Yesterday when news of the House GOP Uprising began to leak out, word travelled quickly through GOP circles via Twitter, an increasingly ubiquitous application of new media that allows registered users to track ‘tweets’ from other users, while interjecting your own, via the web, text message, blackberry, or a host of other devices.

U.S. Congressman John Culberson of Texas, one of the House GOP’s most ambitious adopters of Twitter, used his Blackberry to send 140 character bursts of information out into the world, where it was picked up by a handful of State Parties and other activists across the nation.  From there, e-mail blasts went out, fellow GOPers were called, and the word spread like wildfire before FOXNEWS and other outlets finally picked up on the uprising.

The show sent the Speaker’s office into a tizzy, in which they refused to let the American people see the Republicans at work by shutting off the C-SPAN cameras, according to Politico.

C-SPAN has just issued this statement: “A number of media organizations have incorrectly referred to ‘C-SPAN cameras’ being turned off and not providing televised coverage of the GOP House members’ post-adjournment protest on energy policy being held on the House floor on Friday afternoon. Please note that cameras in the House chamber are under the control of the Speaker of the House and that all media organizations, including C-SPAN, wishing to cover events in the chamber must use the official House TV feed.

It’s a lousy day in your office when even C-SPAN is dropping rebuttal releases on you.

At 5pm last night, the uprising ended and the oddly humorous amalgamation of witnesses: “Boy Scouts, members of the German army, stray tourists and even members in shorts and t-shirts (Politico)” went home.  The point was made that the House Democrats couldn’t/wouldn’t stomach legitimate votes on matters of importance to American families. 

The real winner of the day was the House Republican caucus, for showing that Twitter, whose nifty little service allowed for the instant dissemination of messages across the nation to people able to act on it, and other new media applications have a critical role to play in the political process.  It will be interesting to see how many Republican Members of Congress spend a bit of their five week recess learning to Twitter.