Team Romney explains why their candidate won’t attend a nationally-televised debate in arguably the nation’s biggest swing state, sponsored by the Republican Party of Florida:
Mr. Madden said the Romney campaign’s decision not to participate was “not a question of format, it’s a question of our travel schedule.”
Still, Mr. Madden said, “a lot of Americans would wonder whether we should be answering questions from a cartoon.”
That’s persuasive, isn’t it? The YouTube format is irrelevant, and by the way, we find the format offensive and frivolous.
The fun part now is trying to figure out what these Republican presidential hopefuls are so afraid of. There are a variety of competing theories.
* The Bubble must be protected — Josh wondered if “the current Bush Republican party is so beholden to a worldview based on denial and suppression of evidence that exposure to unpredictable questions presents too great a danger.”
* The GOP base is scary, even to the GOP — Tim F. noted that the Dems’ debate featured questions from the liberal base, but the far-right base is much scarier. “The idea of stringing up liberals, war critics, apostate Republicans as traitors seeps into every forum. They love torture, they hate civil rights and long ago the right’s mainstream leaders declared the entire religion of Islam a free-fire zone. Better still, six years of holding government in a headlock has left these guys with a sense that they’re entitled to say all this without apology or self-consciousness.” If they’re asking the questions, maybe the candidates don’t want to be there to hear them.
* Democracy, schmocracy — Andrew Sullivan suggested that the GOP is “a party uncomfortable with the culture and uncomfortable with democracy,” so a debate with questions from regular people doesn’t suit the party’s worldview.
* Shameless elitism — Steve M. argued that the GOP wants to avoid the riff-raff. “The questioners in the Democratic YouTube debate were sometimes a bit insolent and not always properly groomed. A true modern Republican leader can’t tolerate being sassed at by a person like that; it would be like the Generalissimo of a banana republic allowing a peasant to mock his epaulets and riding crop. Giuliani and Romney, in particular, are trying to project an aura of contempt for the scum who disagree with them.”
For what it’s worth, several prominent Republican bloggers have started Savethedebate.com, hoping to persuade the party’s candidates to participate in the event. Of course, if the presidential hopefuls are anxious to avoid questions from regular folks, it stands to reason they won’t much care about a petition drive, either.
