Twitter Ambush! White House Calls On The Social Media Grassroots To Push Debt Ceiling Deal

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President Obama’s suggestion that Americans call their members of Congress about the debt ceiling last week (a request he re-upped Friday) went so well that his campaign is expanding the operation to a whole different communications platform.

Enter #compromise, the Obama 2012’s latest attempt to turn Republicans in Congress from stubborn partisans into handshaking legislators.

Obama himself tweeted the call via his campaign twitter account, @BarackObama, Friday.

“The time for putting party first is over,” he wrote. “If you want to see a bipartisan #compromise, let Congress know. Call. Email. Tweet.”

Congress has become a hotbed for Twitter (with mixed results, depending on how nude you like your career-ending Direct Messages.) Many members use the service to communicate with constituents and engage reporters — and now Obama is hoping to use that against them.

The Obama 2012 account is currently tweeting out the handles of Republicans in Congress to its 9.4 million followers. The idea is that tweeters then use those handles to deluge the twitter accounts in much the same way they’ve been tying up the phones.

A sample tweet from the campaign:

“If you live in Arizona, ask @SenJonKyl and @SenJohnMcCain to support a bipartisan compromise to the debt crisis.”

Top House Republicans have so far remained rather quiet on Twitter. It’s been hours since Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor or Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy has tweeted anything new. That’s probably because they’ve been busy trying to rally their troops behind the debt ceiling plan authored by Boehner that Team Obama is furiously tweeting against.

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