Republican presidential candidates — notably not presently counting former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — have wisely reversed course and decided to participate in the Nov. 28 debate hosted by CNN, the Florida GOP and YouTube, which made its political mark with an inquiring snowman.
Among those who have committed to participate are former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Presumably, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson will also be on stage as an announced candidate. Romney thinks it’s demeaning showbiz, as if the rest of the campaign isn’t, so expect him to be there, too.
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Debate host Anderson Cooper of CNN will head the selection of YouTubed questions for the candidates. If a candidate thinks a question is biased or inappropriate, he should challenge it forthrightly. Smart candidates ought to relish the opportunity to take an obnoxiously biased recorded question and turn it into a home run.
Part of the backstory here is a growing concern among many on the right that hesitation by GOP candidates to agree to a YouTube debate was emblematic of the party’s seemingly widening Web 2.0 technological deficit. The GOP that made talk radio its own in the 1990s has been slow about learning to use the Internet to transform politics and government for the better. By making both more transparent and accountable, the Internet can be an incredibly powerful tool for the GOP to expose the failures of Big Government, while encouraging a host of revolutionary ways to bring government at all levels much closer to voters. Those on the right who understand this reality too often find themselves on the outside looking in with the GOP establishment.
While the GOPers were dithering over the YouTube debate, all of the Democratic candidates were in Chicago for YearlyKos last week unapologetically sucking up to a bunch of mostly affluent, middle-aged liberal white guys with blogs, who in turn were sucking up to the eponymous 36-year-old Kos, a cult figure in left-wing blogging circles known to his parents as Markos Moulitsas Zuniga.
These Netroots political activists have used their mastery of the mouse click to become the loudest voice within the Democratic party. Democratic candidates have no choice but to curry favor with the Kos crowd because the bloggers help shape the mainstream media’s campaign reporting.
Curiously, these same Democratic candidates who had no compunctions about answering questions from YouTube performance artists, however, still get the heebie-jeebies about taking queries from Brit Hume and other Fox News reporters and journalistas. As we’ve previously noted in this space, the candidate who can’t handle a high hard one from Hume definitely isn’t ready to face Osama bin Laden or the nuclear-obsessed nutcases running Iran and North Korea.
