I can imagine few things scarier than being followed by Karl Rove. Pack of rabid dogs? Nothing. Militant cannibalistic survivalists who haven’t eating in weeks? That’s fine. A herd of angry elephants on skateboards (you know, so they’re really fast)? Still better. So I can’t help but feel for Meghan McCain, who says she’s being followed by Karl Rove. Crazy stalker. Okay she’s being followed on her Twitter, but still… it’s unsettling at best.

Karl Rove is giving Meghan McCain the creeps. Ewww. “Karl Rove follows me on Twitter. That’s creepy,” wrote McCain, 24, on the DailyBeast website… McCain wrote she joined Twitter a few months ago because it allowed her to share the “less serious” and “humorously uncensored moments” of her life. Twitter, the wildly popular microblogging platform, constrains messaging to 140 characters or less.

“But there’s also been a downside: I am now being followed by Karl Rove, and my local sheriff, and God knows how many other political pundits,” McCain wrote. “We need to take Twitter back from the creepy people.” McCain said she’s intrigued by Rove’s Twitter feeds because at the White House Rove was viewed as this “inaccessible man-behind-the-curtain figure,” and, now, he’s sending out these public messages numerous times a day.

But “to be honest, I find Rove’s Tweets boring,” McCain wrote. “Sometimes he takes questions; other times he talks about his appearances on cable news and other shows. But he doesn’t say anything substantive.” McCain wrote she suspected Rove has a “ghost Twitterer,” meaning she believes an assistant is updating his feeds instead of Rove doing it himself personally. While McCain acknowledged that Rove’s Tweets seem to reveal a “softer side” to him, she believes he’s being “disingenuous” about his real self… M cCain praised Twitter as a means of communication. Still, she wrote, “I can’t shake the fact that Karl Rove is following me-it can be creepy. So watch out.”

[From the NY Daily News]

I love that even Republicans find Karl Rove to be creepy. Meghan’s being sort of immature in her response, but at least she’s candid and honest, and that’s nice. In related news, on Saturday she delivered a speech to the Log Cabin Republicans (an organization for gay Republicans) on the ways she thinks the GOP needs to change.

Speaking to an affectionate crowd of Log Cabin Republicans on Saturday evening, Meghan McCain ridiculed the party her father headed this past election, declaring that “old school Republicans” were “scared shitless” of the changing landscape. The Senator’s daughter, who has quickly become something of an iconic figure in the gay conservative community since the end of the election, took repeated shots at the GOP for its antiquated mores.

“I feel too many Republicans want to cling to past successes,” said McCain. “There are those who think we can win the White House and Congress back by being ‘more’ conservative. Worse, there are those who think we can win by changing nothing at all about what our party has become. They just want to wait for the other side to be perceived as worse than us. I think we’re seeing a war brewing in the Republican Party. But it is not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is between the future and the past.”

Later, she called out those officials in the Republican tent who insist that tactical improvements, technology and brass-knuckle politicking are the path back to relevance.

“Simply embracing technology isn’t going to fix our problem,” she said. “Republicans using Twitter and Facebook isn’t going to miraculously make people think we’re cool again. Breaking free from obsolete positions and providing real solutions that don’t divide our nation further will. That’s why some in our party are scared. They sense the world around them is changing and they are unable to take the risk to jump free of what’s keeping our party down.”

[From the Huffington Post]

Meghan also called out Ann Coulter for being “overly partisan and divisive.” She’s obviously a more moderate Republican – and she did declare herself a proud member of the GOP. You can read more of McCain’s comments on the Huffington Post link above. It seems that – when taken in total – she’s asking for some dramatically sweeping changes within the party. It’ll be interesting to see if that comes over time or all at once. Or at all.

Here’s Meghan in July. Images thanks to Pacific Coast News.