lieu of thought.

REPUBLICAN TWITTER: UR DOIN IT WRONG

The idea, I guess, is to attract all those durned young'uns who've gone plumb-crazy for Obama. And I guess, also, there's no good reason why a Republican congressional staffer would try to explain the difference between 'bottom-up' and 'top-down' organizing to his or her boss. Just wouldn't make a lot of sense, and if it did make sense, it would just be trouble.

Rather than reflexively making fun of a few mistakes the Republicans made with Twitter, can't we just compliment them on the way in which they're embracing the service to communicate with the public? I wish more Democrats were using the service.

Really? So far, even putting these Republican's screw ups aside, I've been less than impressed with usefulness of Twitter for political discourse.

For now at least, I'd rather Democrats stay away from it.

Twitter seems simultaneously like the perfect technology match for the Republicans and the most dangerous toy they could ever pick up.

On the one hand, the 120 character limit is perfect for people that always speak in soundbites anyway. No room or need for nuance here.

On the other hand, by letting them instantly disseminate whatever idiocy they think up without forcing them to stop and think about it first, and without filtering it through their aides, it just about guarantees a much higher level of foot-in-mouth disease.

Republican Tech Summit?

P'lease........A bunch of old white guys drooling over themselves to appear hip to the rest of us. Why not just go buy a sports car, assholes. Same dif

I know Republicans often complain about the "liberal media," but honestly, I thought they ALL knew it was bulls**t, a way to do a pre-emptive strike, "working the refs" so that subsequent coverage will be more favorable, and the more you complain about media bias, the more the media will tilt towards bias IN YOUR FAVOR.

But I guess some Republicans are so god-awful stupid, they believe it. How else to explain a comment like:

~~~"Every time I send out a tweet, I'm throwing another shovel of dirt to help bury the old media," said Rep. John Culberson of Texas, a 52-year-old Republican who became one of the most quoted speakers at the Republican National Committee tech summit Friday.~~~

What idiocy. Were it not for the old media covering GOP ass time and time again, they'd be as popular as a Klan rally, though I suppose the demographic breakdown would still be the same. The media allows itself to be used by the right, nending it over and taking it time and time again to ptove how beholden to the left they are not, and along comes a grade-a goober like Culberson who wants to upend the apple cart that's been providing him free apples all this time.

They really don't know how good they've had ti, and continue to have it. They really don't know that they whined and mewled their way into obsolesence. By all means Twitter away. Like the twitter of an actual bird, it'll make as much sense, and be about as relevant.

I think that this article can be summed up as follows: while most Twitter users send tweets, the GOP Twitter users are twits.

Got it?
-Z

Maybe Mark Foley can help them out, he's good with technology and outreach to young people.

"Every time I send out a tweet, I'm throwing another shovel of dirt to help bury the old media," said Rep. John Culberson of Texas, a 52-year-old Republican who became one of the most quoted speakers at the Republican National Committee tech summit Friday.

Watch out Cluberson, I'm not sure Rush Limpbags and your overlords at Faux News will like that.

Twitter may be ideal for Republicans.

140 characters at a time is about the limit of their attention span.

Is it that Republicans imagine Democrats have some sort of monopoly on the internet, which prevents them from using it effectively?

The reason Republicans did so well before was because talk-radio was an authoritarian-friendly medium that allowed bullies to thrive and didn't leave much of an evidence trail behind. Facts and nuance are liabilities in talk radio. But the internet leveled the playing field and made it a fair fight. And so the reason Dems are doing better now isn't because we adopted the internet first, but because we have better positions and we're smarter.

And Twitter doesn't give them anything the internet didn't already provide, so it's not going to help them push ahead. They can adopt all the newest communication tools they want, but unless they can find one that's better than the internet that Dems can't use equally well, it's not going to help them. In a fair fight, liberals will defeat conservatives. It's that simple. I doubt we'll ever see them dominate again.

Looks like the comments nailed the central issue, unlike other media coverage of the story. There are lots of ways to use the internet. Twitter is notable in limiting a message to 140 characters. That is the essential point in noting that Republicans see Twitter as their entry into 21st-century communication. The internet version of sound bite. Yecchh.

Twitter's suited to Republican core-competencies: you can push out talking points in short soundbite form to a large audience very quickly.

Congressmen will very quickly realize that they don't have anything interesting to say. What they *can* do very well is simply repeat the "message of the day" so that it will be broadcast to all of their twitter followers.

Mostly, though, the WaTimes was looking for a "feelgood" that made the Republicans seem like something other than the group of disorganized boobs that they are.

I've thought Twitter was a stupid fad that would take a quick, well-deserved dirt nap.

I realize I was wrong. You can fit a lot of monosyllabic words into your sound bytes in a tweet.

It was practically MADE for superficial top down management of drones.

This is one area whee the GOP may be able to top Democrats handily for teh foreseeable future.

MSNBC commentators carry on throughout the day about Twitter. A few days ago, I came to the conclusion that Twitter must be the most uncool thing on the web if so many Republicans are embracing it. It's like watching a bunch of politicians do the Macarena at a 4th of July celebration. Oh, wait, I am referring to another bizarre phenomenon from the mid-1990s. Sigh.

That this makes news is a pitiful commentary on the Republican party.

McCain is the most prolific tweeter? I thought he wasn't able to harness the power of the internet because of injuries sustained in Vietnam?