Friday, December 5, 2008

Conservatives are flocking to Twitter, but will the GOP ignore their flight.

As I mentioned in my last post, conservative grassroots organizations are exploding all over the internet. Groups on Facebook have doubled since the election, but no social media site has been more intriguing to conservatives than Twitter.

If you belong to Twitter, you understand what can only be called an obsession. If you do not belong to Twitter, you probably have no idea what I am talking about. Twitter is a communication forum that allows people to write comments no longer than 140 characters about whatever they wish. You have the ability to view others comments when you "follow" them and they have the ability to view yours if they chose to "follow" you.

It's not necessarily important to understand twitter itself, but how conservatives are using it to network, exchange ideas, strategize and even speak one on one with GOP members. In fact, one of the RNC chair candidates, Saul Anuzis, is a favorite on twitter because he openly communicates about his daily political life with average conservatives.

Twitter has become so popular with Conservatives that a new site has formed that tracks the top conservatives on twitter. Top Conservatives to Follow on Twitter was the brain child of Michael Leahy, an author and Republican strategist. Last week, Michael started the group which now consists of over 300 members with more vying for a position every day. It features some well known conservatives, such as Senator Jim DeMint from South Carolina, Hugh Hewitt, and most recently Governor Mike Huckabee.

Twitter is only the beginning of the conservative movement on the net. It is allowing those the grass roots to communicate in a fast environment, organize quickly, and spread the message to an ever growing audience. It is only the beginning of the strategy to move conservatives and hopefully the GOP into the 21st century.

This couldn't come at a better time as reports state that President-elect Obama will be holding on to a campaign surplus of over $30 million. Aides closest to him say he may use the excess cash to build a massive grass roots program to support his agenda. The GOP will need it's own grass roots campaign to fight back.

It's already forming, but will they catch on in time to take the lead of it?

3 comments:

Mel said...

I pray that the GOP will wisen up to things like Twitter and SGP, it seems that it has taken this election to galvanize the conservatives as never before. SGP is awesome and I am proud to be a part of it.

bmo said...

We in Virginia had our first post election big meeting.
http://www.rpv.org/events/detail/don-huffman-annual-advance-2008

The Va. Blogger community did pretty good with their tweets of the meeting. Also one presentation they liked was the New Media presentation. Its getting good feedback and I think its a great start. Search Tweet #rpvadvance.

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+%23rpvadvance+

I think its a good first step for our 2012 run.

Laura Lee - Grace Explosion said...

I feel so unworthy of Twitter. I'm sure it's simple... but I don't get it.

lol

I joined. I added SGP. But I don't know how to comment. I thought I commented... just to test... and it didn't work as far as I could tell.

:)

Smart Girl Politics ©Template Blogger Green by Dicas Blogger.

TOPO