CNN-YouTube Republican Debate Hillary Plant

On Wednesday I watched the CNN-YouTube Republican Debates online. I highlighted one interesting response on my Business blog: Why have farm subsidies? Then I saw this transcript of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show where he claims that the YouTube Debate was a disaster for CNN. At first, I thought it was interesting. I read the first part of what Rush said, it was pretty convincing. But I went back to YouTube, saw the debate for myself, saw some of the positive reviews of it and some of the other perspectives, and yes, I agree the questions weren’t the best, but all things considered, they actually did quite a good job of it. I’m impressed, anyway. I learned a lot about the candidates and have even more respect for all of them.

There was one question about gays in the military, and it was later discovered that he is a supporter of Hillary. This was never disclosed during the debate, which is bad. The guy later said that he has no relationship or contact with the campaign, and is therefore not a plant. However, it really doesn’t matter because the Republican candidates handled the question quite well, in my opinion. Rush was rather angry that this was aired because this has not been a prominent issue in recent weeks. Well, that’s not a reason not to air it. The point of YouTube is to see exactly the videos that wouldn’t get airtime otherwise. These are the seldom-asked questions, not the huge questions that get constantly hashed and rehashed every day. So although it wasn’t the best of questions, I would not discount it just because this hasn’t been a prominent issue as of late.

The candidates spend a lot of time speaking and debating. They do interviews and many of the interviews are online today on YouTube, which makes a huge difference because there’s so much better accessibility to it. Here’s an interview of Ron Paul by someone who I don’t know.

At 1:33 AM I can go online and choose exactly what I want to watch. It doesn’t even have to be on YouTube. In the past, nothing like this was even remotely possible. This is really revolutionary and totally changes the game for the candidates. With all of the talking, I wonder when they actually have any time to sit down and learn, and actually get some planning and work done. Hopefully they’re not just there for the publicity and to stand there was a figure or icon.

Did you watch the debate? If so, what did you think– and if not, why?