An ideological debate over YouTube debate

Some Republicans fear their candidates' hesitation exposes real problems within the party.

Last update: August 1, 2007 - 9:01 PM

When the two leading Republican presidential candidates started to squirm about attending a Sept. 17 YouTube debate, they faced a surprising backlash from their ideological allies in the blogosphere.

The candidates' failure to embrace the new format, which the Democrats participated in last week, has prompted public soul-searching by some of the GOP's most loyal supporters.

The candidates, they say, reinforced a notion already bedeviling their side: that Republicans don't "get" the Web.

"The YouTube debate snub is the symptom, not the disease," said Patrick Ruffini, the e-campaign director for the Republican National Committee from 2005 until earlier this year. The "disease," he said, is the Republicans' failure to convey that "the online community matters to them."

The two candidates, Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney, are now trying to work out a deal with CNN for the debate.

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.

Andrew Sullivan, a conservative blogger writing on theatlantic.com, put it this way: "The current old white men running for the GOP already seem from some other planet. Ducking YouTube after the Dems did so well will look like a party uncomfortable with the culture and uncomfortable with democracy."

Others, however, have argued the candidates should not participate, in part because they do not trust CNN to be fair.

NEW YORK TIMES

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