Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have been giving each other body blows, sometimes through surrogates, all week. Last night they had a chance to go toe to toe, and they did not let the opportunity go by.

A nice compilation video of the night’s best lines:

There seemed to be far less Twitter traffic during this debate, as most people wonder what there is left to talk about. But, there’s always some good snark to be had if you dig deep enough.

Apparently I missed a GOP debate last night. Last one til Feb 22??? What will I use Twitter for til then?

— Daniel Dennis Jones (@blanket) January 27, 2012

@RickSantorum ‘s 93 year-old Mother “stole the show” @ GOP debate in Jacksonville, Fl last night. Wow, she looked amazing, so youthful!

— Conway-Vogel (@Margaret_Conway) January 27, 2012

The GOP debate last night was a waste of everyone’s time. If Newt or Romney win the Fl primary, it says a lot about the voters in Fl.

— Curtis (@ULshootUrIout) January 27, 2012

The one month GOP debate break made last night’s strong Romney performance even more important.#FLdebate

— Steve Lombardo (@Steve_Lombardo) January 27, 2012

Tonight is last GOP debate for a while. If you still want to watch poor getting swindled, watch one of the pawn shows.

— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) January 26, 2012

I’ve been told there is yet another GOP Debate tonight! This is like being instructed by your dentist that you need a root canal every week.

— The Bill Walton Trip (@NotBillWalton) January 27, 2012

Yes, this is probably the most important GOP debate. It’s not a cliche for once.

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) January 27, 2012

This is the 19th GOP debate. If you’ve seen every one, I don’t know what happened in your life, but I want you to know it gets better.

— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) January 27, 2012

GOP debate highlights: Fat moron argues with idiot Mormon while creepy homophobic sweater vest dude and crazy old guy look on #CNNdebate

— Paul Solomon (@FrankTheDoorman) January 27, 2012

Experian Hitwise Director of Research Heather Doughtery wrote about the Facebook traffic for the presidential candidates this election season and found some encouraging news – if Facebook has anything to say about it – for one Willard Romney and company, at least insofar securing the Republican nomination. The traffic data only leads up to January 21, which was the date of the South Carolina primary so it’s anybody’s guess as to whether I’ll be announcing that Newt “The Gravedigger” Gingrich is the new President of Facebook after Florida’s primary next week.

Regardless, this is where we are now: Romney’s killing it on Facebook. Not only is his official Facebook page getting 1.7x more visits than Ron Paul’s fan page, his closest Republican/Facebook competitor, Romney’s page is netting 2.5x more visitors than Obama’s page. I know the line graph below is a little hard to see, but that red line that’s leaps and bounds ahead of every other line you see? Red is for Romney, and everybody else basically in the gutter looking up at his Facebook star.

If you’re Mitt Romney’s campaign staff and you believe that Facebook is in any way a valid reflection of people’s Real Life behavior and interests, here’s some news to send you to sleep with a smile: people making less than $30,000 are visiting your Facebook page a lot, and people in Ohio are visiting your Facebook page a lot. Why should this make Mitts happy? Because being poor and living in Ohio are two characteristics of the ever-important swing voters who would help decide a general election should Romney obtain the nomination and face Obama.

31.8% of visitors to Romney’s Facebook page in the last four weeks were reported to earn less than $30,000. Furthermore, visitors from Ohio had the highest share of visits in the last four weeks (Utah was closely behind Ohio in shares of visits but that’s Mormon country – Romney’s bread and butter – so that’s not surprising). Whether people just wanna get close with the enemy or are genuinely interested in learning about Romney, he’s pulling in some Facebook interest.

As Dougherty concluded, this is good Facebook news for Romney because it suggests that “social efforts are gaining attention and building an audience on Facebook.” This has been a crazy primary thus far, though, and who knows what the results of the South Carolina primary have done to this race. Also, keep in mind: this is not madness, this is Facebook; where people go when they need to post creepy pictures of their ultrasounds and share the latest frog/wolf/Asian father meme to their dubious friends. And since the third (more?) act of the Newtation is apparently really happening, so we’ll see how everybody’s settled on Facebook after the Florida primary.

In response, a TSA spokesperson had this to say to Politico. You can see that they don’t actually reference Senator Paul:

When an irregularity is found during the TSA screening process, it must be resolved prior to allowing a passenger to proceed to the secure area of the airport. Passengers who refuse to complete the screening process cannot be granted access to the secure area in order to ensure the safety of others traveling.

