Like Mitt Romney on Facebook. Follow Paul Ryan on Twitter.

Welcome to Chapter XXXVIII of the GOP’s ongoing “We Didn’t Get Our Message Out” soap opera.  You know the drill.  Putting lipstick on that butt-ugly GOPig didn’t help, so the obvious answer is:   More lipstick.  A different shade of lipstick.  Be sitting in a different position when you apply the lipstick.  Something.  Anything.

According to the two co-founders of Red Edge, a digital strategy group, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would have won the 2012 election if only they had made better use of social media.

Co-founder Bret Jacobson said:

“If you had run a really competent, really aggressive digital campaign, you probably could have won an Electoral College vote.  The difference is roughly 450,000 in a couple swing states and you could more than make up for that difference.”

He said the Obama campaign was “incredibly good at empowering people to receive and share information” on the Internet, particularly Facebook.

“They were able to specifically reach out and… help identify these people who need to register to vote.  And it turns out that after a million people logged in, they actually yielded a million real world voter registrations and votes from those people, which is really powerful stuff.”

And now Red Edge wants to bring “Internet culture into the Republican culture.”  In order to do that they need a “tech-savvy candidate who can build a strong digital following.”

The Digital GOP’s Great White Hope?  Rand Paul.  The other Red Edge co-founder, Ian Spencer, said:

“In terms of the grassroots support his father [Ron Paul] has enjoyed, many of whom also support him, I think he's in a kind of unique position to really make some waves online...because there's so many small dollar donors who, who went to Ron and who may now go to Rand.”

Hopefully, Republican campaign managers will master Facebook and Twitter just when those media have faded away and been replaced by the next Internet trend.

In the meantime, please visit Rand Paul at MySpace.