Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan Forgot This Key Detail About Running for President

[unhappycamper]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/2016-presidential-campaign-website-domain-names



They are not masters of their own domain. These potential presidential contenders need to improve their website game fast.

Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan Forgot This Key Detail About Running for President
—By Patrick Caldwell
| Fri May 16, 2014 6:00 AM EDT

There's a long checklist of tasks a politician must complete before she or he can run for president. You've got to court the top political consultants to your cause. Wine and dine at party fundraisers in New Hampshire. Familiarize yourself with all 99 damned counties in Iowa. Maybe write a book. But in the modern age, securing an online presence is near the top of the list.

The first thing candidates have to do to stake their claim on the internet is purchase all relevant web domain names, including any combination of the candidate's name and the election year. Would-be-supporters look online to find out more information about candidates, but if the candidate's website doesn't have an easy-to-guess address and it's not high up in Google rankings, voters might get a skewed story. That's a lesson former presidential candidate Rick Santorum learned the hard way after sex advice columnist Dan Savage gamed Google so that a nasty neologism for Santorum's name was one of the first results to pop up when people did a search for the Christian conservative. Detractors like Savage, opportunists trying to make a buck, and political opponents can be quick to snatch up valuable domains to exploit.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has set up a string of dummy websites that look like they're for individual Democratic candidates but actually collect donations for the GOP's cause. And Time's Zeke Miller recently mapped out the burgeoning universe of Hillary Clinton website squatters. A few prominent domains were being sold (for upwards of $14,000), while HillaryClinton2016.com, founded by a group of grad students, is an LLC hawking knockoff Clinton merchandise.

But what about the potential Republican 2016ers? By this point most of them aren't hiding their inclinations to run for president. Some are already ahead of the game. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is up for reelection in 2016, so he has a convenient excuse for owning RandPaul2016.com. Go to Jindal2016.com and you're redirected to the Louisiana governor's main website. Sen. Marco Rubio's PAC has claimed MarcoRubio.com, while MarcoRubio2016.com is registered anonymously, perhaps by the Florida senator or one of his campaign aides.

[MisterP]

1. this article's saying their chronic masturbators, correct?