Grading the GOP Candidates' Twitter Campaigns

MITT ROMNEY (@MittRomney)

Followers: 145,400

Sample Tweet: .@BarackObama’s Magical Misery Tour chugs along. Reject his failed leadership & get your limited edition hat

Grade: B+

Comments: Romney (meaning the social media manager on his campaign team) would benefit from tweeting more often—doesn’t the front-running candidate have more than 1.5 tweets to broadcast each day? But his tweets are concise and substantive, and who doesn’t like free hats? He also tweets directly at Bam-Bam, which indicates that he has some social media balls. Nice use of the period before the @ sign, too.

HERMAN CAIN (@thehermancain)

Followers: 136,579

Sample Tweet: #FiveDollarFridays for @THEHermanCain Plz donate/RT tinyurl.com/5rvj795 #Momentum #Cain2012 #tcot

Grade: C-

Comments: Cain tweets frequently, but they’re all about how much his campaign is kicking ass. If I’m checking out his Twitter, I probably want to learn something about the candidate, not be hit up for #FiveDollarFridays, which I can only assume gets me 2 medium pizzas and a 2 liter bottle of Coke for $5. He also uses made-up hash tags like an 8-year-old with bad ADD.

MICHELLE BACHMANN (teambachmann)

Followers: 32,605

Grade: D

Comments: I prefer spoof accounts like @Bachmann2012, and @TeamBachmann doesn’t even pretend to be tweeted by Michelle Bachmann. Is she too busy getting her ass kicked by Herman Cain to treat us with 140 characters of sheer insanity? The #Michelle hash tag is an utter failure.

Rick Perry (@GovernorPerry, @TeamRickPerry)

Followers: 98,894; 21,831

Grade: A-

Comments: @GovernorPerry, Rick’s personal account, is a fantastic cocktail of Ranger’s fandom and pheasant hunting. He needs to bring out this side at the debates. Other candidates, take note. @TeamRickPerry makes good use of the retweet, making it much less masturbatory than the other candidates’ accounts.

RON PAUL (@RonPaul)

Followers: 89,358

Grade: C+

Comments: Directs to content about how awesome Ron Paul is, but they’re mostly from Jack Hunter. The brazen Paul, with his appealing, somewhat insane ideas, would be an amazing voice on Twitter. What does his campaign have to lose by letting him loose? He’d use the @ sign to attack 24/7.