Interesting piece in Wednesday’s New York Times about the major political parties’ “[using] social media and other online tools to galvanize supporters.”
Nut graf:
During last year’s midterm elections, Republicans caught up with Democrats in using technology and social networks, and now many Republicans elected to the House and Senate are using these tools more than Democrats, according to several political and technology experts.
“This will be the first election in modern history that both parties are understanding the potential of the technology to change the results of the election,” said Andrew Rasiej, a co-founder of TechPresident.com, a blog that covers politics and technology, and a digital adviser to Democrats since Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in 2004. “Both Republicans and Democrats are ready to use online platforms and are no longer skeptical of its potential.”
Exhibit A:
Sarah Palin, who started a brand-new Web site Tuesday with features that allow supporters to easily donate to her political action committee, has long had an established and robust presence on Twitter and Facebook, where she has almost 2.9 million fans.
Sample content of Palin’s brand-new website:
Governor Palin’s Appearance on “Hannity” on April 19, 2011
Video and Transcript of the Tax Day Tea Party Speech in Madison, Wisconsin
(But enough about me. What do you think of me?)
Exhibit B:
Mitt Romney announced his exploratory committee last week with a video, an update on his Facebook page, which has almost 845,000 members, a Twitter post introducing the hashtag #mitt2012, and a new Web site.
All of which are as about as exciting as you’d expect.
Your underwhelm goes here.
(P.S. Not a great photo, Mitt.)
Campaign Outsider 
Scary to think he may be the most sane of the potential GOP candidates in ’12.
Under “SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT”, she takes the NY times to task for something or other, with the words “The New York Times just can’t seem to get much of anything right lately. No wonder they’re facing economic and reputation woes”. As if right-wing publications without strong subsidies by the rich (the Washington times; the Weakly Standard) could stand on their own. I realize that the NY Times’s reputation took a slight hit when their music critic failed to name Beethoven as the GREATEST COMPOSER EVER (LvB was described that way in volume 14 of the print edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica) thus leading Frank Rich to leave. But somebody may wish to inform Sarah that the Times DID eke out not one, but TWO Pulitzer Prizes this week.
Interesting that a site using the TwentyTen default WordPress theme is calling out people for being boring/bland. Just saying…