And now, the TSA is doing some more PR via Twitter, as they have taken to responded to around a dozen major news organizations’ tweets about the incident. They are using the same response in each, saying “This passenger was rebooked on another flight and completed screening without incident.”

Although Rand Paul has yet to comment on the incident via Twitter, Ron Paul is using it as an opportunity to make a campaign promise:

His statement is as follows:

The police state in this country is growing out of control. One of the ultimate embodiments of this is the TSA that gropes and grabs our children, our seniors, and our loved ones and neighbors with disabilities. The TSA does all of this while doing nothing to keep us safe.

That is why my ‘Plan to Restore America,’ in additional to cutting $1 trillion dollars in federal spending in one year, eliminates the TSA.

We must restore the freedom and respect for liberty that once made American the greatest nation in human history. I am deeply committed to doing that as President of the United States.

Both Ron and Rand Paul have been staunch opponents of the TSA for some time now. We will update this story when more becomes available.

Moira Bagley, the junior Kentucky Senator’s Communications Director, just tweeted this:

Rand Paul’s father Ron Paul, who you might know as a Presidential candidate, also tweeted about the event, referring to an “anomaly” regarding the body scanner:

Both of the Pauls have been critical in the past of the TSA’s patdowns and other practices, referring to them as government overreach. Speaking to a TSA official in 2011, Rand Paul said “[my constituents] are still quite unhappy with you guys as well as myself and a lot of other Americans who think you’ve gone overboard, you’re missing the boat on terrorism because you’re doing these invasive searches on six-year-old girls.”

It also appears that this incident is interfering with an event that Paul was supposed to attend today. Paul’s last tweet says that the Senator was on his way to March For Life in DC:

Here’s how the Twitterverse responded to this rash of nods from all four remaining GOP candidates.

Newt Gingrich answered the SOPA question first, saying, “I favor freedom.” He said that there are already tools and avenues of recourse in place to allow copyright holders to sue and stop piracy domestically. Gingrich continued:

“The idea that we’re going to preemptively have the government start censoring the Internet on behalf of giant corporations’ economic interests strikes me as exactly the wrong thing to do.”

Mitt Romney chimed in:

“I think he got it just about right… The law as written is far too intrusive, far too expansive, far too threatening to freedom of speech and movement of information across the Internet. It would have a potentially depressing impact on one of the fastest growing industries in America, which is the Internet and all those industries connected to it.”

Ron Paul pointed out that the others were late to the party:

“I was the first Republican to sign on with a host of Democrats to oppose this law… The Republicans, unfortunately, have been on the wrong side of this issue.”

Rick Santorum, while agreeing with everyone else that SOPA goes too far, did have a personal axe to grind.

“The Internet is not a free zone where anybody can do anything they want to do and trample the rights of other people… The idea that ‘anything goes’ on the Internet, where did that come from? Where in America does it say that ‘anything goes’?”

Of course, Rick Santorum has been embroiled in his own personal fight with Google and difficulties on the Internet.

But, the Republicans aren’t Facebook official with their Romney relationship status yet and so we’re still supposed to play along as if we still believe in Santa Claus. Contributing to the charade that this weekend’s primary is meaningful, social media scientist (can you actually major in that now?) Dan Zarrella took a look at the Twitter activity regarding the final four candidates – Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich – to see how each of them are doing among the crucial Twitter constituency. Using the multiple metrics examined by Zarrella, let’s score how each candidate did and just get this primary election over with:

Most followers: Gingrich.
Average number of Retweets: Paul.
Retweets-per-follower: Paul.
Reply percentage: Gingrich.
Link percentage: Paul.
Mentions per hour: Romney.
Followers per mention: Romney.

Final Score: Santorum, 0; Gingrich, 2; Romney, 2; Paul, 3.

Ron Paul wins! He’s the next President of the United States of Twitter! Come on down! Although, Paul’s had a pretty good relationship with the Twitterscape as the primaries have lurched to inevitabile Romney-vision.

(Oh, and as a conciliatory note, in case people on Twitter weren’t aware, there’s a guy named Rick Santorum running for president, too.)

If only everything were that easy, right? Right. Unfortunately, this is the real world where we still have to grunt and sweat under a weary life of real elections, so take a look at the full infographic to actually understand what’s happening on Twitter with the Drab Four.

The user comments:

Ron Paul is the only authentic conservative in this race, and the only one capable of bringing authentic change to Washington. He is the only sole alternative to flip-floppers responsible for the costly mistakes of the past.

Despite the plural of “floppers”, Jon Huntsman is the only other candidate mentioned in the video. And, this is the only video that “NHLiberty4Paul” has posted.

