Huffington Magazine Issue 32 | Page 53

ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES BREATHING FIRE going to take them all that far.” Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), in a December interview with The Huffington Post, said there are cultural differences between the two parties that have held the GOP back in terms of organizing and coalition building. “One of the characteristics of the right is that it’s much harder to have social networking, because people on the right like being iconoclastic,” Gingrich said. “On the left you have a natural grouping. You have the sense of, ‘What’s this week’s cause? And HUFFINGTON 01.20.13 we did turtles this week. What can we do next week?’” Reed, however, dismissed the idea that what motivated Democrats was all that different from what might motivate Republicans. “If there was one thing we did different than anybody else it was just resources. Jim Messina and those guys said early on I’m going to bet a lot on technology, and that was it. I don’t think this is a uniquely Democrat thing either,” Reed said. “If you’ve grown up on the Internet, or if you’ve been on the Internet for a long time and built software there, you want to give tools to the users because they will do your job for you.” A cutout of Mitt Romney is loaded into a truck by workers after a U.S. embassy election party at a local hotel in Delhi on Nov. 7, 2012.