Robyn Gee on Thursday, Aug. 18th
Rick Perry might not have won the Iowa Straw Poll, but he leads the GOP candidates in one thing – Twitter mentions.
The Washington Post used Topsy to measure who was at the center of Republican buzz after the weekend events. Perry was mentioned in over 56,000 Tweets after his making the comment that it would be “treasonous” to print more money. His decision to enter the presidential race also spiked mentions.
Perry stole some buzz from Michelle Bachmann, who came in second with 38,000 Twitter mentions after she won the Straw Poll, and Romney came in last, possibly because he skipped the Straw Poll altogether. His Twitter mentions fell from 5,794 on Saturday to 3,052 on Tuesday.
The Post reports that Twitter buzz has no correlation to political support, and the Twitter mentions were both positive and negative.
Graph below from the Washington Post:
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Sara Imjan on Wednesday, Apr. 27th
The White House has released President Obama’s long-form birth certificate that members of the Birther movement (which includes numerous Tea Party officials and one of the Republican party’s most popular presidential candidates, Donald Trump) have sought as the product of a two-year long witchhunt.
In a speech this morning, the President decried the demands as a “sideshow” from “carnaval barkers.” But he didn’t go far enough. In the parallel universe of sane politics that must be out there balancing out our wildly teetering Washington, the country that elected the man would have long put the issue to rest, marginalizing the Birthers and their ilk for the xenophobic subtext that has fueled the campaign to delegitimize the first non-white male to hold the country’s highest office. No such consensus opprobrium transpired, and meanwhile, elected officials have been unable to keep a lid on their racist outbursts. So, having made an outsize gesture that not only acknowledged but conceded to this buffoonery, the President squandered an invaluable moment in the spotlight availed by the birth certificate’s release. His speech contained a tepid reproach that never once used the word “racist.” Am I surprised that Obama is being accomodationist? Not in the least. But given that his opposition has made race the most enduring issue behind their politics, the least he could have done is fully owned the moment, and told them ’bout themselves. And more critically than responding to the Birthers, Obama could have sent a message to the rest of the country that entertained the years long spectacle in relative silence.
However, such a dressing down probably wouldn’t have accomplished an end to the political terrorism itself. As the Atlantic reported this morning, after Trump’s self-congratulatory moment for his Sysiphusian dedication to uncovering Obama’s deceptions, he didn’t miss a beat before declaring that the next stone to turn over is the President’s college record. Unfortunately for Trump, last time I checked, that kind of falsehood isn’t impeachment material.
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