Politico's idea of news: John McCain, Twitter genius. Because it's pure genius to tweet stuff like this:

But they don't stop there.

But it’s not just McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, who’s the GOP standard-bearer for social media. In a social media game mastered by the campaign of Barack Obama, the study found Republicans have “struck back,” with GOP senators averaging more than 5.5 IQ points higher than their Democratic counterparts.

Of the seven senators who scored “genius” social media rankings, four were Republicans: McCain — the top tweeter, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Scott Brown of Massachusetts and John Cornyn of Texas.

DeMint is a tea party force, and Brown rode significant grass-roots tea party support to upset Martha Coakley for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat last winter. Cornyn is the head of the Senate GOP campaign organization.

Wow. A Tea Party force. And a Twitter genius. Evidently the authors of the official academic study of Senators' Twitter use didn't take the gaming aspect into account when they came up with this study. Nor did they particularly care what the content was.

But hey -- props to the staffer behind the McCain account, who at least knows enough about trolling to get Politico's attention, eh? They don't really think John McCain tweets from his iPhone do they? He barely understands his Blackberry.