Republicans to whip up support with Blackberry app
The Republican leadership in the US House of Representatives unveiled a free application for the Blackberry on Thursday to keep users up to date on the latest in Congress through their cellphones.
The Blackberry application called "WhipCast" comes slightly more than two weeks after the Republican Party rolled out a new website that embraces the social media tools used by Democrat Barack Obama to win the presidency.
"Whipcast" was launched by Republican representatives Eric Cantor of Virginia and Kevin McCarthy of California.
Cantor and McCarthy are responsible for shepherding legislation through the House in their positions of "whip" and "chief deputy whip" respectively.
"Today's launch of the WhipCast BlackBerry app is the latest demonstration of our commitment to modernize the way we communicate with Americans from coast-to-coast," Cantor said.
"The WhipCast enables the Whip Team to communicate with the public in a faster, smarter, and more effective way," he said.
McCarthy said "WhipCast is more than just the House Republicans gaining technological ground -- it's a new and better way of communicating."
The WhipCast provides news alerts, audio updates, video features, and other content and is the latest attempt by the Republican Party to chip away at the Democrats on the technology and social media front.
Obama relied heavily on the Internet during his presidential campaign for organizing, fundraising and communicating and has created MySpace, Facebook and Flickr pages and a Twitter feed since entering the White House.
Having lost the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, the Republican Party is gearing up for the 2010 mid-term elections.
(c) 2009 AFP
