I have been brainstorming with the guys over at TCOT (Top Conservatives on Twitter) for a few days now on how to leverage the power of twitter into political mainstream, and how to get more elected officials on twitter.  I thought I would share my email and see if it sparked any more ideas or interest.  Stay Classy…

As I see it conservatives now more then ever want/need a more defined 
issue base to refer to.  I have been watching the political debate 
scene for about two months now, and especially on twitter it seems 
like people people jump on a 1 day story, ride it into the ground, but 
its effectively just noise.  Twitter can first be used for getting out 
talking points.  Make the TCOT community a thinktank where once a week 
a think-piece is opened for people to debate.  The feedback from 
@replies can be compiled into an RSS feeding blog, or responses can be 
combed and best ideas can be thrown onto the blog to increase 
dialectus on a issue.  Live debates can even be run through uStream, 
or interviews with political officials can be shown live or in vlog 
form.  I have even seen this done with skype over uStream so 
integration with even the most non tech-savvy CRP member or elected 
official would take just a phone on their part.  Overall though all of 
these measures would help message dissemination, definition, and 
direct contact.

As i see it, elected officials will be a challenge because they do not 
believe the opportunity cost of the time it would take v.s the benifit 
it would bring is worth it.  This is namely because they are not aware 
of how great the benifits could be for how little time is required.  
Twitter allows a direct link between constituent and elected 
official.  At very least, in policy meetings, committee hearings, or 
especially votes, a official could twitter out their thoughts.  This 
process could begin with following/working for/volunteering for a 
small amount of officials as a pilot program of sorts, leverage the 
success of that into momentum in gaining legitimate place for this 
sort of activity.  Again, a service like ustream could be used to hold 
interviews where people can directly ask questions, or the top 
questions twittered in will be taken.

The main leverage twitter has in all aspects is bringing power to the 
people.  Started as bringing blogging to the masses by putting it on 
micro scale, now it allows anyone to follow anyone else big or small 
effectively bringing the distance (be it social or physical) between 
people down to essentially nothing.  This same concept can be 
interpolated into politics bringing the politician home to the 
people.  In such an era of “change” the main thing people want is the 
“un-washingtonized” politician.  Giving people a link to talk or 
listen directly to their representative, or member of their party, 
even if it is just a small semblance or notion of that, will increase 
confidence, increase political activism most of all because people 
will feel like they actually have a say.

This is part of a different email talking about ustream…one of the biggest tools for politics I believe that is currently absolutely untapped

Also, another thought I had which could be implemented now or in the very near future is an idea from the campaign last year; the conference call.  Only, update it for web 2.0 and start having weekly uStream broadcasts where an issue is talked about, elected official interviewed, or collective debate held on key talking points.  This will start getting the community to talk about a more clear message, and also unify the TCOT community, or whoever else for that matter, in mobilizing towards focused issues rather than the scatter shot approach.