Ron Paul has denounced the video. In fact, he has filed a trademark and defamation lawsuit in San Francisco federal court against the user who posted it. Since the user is anonymous, the suit is a “John Doe” suit, whereby an action is initiated, with room to fill in the name of the defendant once it becomes known (possibly by subpoena).

The complaint states:

“This is a classic case of dirty politics resulting from the unlawful use in commerce of an underhanded and deceptive advertisement designed to tarnish plaintiff’s reputation.”

A couple of things stick out about these actions. First of all, the wording seems to indicate that Ron Paul does not believe this poster to be a legitimate supporter of his. Rather he thinks he has a “troll”. From Urban Dictionary, a troll is:

“One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument.”

In other words, Paul may believe that this person is not a supporter, but wishes to damage Paul’s reputation by association with the kinds of provocative statements in the video.

Paul may also want to distance himself from the poster in the eyes of the public. Since Ron Paul is a public figure, it is unlikely that a defamation lawsuit of this kind will be successful. But, to the voting public, this move may demonstrate Paul’s seriousness about not being associated with these statements.

This quote usually comes from a popular or recent article about the person that also appears in the Google News search results. The quote is automatically generated by a Google algorithm – not hand-picked. And as we know all too well, there are often flaws in algorithms.

This leads us to Ron Paul, and the unfortunate misquote that adorned his search results a couple weeks ago. Barry Schwartz pointed me to a Google News Help thread where one user had captured a result with a particularly racist misquote from the Presidential hopeful:

The outraged user commented:

This was never spoken by Ron Paul, and should not be displaying Inaccurate and Misleading racist quote to Millions of Google users. Can anyone post a news article with “questionable content” and then have Google use it to deface an individual just because of one authors prejudice? Please remove this, it has been showing for days, I would hope Paul himself would take legal action against Google for something of this nature.

There’s a good point in there. This kind of thing could be seen by millions and millions of Google users, especially if it was plastered at the top of the results for multiple days. Of course, Google didn’t do this on purpose to smear Ron Paul, but there’s no denying that this kind of accidental misquote displayed so prominently could really do damage to a public figure – especially a politician running for the highest office in the land.

This quote is no longer displayed when one searches for Ron Paul within Google News -

But it got me thinking. This Google News feature may have the problem of providing some serious confusion, misquoting, and out of context quoting on occasion. I mean right now, if you search Mitt Romney within Google News, you get this quote at the very top:

To be fair, that’s not a misquote – Romney did say that. But that quote has been at the center of a huge controversy within the Republican party and a focal point of attacks against the former Governor for the past week. The whole controversy centers on the fact that Romney supporters feel that quote was taken out of context. It’s kind of ironic to see it presented at the top of a Google search without any context.

Other, smaller problems can occur as well. Take for instance the confusion created when you search for Joe Biden within Google News:

That quote is cut off and therefore it is unclear who he is talking about. To a casual searcher who doesn’t quite grasp that section’s function, it might appear that it’s just saying that Joe Biden himself will “double down” on those policies.

Then again, sometimes the algorithm works splendidly:

As you probably already know, this little Google problem pales in comparison to the one facing another GOP hopeful.

Most candidates keep their noses clean. “Macaca” moments will sink a ship, and all the faster if they’ve been re-tweeted and embedded before you get sober enough to remove the post.

Some tweets are pretty revealing about the candidate or their plans. For example, Mitt Romney seems to care little about the other also-rans. He’s focused on the Big Man himself, President Obama…

Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich aims at Romney…

…and, compares himself to Reagan.

Rick Santorum is just happy that someone is talking about him without mentioning Google.

Rick Perry doesn’t like seeing Santorum all that gleeful. Got to bring him down a peg…

And, while he’s at it, let’s throw rocks at Romney and Gingrich, too…

Not to be out-Reaganed by Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann piped up…

And, she planted her flag heading into Iowa.

Then, on January 4, the day after the Iowa caucus…

Well, she hasn’t tweeted since. I wonder why?

Herman Cain also went out with a whimper back on December 5…

But, Ron Paul is the sassy one, dissing Newt…

And, the most “oh, snap!” tweet to date, for Jon Huntsman after Iowa…

Huntsman did not tweet a reply, but someone within earshot of him did, and he re-tweeted it…

Raawwwr!

With South Carolina coming up soon, it’ll be fun to see if anyone accuses another candidate of having an extramarital affair that resulted in a black baby.

Naaahhh. No one would do that.