Republicans get their tech groove on at GOP Tech Summit

Forget necessity: last Friday's inaugural GOP Tech Summit proved that panic is the mother of invention. How else to account for the stunningly rapid convocation—Friday's event at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC, was only announced Monday—of a pow-wow session that drew activists and e-campaign strategists from around the country, and thousands more via a live webcast, replete with simultaneous online discussion, companion Ning and Facebook groups, and a welter of associated Twitter hashtags? Newly-minted RNC Chair Michael Steele announced the sea change in signally un-conservative terms: the two sure ways to get "kicked off the team," he declared, were to reject an idea because it hadn't been tried before, or to justify a practice on the grounds that "we've always done it this way." Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich—who apparently learned of the summit on Twitter, to which he is a recent convert—had some characteristically big-picture remarks of his own, invoking the revolutionary power of 18th century pamphlets like Common Sense and The Federalist, and touting the potential of many-to-many communications to cultivate a more inclusive politics.