"GOP's tech hurdle: They don't always get it"

[applegrove]

GOP's tech hurdle: They don't always get it

By Tony Romm at POLITICO


http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/2016-election-republican-technology-hurdle-113200.html

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Republican presidential prospects like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio have tapped the tech industry’s fat wallets and mined its big-data expertise — but these 2016 hopefuls couldn’t be further from Silicon Valley when it comes to policy.

A series of major divides — from the fate of net neutrality to the future of surveillance reform — still splits this trio of prominent pols from Internet giants in the country’s tech heartland, which helped catapult President Barack Obama to well-funded victories in 2008 and 2012.

Web companies, for example, are pressing the Federal Communications Commission for new rules that would require Internet providers to treat all online traffic equally. But Cruz, Paul and Rubio are anything but neutral on net neutrality — they hate it, much less any government regulation at all.

Republicans also have a rift with the tech industry over domestic spying. More than a year of work by tech leaders like Facebook and Google to curtail the National Security Agency’s surveillance authorities failed this month in part because Rubio joined Paul, usually a supporter, in voting against it. And tech executives who have clamored for more high-skilled workers have heard only criticism lately from most Republicans, who slammed Obama after he issued an executive order on immigration reform.



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