Congressmembers Who Tweet And Congressmembers Who Don't

Now that I'm retired, I'm on several boards, both business and civic. One is a large non-partisan civil liberties organization Inside the Beltway. At one meeting their president announced he was teaming up with GOP arch villain Grover Norquist. There was stunned, dead silence in the room. Many of the people around the table had been working in the trenches against reactionaries like Norquist when the president was still a (liberal) Republican. I realized that he had just taken a giant step towards ending his own tenure with the organization. Working with someone of good faith across party lines is one thing; working with Grover Norquist or Jack Abramoff or Tom DeLay is something entirely different. You won't find anyone at DWT monkeying around with that shit. However, over the last few months I've been in a friendly and spirited dialogue with the Sarah Palin of The South, Katherine Jenerette, an extremely-- and I mean extremely-- conservative Republican candidate for Congress in South Carolina. Her website prominently features a "How Liberal Blogs see her" post that links to two not very complimentary DWT stories about her. A teabagger type-- and far better looking and less dizzy than Palin-- she's the leading candidate to replace retiring Republican Henry Brown (and she's up against a whole slew of sons of famous Republican icons). She's probably one of the only Republicans, outside of my insufferable brother-in-law, who I chat with.

A couple days ago she sent me these two e-mails:

I saw your latest post on the First Congressional district, now I'm a godess? I'd just rather just be a mom, a soldier, a concerned citizen...

Actually, I died laughing. It was good entertainment. Should I send you a picture of me and my pick-up truck? My 13-year old daughter keeps trying to get me to trade it in for a candy-apple red camero. I need to find you on Facebook and make you one of my friends. I have a few Democrat friends. I like everyone (there are a few exceptions), I just don't agree with everything everyone says.
 
I'm still at here at Ft. Bragg. We've got a boatload of people going to Afghanistan as you know. A lot of people going to the Horn of Africa as well. I was in DC a few weeks ago at the State Dept. with a group going to Iraq to help with the upcoming elections. As if we can tell the Iraqi's about honest elections on either side of the isle.
 
When I do go to wherever the Army sends me, I would love to be a guest poster to your blog.
 
Thanks to you and Ken. Maybe while I'm up at Ft. Dix; if I get a chance, I can look you up in New York. You could show me around. I've only been there twice. I would truly be a tourist.

----

You make me blush! Why do you like me so much when we are obviously on different sides of the isle on most issues?

Your new FB Friend,

Katherine

PS - I know that Sarah Palin is by far - more widely known and more popular then me-- but how bout Sarah Palin - the Katherine Jenerette of Alaska?

Yes, she and I became Facebook pals and I ever tweeted something about Palin being the Katherine Jenerette of Alaska (which probably left some people scratchin' their heads). Don't expect to see DWT endorse her, even if I do prefer the real crazy, out-there Republicans to the garden variety greed-and-selfishness country club types like her opponents. I mean there is something to be said about having opponents like Michele Bachmann, Paul Broun, Steve King, Mean Jean Schmidt, Virginia Foxx and Jim Inhofe to be able to point to and say, "See this is what we're up against." And I'm happy to promote her candidacy among the scores of Republicans who follow me on Twitter.


In fact, I follow dozens of Republicans on Twitter and often have a great deal of fun making fun of the bone-headed tweets from imbeciles like McCain, Patrick McHenry, Darrell Issa, Mike Pence, Marco Rubio, Grandpa Grassley, Glenn Beck, Jim DeMint, Howdy Doody, Paul Ryan, Mary Bono Mack, etc. On the other hand, I don't follow many Democrats. First of all, there don't seem to be many on Twitter. Second, the one who runs her mouth the most, Claire McCaskill, is almost as lame and clueless as Grassley and it was so painful reading her tweets that I stopped following her. Alan Grayson's stuff is great, of course, but he's like the only Democratic member of Congress worth following.

Yesterday a brilliant healthcare wonk, Mark Senak, posted a fascinating study he did on his blog, Twongress-- the Power of Twitter in Congress. I couldn't stop savoring all his research yesterday and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Like me, he feels the Democrats aren't making use of Twitter and that they ought to wake up and smell the roses before it's too late. (I gather, though, that he'd agree with my assessment that the Republicans may be using it a lot but not very effectively. He told me that "the two most important things that come out of the report are these: First, it is an election year and Twitter, which didn’t even exist until three years ago, has become a powerful communications tool. And when you look at the numbers, one party is clearly utilizing it at a greater rate, meaning that on specific issues, they can generate specific messages to a targeted base using Twitter. That said, there is certainly time between now and the election to change that. The second thing is that if you look beyond the numbers, the truth is no one and no party is really maximizing the potential of twitter. Tweets aren’t being classified by topic using hashtags, and they aren’t using Twitter to drive people to their Web sites. There is a lot of unmet potential." The report itself goes much deeper:

As social media in general, and Twitter in particular, have had growing utility among policy makers, I therefore set out to examine the role of Twitter and its use by members of Congress (MOCs) to determine who was using this medium and where, if at all, there was influence and clout among members.  Hence the white paper that I am publishing today - "Twongress - The Power of Twitter in Congress" - Download Twongress White Paper Final 1-14-10.

...Here are a few of the topline findings.  There are 89 Republicans using Twitter and 32 Democrats. While there is near-parity between the parties in the Senate, House Republicans are particularly active on Twitter.  For example, House Republicans sent out 29,162 Tweets.  One House member ranked in the top ten number of followers with nine Republicans in the top ten.  Two House Democrats were in the top 20, and eighteen House Republicans in terms of followers.  Two Democrats were in the top ten for influence and clout, with eight Republicans in the top ten. All told, in the House, Democrats sent out 5,503 and Republicans sent out 29,162.

While there was much more parity on the Senate side, individual distinctions emerged.  Senator John McCain has more followers by far than any MOC.  Senator Claire McCaskill sends more Tweets than any MOC.  Senator Jim DeMint pulled more influence and clout than any MOC, in spite of Senator McCain's far greater number of followers.
 
But there is also a story beyond the mere numbers. While some in Congress have embraced Twitter with some gusto and have acquired significant followers, the truth is that no one in Congress is doing a particularly outstanding job in using Twitter or maximizing its potential. There has been little effort to develop the resource to engage communities by classifying their tweets by topic for their constituencies through the use of hashtags.  For example, one could organize one's tweets under hashtags for "taxes" or even by party-- such as"DEMHCR" for Democratic member views on health care reform. Those tweets could be aggregated at Web sites, and twitter could drive traffic to those Web sites. Without such strategic efforts by either individuals in Congress or by the parties, the primary use of Twitter by Congress is merely as a message platform to push out points direct to waiting constituencies. In other words, the tweets are one-offs. Much more, actually, could be done to harness the echo chamber that is Twitter.

If any of this is even vaguely interesting to you, you have to download the pdf file and revel in the wealth of information Mark has put together-- like that chart up top or this one here: