Squirming GOP candidates bagging YouTube debate get backlash from bloggers on the Right

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Republicans Shun Debate, and Right Cries Out
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: August 1, 2007

When the leading Republican presidential candidates started to squirm last week about attending a Sept. 17 YouTube debate, in which the public would ask questions via video, there was a surprising backlash from the world of Republican and conservative bloggers.

The Republican candidates’ failure to embrace the new format, which the Democrats participated in last week, has prompted a public soul-searching in the blogosphere by some of the party’s most loyal supporters. The candidates, they say, reinforced a notion already bedeviling their side: that Republicans don’t “get” the Web. While the Republicans have mastered talk radio, the Democrats have been ahead in using the Web for fund-raising, organizing and energizing the grassroots.

“The YouTube debate snub is the symptom, not the disease,” said Patrick Ruffini, a prominent Republican blogger and the e-campaign director for the Republican National Committee from 2005 until earlier this year.

The “disease,” he said in an interview, is the Republicans’ failure to convey that “the online community matters to them,” even if they have active Web sites and are using them to raise money. He has helped start an online petition to urge the candidates to participate in the YouTube debate.

The candidates are now trying to patch up the mess. Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney, two of the leading Republicans, had said last week that the Sept. 17 date interfered with their fund-raising schedules and Mr. Romney said the video format was demeaning. Today, an aide to Mr. Giuliani said the campaign was working with CNN, which is to show the debate, to find a mutually agreeable date, while an aide to Mr. Romney said they were waiting for CNN to propose a new date and would then consider participating....Still, the damage may have been done in reinforcing a stereotype of Republicans as stuck in a time warp, writing off younger voters and afraid to face an unpredictable public that has a negative opinion of the current Republican White House and the war in Iraq....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/us/politics/01cnd-repubs.html?hp

[damntexdem]

1. Very true: “The YouTube debate snub is the symptom, not the disease,”

The disease is Republicanism itself.

[Beetwasher]

2. LOL! Ha! They Can HAVE Talk Radio!

We control the tubes! That's the future! Ha Ha, suckers! Al Gore is a frikkin' genius!!

[MADem]

4. WE CONTROL THE TUBES!!!!

Brilliant!!!!

[MADem]

3. Mr. Romney said the video format was demeaning.

:rofl:

DEMEANING, eh???

But magic underwear is uplifting?

And polygamy is just history?

Mitt the Shitt is just pissed off because of that newfangled thing called VIDEO TAPE, that recording him flip-flopping all over the damned place about every issue he now claims to hold near, dear, and rock-solid close to his heart!!

What a lame baaaastid!!!! And a COWARD, too!!!

[NYC Liberal]

5. Funny, because Mitt already answers questions submitted to him via

YouTube, with his own YouTube videos.

'Course he gets to select which ones he answers and obviously writes out the answers beforehand.

[EST]

6. You're kiddin', right?

He really does that?
Dayum, all this time I thought he could read minds or was a geneeass or something. :)

He is one arrogant bastard who just once in a while lets his guard down and you can see the contempt sliming through.

Of course, it probably would make one pretty arrogant and contemptuous to be able to get a pretty fair percentage of one's adopted family to follow you around like a bunch of dogs, sniffing your identity badge.

[Massacure]

7. Republicans: Don't know how to debate on several Internets at the same time.

:rofl:

[DeepModem Mom]

11. Good one! nt

[opihimoimoi]

8. They FLOPPED and now they wanna FLIP???Too Little Too Late...they are wussies

Cowards and DULL too boot.....all are losers....if I wuz there...I would drop out...go AWOL or sumthin

[ima_sinnic]

9. ha ha -- inability/unwillingness to adapt is the fast lane to extinction

radio is so 20th century -- not even late 20th century, more like early to mid.
so keep drooling into your radio mikes, repuke neanderthals! your market is already past its prime, aging more and more every day --at this rate you will be history very quickly.
the future is OURS!

[hisownpetard]

10. The Repubs just don't get it!! The reason the YouTube snub is so

egregious is NOT because it shows they are out of step with the internet(s).
It shows how out of touch they are with the people!
They are so used to spitting out the usual memorized talking points,
controlling who is in their audiences, and staging their appearances
that the thought of answering a question extemporaneously, from an
unknown source, in front of real people, makes them apoplectic.

What they fear is the honesty and immediacy of the internet, where
a film clip says 100 times more than all the phony words they can
string together ever will.

[riqster]

12. They don't know how to answer questions from the People

...only from the Pod Pundits of the MSM, who will not ask them anything too difficult or embarrasing.

[Uncle Joe]

13. I would suggest to Patrick Ruffini,

that it's not just the on line community that doesn't matter to the Republican Party, the vast majority of the American People don't matter to them. However the on line community can let it's feelings be known in a convenient and efficient manner, when they're snubbed.

With the American People in general it's more difficult because their voices are muted or distorted by the Republican allied corporate media, also this same corporate media glosses over the Republican Candidates thereby camouflaging snubs,lies, mistakes and betrayals. In short, the people that depend solely on the corporate media for their information, have been dumbed down regarding our political leaders.