Letting Romney Off the Hook?
by Patrick Ruffini :: August 14th, 2007 9:52 pmMy friend Patrick Hynes has a bone to pick with the Save the Debate coalition, for supposedly letting Mitt Romney “off the hook” for not yet RSVP’ing to the YouTube debate. Here’s how we addressed the issue in our statement yesterday,
We have seen some reports that not all candidates have yet committed to the just-announced November 28th date. We are extremely optimistic about the incredible momentum behind this debate. Save the Debate is confident that when the dust settles, every candidate will seize this historic opportunity to engage the American people.
For my part, I fully expect Mitt Romney to participate. The same goes for Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, and Tom Tancredo, who haven’t officially RSVP’d, though we’ve heard favorable omens through the grapevine.
Likewise, we were encouraged to read this in the Washington Times today:
Sources close to Mr. Romney”s campaign, considered one the most technically savvy, predict he will get on board. His campaign has posted nearly 300 videos — the most of any candidate from either party — on YouTube.com, with about 700,000 unique viewers.
“Scheduling conflicts,” the candidates’ all-purpose excuse for declining an event, are no longer an issue. As TechRepublican reports, the Romney campaign’s schedule is wide open for late November. There is no reason for Romney not to participate.
If any candidate in fact turns down this opportunity, they will hear from us. The Save the Debate coalition is being kept active, with the goal of promoting a good debate with substantive questions, and over the longer term, encouraging the candidates to step up their online efforts so they will be in a position to defeat Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama online. Should one or more candidates decline, the frustration you saw directed at the entire process last time would be focused like a laser beam on one candidate. Being the only candidate to decline would be a mistake far worse than the initial debate snub — and I think each of the campaigns understands this.
Tagged: debate 
mitt romney savethedebate youtube
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I think it would be justifiable if Mitt Romney decided to skip the debate just like Rudy and John skipped the Ames Straw Poll to diminish Romney’s win (they already knew from many polls that Romney would be the likely winner by a significant margin).
However, I think Gov. Romney is a man of class and he will participate because it is the right thing to do. He also bright enough to know that his absense would be spun as “fear of the public” so he’d be castigated by friend and foe alike.
I hope that the forum will not be as childish as what I witnessed with the Democratic U-Tube debate. I think you organizers have a great responsibility to learn from the Dems mistakes and put on a serious YouTube “debate”. I’m not holding my breath.
Patrick,
It’s all well and good to have people out there getting questions from good solid Republicans.
That’s not the problem however. The problem is the fact that CNN is going to be picking the questions - with apparently no input form Republicans. If they would have co-ordinated with some Republican organization - then we cut down on some of those silly “snowman” type questions - and cheap shot questions drafted by liberal activist.
You can be sure at places like dailykos and democratic underground they’re making their YouTube questions as hard hitting as possible.
Once again - we’ve allowed the liberals/MSM to frame the debate - and we’ll end up letting the Democrats make us look stupid.