JEFFERSON CITY — Roy Blunt is no neophyte when it comes to the hand-to-hand combat it takes to win elections.

The seven-term congressman knows how tough it can be to win statewide in Missouri. Blunt — who is seeking the Republican nomination to run for U.S. Senate — has coasted to his past few victories in a safe, southwest Missouri district. But he's lost two bruising statewide races, one for lieutenant governor and one in a primary for governor, to go with a victory as secretary of state.

It's one reason he's embracing new technology that is changing how elections are run and how they're covered by the press.

Like most politicians these days, Blunt is on Twitter. He (or his staff) is using the social media to try to create an advantage when spreading his message.

"It has a capacity to get people to a place quicker than we've ever had before," Blunt told me. Indeed, all summer long, Republicans and Tea Partiers have used Twitter and other social media to mobilize opponents of Democratic proposals on energy and health care. Blunt has taken notice.

More than 13 months away from the nationally watched contest between Blunt and Secretary of State Robin Carnahan — the expected Democratic nominee — there already have been two high-profile examples of how social media can affect the election narrative.

I play a small, and sheepish, role in one of them.

In July, colleague Bill Lambrecht wrote a piece about Blunt's role in the national health care debate. In Lambrecht's story, Blunt took a verbal shot at Carnahan, who has taken the political strategy of not weighing in with firm positions on the ever-changing legislation.

Lambrecht had been unable to get a comment from Carnahan before he left for vacation, so an editor asked me to reach her. It turns out that Carnahan, like Lambrecht, was on vacation.

I thought nothing of it, and included a comment from her spokesman, pointing out that she was out of town. I didn't ask where she was.

Using social media such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as conservative blogs in Missouri and Washington, D.C., Blunt allies spun a new narrative.

"Where's Robin?" was born, the result of a throwaway sentence and a candidate's reluctance to engage early in the election cycle.

The question "went viral," the catch-phrase for using social media to give a story legs. Keep in mind, this was shortly after South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's unfortunate and highly public trip, saying he was "walking the Appalachian Trail," while he was instead in South America having an affair. So the story — at least on Twitter — had a certain panache.

Fast-forward to earlier this month with. Democrats provided their own example of turning a nonstory into a story using the same Internet techniques.

Giving a speech to the Values Voters Summit, Blunt chose to make a point about the ever-changing nature of debate in the Beltway by telling a story of monkeys in India moving the golf balls of British soldiers on new golf courses they had built.

To say the least, the words were inartful, considering the context of the racially tinged debate over the presidency of Barack Obama. Democrats — again, in blogs and social media — pounced.

Blunt and his allies struck back, noting the congressman had told the same story years before, perhaps several times, long before the country had its first black president. They posted video and returned allegations of racism on those who had tossed the charge their way.

In the new, hyper-sensitive world of 24-hour news cycles in which campaigns actually pay surrogates to post anonymously on blogs, the two examples provide a case study of precisely what Blunt has recognized.

It is 13 months before the election. At this time in 2006, when Missouri had another nationally watched Senate race between Claire McCaskill and Jim Talent, the race was just barely beginning.

But the election game has changed, and so has the news cycle, giving campaigns the opportunity to win or lose day by day, even hour by hour.

The new media, one way or another, will play a role in electing the next U.S. senator from Missouri, much as it has played a role in fomenting Tea Party dissent all summer long.

In the long run, will it matter?

Check Twitter on election night in 2010, and I'll let you know.