Redstate

By Erick Posted in 2008 — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

When it started, I signed the petition to save the debate. Rob and Soren are founders of the coalition and, for all my cynicism about the YouTube debates, Rob, Soren, Patrick Ruffini, David All, and many others firmly believe in their usefulness as a way to bypass the media and get the candidates connected straight to the voters.

And despite my cynicism, they have a valid point.

I'm pleased to see the statement the Save the Debate Coalition released tonight. CNN is largely to blame for this disaster of a debate and Save the Debate Coalition, willing to push forward on these types of debates, writes:

"The Save the Debate coalition would like to thank the Republican candidates for participating in the YouTube debate, which reached an estimated 4.5 million Americans, a record for this primary cycle. We are hopeful that the candidates will consider future opportunities to use technology to reach new participants in the political process.

"Further, we applaud the YouTube community for the quality of the questions submitted that sparked informative and substantive exchanges among the Republican candidates. With nearly 5,000 YouTube user-submitted questions -- 2,000 more than for the Democratic debate — Americans are increasingly taking advantage of the opportunity to participate in the democratic process.

"Unfortunately, CNN's flawed editorial process in choosing the questions asked of the candidates marred an otherwise lively debate and betrayed the trust of the Republican candidates and the YouTube user community. In the most glaring example, a questioner affiliated with the Hillary Clinton campaign was given a soapbox to berate the Republican candidates at the debate -- when even a cursory web search of the individual would have revealed his clear conflict of interest.

Your mileage may very on these debates, but I applaud Rob, Soren, Patrick, and David for tackling this issue in this manner.

CNN needs to figure out the medium and figure out Republicans before it tries this again. Oh, and I still say some heads should roll.