The debt ceiling debate on Twitter

I was feeling a little snarky yesterday and sent out this tweet: 

BREAKING: Obama releases his #debtceiling plan: Executor of Nigerian estate emailed & will be wiring us $14 trillion.Fri Jul 29 19:41:01 via UberSocial for BlackBerrySarah Rumpf
rumpfshaker

Apparently people thought that was funny; last time I checked, it's been retweeted ("forwarded" for you non-Twitterers) over 80 times. Glad y'all found it amusing. Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week...

Elsewhere on the Twitterverse, after President Obama gave another one of his whiny "the Republicans won't do what I waaaaaaant" speeches and implored Americans to contact their members of Congress to work on a bipartisan solution to the debt ceiling crisis, the official @BarackObama twitter account began an ill-advised deluge of tweets targeting just Republican Members of Congress.

You heard the President. So here's what we're doing: throughout the day we'll post the Twitter handles of GOP lawmakers in each state.Fri Jul 29 16:12:59 via webBarack Obama
BarackObama

Tweet at your Republican legislators and urge them to support a bipartisan compromise to the debt crisis.Fri Jul 29 16:18:59 via webBarack Obama
BarackObama

The White House showed, once again, that the Democrats really do have their own way of defining words. Only in the Democrat Dictionary™ does "bipartisan compromise" mean "nag Republicans to do what we want." And they proceeded to spam twitter for hours, listing the GOP Representatives in all fifty states.

The backlash was swift and vicious. @BarackObama lost over 33,000 followers and many members of Congress tweeted their displeasure with this tactic. Dennis Ross, a Republican from Florida's 12th District, posted this:

Dear President Obama - tweet mention bombing Members of Congress with folks NOT from our districts - #tweetledumbFri Jul 29 18:35:44 via webDennis Ross
RepDennisRoss

All Obama's twitter spam seemed to accomplish was annoying a lot of people and further highlighting the fact that the President has yet to produce his own debt ceiling plan (the aforementioned Nigerian email promises notwithstanding!). Here's a great tweet from another Florida Congressman, Tom Rooney, from the 16th District:

Here's President Obama's plan, for a quick comparison to the House GOP plan: http://t.co/7BFLgJ2Fri Jul 29 17:34:48 via webTom Rooney
TomRooney

In case you missed the joke, the link purporting to be Obama's debt ceiling plan goes to a blank page. Nicely done, Rep. Rooney.