General

Going Forward on Youtube

Captain Ed has a modest proposal for fixing the youtube/cnn debate to make it more comfortable for GOP candidate:

So what’s the solution? How can we engage voters in a national forum through the New Media, while keeping the debate substantive and serious? I have a simple solution: have CNN cede the editorial/selection process to the New Media, in the form of the blogosphere.

CNN would ask bloggers to form a committee to review the YouTube entries. Since this debate is a Republican primary event, the bloggers should probably represent that segment of the electorate — primarily Republicans, but perhaps with independent/centrist representation as well. The committee would review all of the YouTube entries and narrow them down to around 20, through whatever process and criteria to which these bloggers agree. They would also agree to the order in which the questions would be asked.

This would be nice for the bloggers who get to be on the committee, but really all you’ve done is replace one elite with another.  Wrong.

Simply do a Digg or Ideastorm and let the mob filter the best questions up.  Anyone can submit a question, anyone can promote or demote a question.  Best questions go to the top.  Bad questions get buried.  Trust the people… no elites needed.

Hennessy’s idea is probably going a bit too far though:

To make the presidential race more interesting, I propose a blog-off. The candidates have to start a blog using a commonly available blog app: WordPress (my fave), MoveableType, etc. The candidate with the highest TLB Ecosystem score wins his party’s nomination.

The rules

1. Posts must be submitted by the candidate himself or herself. The FEC will supervise the posts to ensure they come from the candidate
2. Blog must be hosted on a discount hosting site, and the candidate himself must deal with DNS problems, server outages, and database problems caused by the fetishist blog sharing the same MySQL server.  (heh!)
   
   1. Candidate campaign contributions are limited to money raised from their banner advertising.
3. Banner advertising cannot solicit donations for that candidate’s campaign.
4. Candidates are prohibited from any other form of advertising, save for live appearances.
5. Candidates must respond to all comments within 15 minutes, lest be compared to female genitalia.
6. Each blog entry must contain at least 3 links to other blogs, at lease one of which requiring manual trackback.
7. At least one entry per day must be posted between the hours 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. in the candidate’s time zone.
8. The candidate’s internet service provider must be publicly available. Charter’s Pipeline serves them right.
9. Each candidate must appear first on the OTB Beltway Traffic Jam at least once before his party’s convention.

Ten simple rules. Think they can follow them? Oh, and the winner gets custom pajamas.

ha!

CQ also links to John Cole, who questions the kind of questions we will get from the new elite:

Hugh Hewitt- Mr. Romney, how much worse than Osama bin Laden are the Democrats? A lot, a whole lot, or oodles?

Red State- Mr. Giuliani, if Obama is elected, will he declare defeat in Iraq and withdraw our troops before surrendering to Iran, or will he surrender to Iran first?

Michelle Malkin- Mr. Romney, if Hillary is elected President, how long do you think it will be before she institutes a policy of forced abortions and mandates the Quran be taught in schools?

Dan Riehl- Mr. Thompson, have you always had such strong shoulders and a chiseled jaw? And if elected, will you find out what happened to Natalie Holloway?

K-Lo- Mr. Romney, are you busy this weekend? As a follow up, you are aware Michelle is not the only one with a cheerleader outfit, aren’t you?

Dean Barnett- Mr. Paul, how long have you been a racist? Have you stopped attending anti-Semitic rallies? Why do you challenge George Bush, who is clearly the greatest thinker of our generation?

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