This week, the Republican National Committee has released a new area of its GOP.com website called “Pelosi’s Puppets.” The web pages in this area of the official Republican Party website accomplish two tasks for the Republican National Committee. First, they identify fourteen members of Congress who they call “Pelosi’s Puppets”:
Meet Pelosi’s Puppets: Congressional Democrats who take marching orders from their Puppet Master, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, instead of you, the American people. Below we’ve pulled back the curtain on the first set of puppets to take the stage – find out what you can do to help clip their strings to bring us closer to the ultimate goal of firing Puppet Master Pelosi.
I’ll consider in a later post whether this “puppets” allegation leveled against the 14 House is actually true. For now, let’s move on to the second task of the RNC “Pelosi’s puppets” website. Consider one of the accused “puppets,” Rep. Thomas Perriello of Virginia. Representative Perriello is hardly an ultra-liberal. He’s only supported a third of the slate of House progressive legislation we identify at That’s My Congress. On top of that, Perriello has cosponsored a measure to curb free speech by banning the burning of the American flag. He’s voted to pass public land to a conservative anti-gay youth group, voted in favor of military pork projects, and finally voted to cut off a woman’s right to choose. These are hardly the actions of a dogmatic liberal “who takes marching orders from his Puppet Master, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.” But the RNC uses its website to label Tom Perriello a “Pelosi Puppet” nonetheless.
What does the Republican Party ask its followers to do then? Why, participate in a Tweetbomb. If you find yourself asking, “What is a Tweetbomb?,” just look at this screen capture from the RNC “Puppet” website for an indication:
That’s right: on the very same website where the Republican Party castigates Tom Perriello as a “puppet” under the control of a “puppet master” for “taking marching orders,” the Party issues its own marching orders, providing a list of “5 Things You Must Tweet NOW!” Not confident in the ability of his followers to compose 140 characters of text on their own, RNC Chair Michael Steele writes out five snippets of prepared text for rank-and-file Republicans to repeat on Twitter. Not even confident enough in the ability of his followers to cut and paste those tweets on their own, Puppet Master Michael Steele gives them five auto-tweet buttons to press and automatically post the text to Twitter.
This tactic is the latest technological implementation of “Astroturfing,” the creation of a false appearance of grassroots sentiment (fake grass = Astroturf), when this appearance is in actuality driven by a corporation, party, or other elite, resource-rich group. The Republican Party used to engage in astroturf campaigns with letters to editors of small-town newspapers — but who reads letters nowadays? How much easier to create the appearance of an online social movement with a Tweetbomb. All Steele has to do is pull a little string, and his puppets will …
… ignore him. As of now, a search for tweets including the text “@TomPerriello” reveals that of 60 such tweets posted over the last 5 days, absolutely none contain the the text from the first four of Michael Steele’s “5 Things You Must Tweet NOW!” As of now, there are no tweets on all of Twitter using the hashtag #PelosiPuppets or in a search for the text “Pelosi Puppets” either.
By comparison, there have been more than 20 twitter posts on the subject of “Michael Steele” in the past 20 minutes. One of them reads:
My fellow Republicans and myself no longer consider Michael Steele a Republican…just sayin!
This leads me to wonder whether a Puppet Master is really a Puppet Master when his puppets give him the finger and cut their strings.
