GOPers Bail on YouTube Debate?
Ruffini:
“

Over the last few hours, I’d been hearing buzz that GOP candidates were going wobbly on the CNN/YouTube debate. I was dismissive. Given the huge earned media hit the Democrats got this week, the fact that even the highly partisan questioners acquitted themselves better than Chris Matthews did in the first debate, and the sponsorship of the powerful Republican Party of Florida, I didn’t think the GOP candidates would make the political mistake of passing up it up.

I was apparently wrong. Rudy Giuliani is unlikely to participate, according to an official source.

And Mitt Romney wouldn’t commit, dissing the “snowman question.”

Mitt Romney didn’t like some of the more frivolous trappings and told the New Hampshire Union Leader that “I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman.”

I would now expect numerous candidates to bail, just like they did at Ames, citing the lack of a frontrunner.

This is a big mistake. The Democrats are afraid to answer questions from Big Bad Fox News Anchors, and the Republicans are afraid to answer questions from regular people. Which is worse?

It’s stuff like this that will set the GOP back an election cycle or more on the Internet. No matter the snazzy Web features and YouTube videos they may put up, if they’re fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea of interacting with real people online, what’s the point?

Having spent the better part of a decade working at the intersection of politics and the Web, I can’t help but feel of a deep, deep sense of dismay that we’re missing something so basic. This is EXACTLY why I am afraid that we will be outraised by $100 million or more in 2008.

Yes, some of the questions on Monday were trivial. Yes, they were partisan. (I expect many of the 9/17 questioners to be partisan Republicans.) Yes, they were messy. But so is democracy. And the fact that some place so much faith in the broken mainstream media over a benign format like this one says a lot about the difficult straits the Republicans are in right now.

Perhaps the rest of the field will prove me wrong

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I bet Ron Paul will happily participate in th at You Tube debate. In fact, my gut feeling is that the frontrunners in the GOP are afraid of another Paul Blowout on the web. He has a debate style, clarity of views, and no holds barred affinity for the Constitution that is very reminiscent of Alan Keyes, and we all know what the GOP did to Keyes during a key republican debate.

“In Atlanta in 1996, GOP Presidential candidate Alan Keyes was invited to a televised candidate debate in Atlanta, but when he did not place in the top several candidates in the New Hampshire primary voting, the invitation was rescinded, and he was arrested when trying to gain entry.”

I’d be scared too.
Jenny Hatch