Republican organizers have been trying to coax the faithful onto social-networking sites like Twitter for a while now. They shouldn’t have to work that hard: Some Republican politicians are already making news on Twitter. Recently, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called Sonia Sotomayor a racist, and current Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley rebuked President Obama: “Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us ‘time to deliver’ on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND,” wrote Grassley in the shortened vernacular of the form. Soon thereafter, he Tweeted: “Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said ‘time to delivr on healthcare’ When you are a ‘hammer’ u think evrything is NAIL I’m no NAIL.” Regardless of your political views, this kind of behavior should be encouraged. Press secretaries and strategists from both parties have been conspiring to hide the true views of their political clients for years now. So anything that allows politicians to give full expression to the id is to the good. It injects unpredictability, randomness, and texture (or txtur as Grsly wd type it) into our politics.
more from John Dickerson at Slate here.