print
email
delicious
digg
technoratiYou're right Patrick and David, real people shouldn't scare Republicans. Plenty of working and middle class people self-identify as Republicans. But do they spend time on YouTube? Do they watch CNN? Not in the numbers Democrats do.
The also-rans of any party will show up at a car wash for exposure, but the R frontrunners, Mitt and Rudy, shy away from 2.6 million viewers. It's understandable; they have more to answer for and the most to lose. It's not the difficult or silly questions that have them checking their schedules for conflicts, it's the embarrassing ones. If they can't count on the quiet collegiality that exists between the MSM and candidates for president, they don't want to play. There's no percentage in it.
And never mind what the Ds might ask, Joe Bible might press them both hard about abortion, Joe Sixpack could whack Rudy on guns, and my sister who lives in Massachusetts might want to know if this is the same Mitt Romney who used to be governor.
These guys have every reason to boycott a forum they have no control over. And while the same could be said of the D frontrunners (skipping out on Fox), there are too many Ds on the Internet and watching CNN to safely duck it. Apparently, Mitt and Rudy figure there just aren't enough Rs paying attention to worry about YouTube. And that, as you clearly recognize, is a systemic problem for the Republicans.
But what's behind the R lag in NetRoots organizing and fundraising? In my mind I see a D drinking espresso in the glow of a computer monitor, furiously blogging, while the R is in the basement fiddling with his toy trains. I know it's simplistic, but my gut (and unlike Chertoff, I have one) tells me that it all flows from the heart of true conservatism -- the embrace of tradition and a resistance to change. The guys driving Beemers wearing French cuffs aren't the problem -- it's the base and their core principles.
Two cycles to enlightenment might be optimistic.
Jack McEnany, Editor LostNation.TV
More details on GOP cold feet
Jose Antonio Vargas has more details on the Washington Post's new non-blog daily diary of the campaign, The Trail.
And on OpenLeft, Matt Stoller spins a complicated analysis trying to explain why Republicans might have cold feet, arguing that because their base is "relatively old and living off the military industrial economy," their folks "watch cable TV, religious programming, and use direct mail." By contrast, "Young people, single women, and economically vulnerable and/or unstable are forming the voting base of the Democratic Party. And these are the people that use the internet."
I think Stoller is making a simple thing way too complicated, and his demographic data is wrong. The simple thing is the current Republican frontrunners are afraid of the freewheeling nature of what YouTubers may serve up as questions. If I were Fred Thompson, I would tell Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani that they're wimps for passing on the September 17 debate, and make a lot of noise about showing up.
As for Stoller's theory about the Democratic tilt of the internet, while there's definitely a skew toward the Ds in terms of activism online, Pew's surveys generally show that internet users in general are disproportionately Republican (it's the class skew), and in terms of online political activism, the Democratic advantage is at best 60-40. Hardly enough of a reason for the Rs to be afraid to do YouTube.