Facebook official: Sarah Palin and you.

It's no secret that the Republican party as a whole has been behind the curve on the use of Social Networking. We saw it the most during the 2008 election and now they are struggling to catch up. The Democratic party has become a powerhouse of youth and new media.

As the Democratic Party thrived on the new media frontier, the Republican Party stayed behind. The McCain campaign didn't hire a resident blogger until June 2008.
The McCain campaign was based on old-media approaches to politics -- which made sense on one level, since its candidate was in his 70s. Few Republicans knew how to use social media to the party's advantage. The danger was that a GOP mired in old ways of communication would become obsolete.

But then Sarah Palin came along. Palin's encounter with the old media was a disaster. Her interview with Katie Couric went badly. Tina Fey's impression reduced Palin to a cartoon. Palin needed a way out.
By necessity, she's found a way for the Republicans to adopt social media. She has more followers on Facebook than any politician except President Obama.

Could it be that Sarah Palin is going to be the one to go rogue on the GOP and bring them into the 2.0 age? Strangely enough it could be. Sarah Palin may be a terrible candidate but the 2008 election skyrocketed her to pop culture stardom. During the campaign she didn't stand a chance with old media, mainly because they asked questions that were logical, but on Facebook and Twitter she could say as much as she wanted no matter how wrong, off base, or false it was. She quickly found a domain where the people couldn't interrupt what she had to say, and if she didn't like something said on her post she could delete it and block them. Life was good.

These platforms allow her to speak directly to her supporters. Palin's experience with old media during the campaign soured her on the old ways of doing things. As she put it in her debate with Joe Biden, she wants to speak to the American people without the "filter" of the mainstream media.

And it seems to be working. In August, in a single Facebook post, Palin did more to shape the debate on health care than any other Republican politician. (I'm referring, of course, to her charge that the Democratic health care bills eventually could lead to government rationing of medical care through "death panels.")

Then, in October, Palin led the way in national Republican support for the insurgent candidacy of Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate in November's special election in New York's 23rd Congressional District. One Facebook post from Palin endorsing Hoffman started a cascade effect in donations and support that resulted in liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava's withdrawal from the race and Hoffman's razor-thin loss to Democrat Bill Owens.

Meanwhile, Facebook allows Palin to burnish her policy credentials with foot-noted, op-ed length essays on health care, cap-and-trade, government spending and much else. Step by step, Palin is showing other conservatives how to use new media and social networks to their advantage. And no one seems to care.

Scary isn't it? Could the former Alaskan Governor and VP candidate made world famous by Tina Fey on SNL really revolutionize the GOP? Could the party of 'No' become the party of 'ya betcha'? Probably not but one thing is for sure, no matter how far behind the GOP falls on social media Sarah Palin will be there, oddly enough, showing them all up.

CNN Article quoted.