I can’t say as I blame them after the fiasco on Monday but come on guys suck it up and show what you’re made of.

Four days after the Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C,. more than 400 questions directed to the GOP presidential field have been uploaded on YouTube — targeted at Republicans scheduled to get their turn at videopopulism on Sept. 17.

But so far, only Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) have agreed to participate in the debate, co-hosted by Republican Party of Florida in St. Petersburg.

“Aside from those two candidates, we haven’t heard from anyone else,” said Sam Feist of CNN, who’s co-sponsoring the debate with the popular videosharing site.

Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney, both with dozens of videos on their YouTube channels, have not signed up. Neither have the rest of the Republican candidates, including Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.), whose “Tancredo Takes” on his YouTube channel draw hundreds of views. Sources familiar with the Guiliani campaign said he’s unlikely to participate. Kevin Madden, Romney’s spokesman, said the former Massachusetts governor has seven debate invitations covering a span of 11 days in September.

“We haven’t committed to any of them yet,” Madden said.

In an interview Wednesday with the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, Romney said he’s not a fan of the CNN/YouTube format. Referring to the video of a snowman asking the Democratic candidates about global warming, Romney quipped, “I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman.”

The Sept. 17 Republican debate was announced last Friday by YouTube, CNN and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) , who called Monday’s Democratic showdown “the people’s debate.” An informal “save the date” reminder was sent about a month ago to the candidates, CNN’s Feist said, and individual campaigns were called shortly after Friday’s announcement. Formal invitations arrived at campaigns yesterday. YouTubers can upload videos until Sept. 16.

Erin Neaves, 25-year-old mother of three, uploaded this question: “You hear a lot about supporting the troops from the Republicans, and we’re not getting any kind of support from the government ….. We are getting more than 15-month deployments. We are getting cut out of our bonuses. ….. How will you support the troops?” She’s a Democract and her husband serves in the U.S. military.

John King, a paramedic student at Cincinnati State, has a direct question for Giuliani about his business, Giuliani Partners. “I’m not saying that’s wrong to make money off your image, but why are you keeping it such a secret — the clients, how much they paid you, what kind of work you did for them?” asks the 24-year-old Republican.
Patrick Ruffini, former eCampaign director at the Republican National Committee who served as online adviser to Giuliani for a few months earlier this year, said it would “very problematic” if the Republican candidates declined. “What’s worse — questions from the public, many of whom are supporters, or questions from the media, who many Republicans believed are biased? This is YouTube. That’s not something they’d want to snub,” Ruffini said.

So far YouTube, CNN and Florida’s Republican Party are staying optimistic.

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As usual CNN, the most trusted name in news, screwed it up. The format was horrible and the moderator was terrible.
I can’t wait for the Republican debate under the same conditions.
Hillary did clean house.

Democratic presidential candidates shared the spotlight Monday night with ordinary citizens from around the country in a two-hour debate that featured sharp and sometimes witty video questions and often equally sharp exchanges among the candidates on issues ranging from Iraq and health care to whether any of them can fix a broken political system.

The debate, co-sponsored by CNN and YouTube, underscored the arrival of the Internet as a force in politics. The citizen-interrogators generated the most diverse set of questions in any of the presidential debates to date and challenged the candidates to break out of the rhetoric of their campaign speeches and to address sometimes uncomfortable issues, such as race, gender, religion and their own vulnerabilities.

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WoW! CNN the most trusted name in news reports that the seven men are going to gang up on Hillary Clinton.
She’ll wipe the floor with them.

South Carolina primaries are all about the base. That’s true for both parties.

For Republicans that means conservatives. It’s the conservative firewall state, where George W. Bush put out the John McCain brush fire in 2000.

For Democrats, it means African-Americans, who make up about half of the voters in the South Carolina Democratic primary. The main reason the Democratic Party is allowing South Carolina to hold an early primary is to give African-American voters a bigger voice.

As a result, South Carolina could be crucial in the selection of the Democratic nominee, just as it has been for Republicans for many years.

Unlike the turmoil in the Republican contest, the Democratic race has been fairly stable all year. Sen. Hillary Clinton has maintained a lead in the national polls, with Sen. Barack Obama second and former Sen. John Edwards third. No other candidate has made double digits.

The Clinton campaign has been trying to surround its candidate with the aura of inevitability: “Face it, she’s going to be nominated. Better get on the bandwagon now.”

The CNN-YouTube debate in Charleston, South Carolina, Monday night could look like seven against one: seven Democratic contenders trying to challenge Clinton as “The Inevitable” — and competing with each other to become “The Alternative.”

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According to this article in The Hill 26 of the 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus have written the Democratic Presidential candidates, with the main targets being Senators Clinton, Obama (a member of the CBC) and former Senator John Edwards to ask them to reconsider having a debate on Fox News.

Black Caucus leaders sent the letter to the entire field of Democratic presidential candidates, but the primary targets were Obama, Clinton and Edwards.

The caucus has 43 members from 22 states, who together represent about 40 million Americans, an official with the group said. Seventeen members of the Black Caucus represent districts that are less than 50 percent African-American, said caucus Chairwoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), who argued that the issues at the debate will also be of interest to other minority constituencies, such as Hispanics.

“It’s not just a black thing,” Kilpatrick said.

Thompson said presidential debates often ignore issues that are important to minority voters.

“Nobody is talking about the disproportionate statistics that we have in this country as it relates to minority population,” Thompson said. “You can look at healthcare, you can look at education, you can look at employment, you can look at housing, you can look at lending. All those [statistics] show a very bad picture for many constituents we represent.

“So we think Democratic and Republican candidates alike should have an opportunity to say what they plan to [do to] level the playing field,” he added.

By framing their decision to skip the debate as a missed opportunity to communicate to an important Democratic constituency, caucus leaders are ratcheting up the political pressure on the Democratic front-runners.

When the CBC was looking for a network to work with them on a debate Fox News was the only one to respond.

I think after seeing how Fox News performed last week in the Republican debate as opposed to how NBC performed for the Democratic debate and the first Republican debate should calm the fears of the candidates as far as being fair. They will do follow-up questions and demand answers to their questions if someone strays away from the topic, based on last week’s performance, but they won’t be asking silly questions of the candidates.

Let’s see how this plays out, especially with Barack Obama. If he says yes then Senator Clinton and former Senator Edwards will have to join in and since they’re going to get some tough questions down the road (we hope) they might as well start now and state their positions.

Here’s one more interesting quote from the piece:

Left-leaning columnist E.J. Dionne wrote last month that Democrats were well within their rights.

“Tell me again: Why do Democrats have an obligation to participate in debates on Fox?” Dionne wrote. “I am an avid reader of conservative magazines such as National Review and the Weekly Standard. But if these two publications teamed up to sponsor a Democratic debate, would anyone accuse Edwards, Obama and Clinton of ‘blacklisting’ if the candidates said, ‘no thanks’?”

I think last week’s performance by the Fox News crew of Brit Hume, Wendell Goler and Chris Wallace did an outstanding job of being prepared and of handling the debate.

If you’re going to play baseball you can’t have softballs lobbed at you all the time.