This is priceless:

The Republican party took down its innovative link-shortening tool Tuesday for several hours after pranksters had a field day using the tool to associate the GOP with bondage sites.

As part of its new media strategy, the Republican party launched a new site called GOP.am on Monday. It’s a URL shortener designed to make it easy for conservative web surfers to exchange links to web pages.

Pranksters almost immediately began using the service to link to controversial or ironically intended websites, such as the official site of the American Communist Party, a bondage website and a webpage advertising a sex toy in the likeness of Barack Obama. GOP.am apparently started blocking such links at some point Tuesday morning, and the GOP.am homepage was taken offline.

I must admit that I joined in the fun with this link. Balloon Juice also had a lot of fun with it. Besides all that fun, I really think this speaks volumes to the lack of understanding the GOP has when it comes to the internet. People are going to do things like this and your best bet is to just accept it and move on.