Barack Obama's victory last year left many Republicans bemoaning their party's ineptitude when it came to political exploitation of the Web. Democrats, they admitted, were far ahead in the art of using the Internet to seduce voters.
So Connecticut Republicans decided it was time to boldly forge into the 21st century, only to stumble when one of their decidedly deceptive experiments ran into trouble last week.
Twitter, Inc., shut down 33 fake Twitter accounts created by Republicans using the names of Democratic state representatives. The Republican scheme was to send out posts under the Democrats' names mocking the liberal tax-and-spend bastards.
The ethics of it are completely lost on them:
"That's unfortunate," was state Republican Chairman Chris Healy's response when told of Twitter, Inc.'s decision. "I'm not quite sure what the issue is, other than that the Democrats were successful in stopping free speech."
...
Their Twitter ploy may have misfired, but Connecticut Republicans aren't giving up on those 33 Web sites created in the names of the Democratic lawmakers. (The fake Twitter posts were linked back to those Web sites.)
I must admit though, this is progress for the GOP after a fashion. It's as if someone hypothesized how Tricky Dick would operate in the internet age.
