Monday afternoon the GOP spin machine cranked into high gear and began barfing out news releases and research documents about the Obama Waffle comment.

"Chomping down on sausage and waffles at Glider's Diner in Scranton today, with his Pennsylvania BFF (Sen. Bob Casey) at his side, Obama avoided commenting on former President Jimmy Carter's meeting with Hamas. Asked by a reporter if he had heard that Carter reported a positive outcome from the meeting, Obama looked sternly at the reporter in question and said, 'Why can't I just eat my waffle?'"

A lot of people have asked me why I give the GOP such a hard time about their online efforts. The party, whether others would admit it, has developed some very cool toys. The trouble is, nobody is using them. The problem, I have maintained, is the fundamental disconnect between political communications and marketing. This perfectly illustrates that point.

Since I am often accused of bitching w/o offering constructive comments, I'm turning over a new leaf. From now on, when I see specific examples of how I think we went wrong, I'll point it out and offer ideas of other things we could have done to capitalize.

Given this gift, for example, the first instinct was to distribute a press release. You might ask, "What's wrong with that?" Well, let's start with the fact that the story was already in the press? So who was the release aimed at? If the media is already covering the story, pushing it out to the media is kind of pointless.

If the press release, distributed via their website and at least one of their mailing lists, was aimed at activists, then the format was all wrong. These sterile releases just aren't very compelling.

What should they have done differently?

They could have capitalized on this online in a number of ways. If you're looking to make a splash with this, here are five suggestions:

• If you're John McCain, wherever you are, convene a breakfast of local bloggers the next morning. Call it "The Waffle Side chat" and ask them to come sit down with you and talk issues over breakfast. The media will be in tow already, so they'll not only recap the Obama incident, but portray you in a positive light. You get to score the hit on Obama, but you also get the positive light on you.
• Have the candidate begin a video blog series. He can take questions over the site and every morning, over waffles, answer a few questions submitted online. They could have had the form up that day (earning media on the blogs already chatting about the waffle story). They then would earn media a day or two later when the first episode hits (thereby dragging waffle-gate into a multi-day story.)
• Make this a list building exercise. Quickly deploy a micro-site with messaging that drives the point. "We'll take your questions between now and Friday. When Obama finishes his breakfast Friday morning, we'll meet him outside the restaurant with you stack of questions and ask if he's willing to answer the people's questions now that he's finished his waffles."
• Tie this to the already open-ended storyline you've tried to create about Obama's comments to SF donors, and equate it to aristocratic snobbery. Instead of "Let them eat cake", it's "Let me eat waffles." It may be a stretch, but that's never stopped people in politics before.
• Finally, given their propensity to level the charge of waffling against Democrats, I can't believe that somewhere in the GOP there isn't a waffle costume. Have some CRs follow Obama town to town with the waffle costume and a big sign that says, "Eat me! Then answer some questions!"

  (I admit, this is a freebie more for people who are not campaign or RNC types. I imagine they'd want to keep their hands clean on this one.)

These are just a couple of ways to make hay out of this story without a single press release. It's the difference between running a campaign through the media and running a campaign through the people. Given our distrust of the media, I'm constantly amazed the former is almost always our first response.

Something along these lines would also serve to attract attention, and build an audience. Both are things the GOP needs desperately to do right now.