Republicans on Capitol Hill have made up ground in social media after Barack Obama famously put social platforms to use to wrangle in votes in 2008. The New York Times has a report on the extensive social networking operation the GOP had developed over the past four years, with staffers ready to respond to any Democratic talking point instantly by tweet or by blog post. "House Republican members have more than twice as many followers as their Democratic counterparts — about 1.3 million versus roughly 600,000 — and are far more active on Twitter with more than 157,000 individual Twitter messages, versus roughly 62,000 for Democrats," reports The Times. Is there anyone who can make this sound dramatic? "This is the first time that both parties have people on staff who are specifically focused on social media and willing to deploy and use it," Andrew Rasiej, who studies the intersection of politics and technology, tells The Times. "It won’t be tanks against the cavalry this time. Both sides have tanks, both sides have fighter jets and both sides may have nuclear bombs."

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