That is the question facing the Republican presidential gaggle.  And the rightish blogosphere appears to be split on the issue.

Patrick Ruffini set the ball rolling by lamenting that the GOP candidates, led by Giuliani and Romney, are making themselves look like Barney - i.e. cowardly dinosaurs - by ducking the September 17th YouTube “debate”:

This is a big mistake. The Democrats are afraid to answer questions from Big Bad Fox News Anchors, and the Republicans are afraid to answer questions from regular people. Which is worse?

It’s stuff like this that will set the GOP back an election cycle or more on the Internet. No matter the snazzy Web features and YouTube videos they may put up, if they’re fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea of interacting with real people online, what’s the point?

“Real, regular people”?  THAT’s what Ruffini thinks was on display Monday night, a parade of absurdity and human deritus which produced one silly, stupid, idiotic, brain-dead question after another?

That was the essence of Hugh Hewitt’s rejoinder:

If the GOP candidates agree to this format, expect a series of cheap shots about all of the top tier candidates. Patrick worries that the Republicans will appear behind the times if they take a pass. Perhaps, but if that means skipping a no win set-up where MSM agenda journalists work for weeks to put a video shiv into one or more of the Big Three, I am for it. The second tier folks will no doubt show up hoping for a Hail mary moment, but Giuliani, Romney and Thompson ought to say no thanks.

To illustrate,take a look at this story –a bit of agenda journalism that Jonathan Martin at Politico.com told me on air today is built on a story that has been floating around for months. Imagine some YouTube video asking Rudy why he’s defending a suspected pedophile. No MSMer would dare ask such a loaded question, but imagine what the gang at CNN would do. They covered for the Dems with a series of overwhelmingly left-biased questions at the first YouTube debate, with a very few tough, serious questions thrown in. That dynamic would change completely in a GOP YouTube debate - they or their counterparts at a different network will be gunning for the Republicans, and the question set will be designed to embarrass or ridicule.

Ruffini answered that it would be hypocritical for Republicans to duck CNN/YouTube after criticizing the Dems for skipping the Fox News-moderated debate, which seems to me to be a rather large diss of Brit Hume, Chris Wallace & co.  He also paralleled with the “legacy” media sniffing at the blogosphere during the 2004 presidential campaign, which is an equally large diss at, well, us, and himself, really.  Lastly, he fretted that the GOP will “lose an entire generation of voters” if the candidates don’t pander to their particular communications format preferences.  A worry one would expect a ‘Net operative to harbor.

Hugh’s retort was a classical visual and an appeal to the big picture:

Why not have them go in barrels over Niagara Falls - that would get a lot of interest as well.

What Patrick fails to see is that it isn’t about talking to people or being willing to connect with voters through new media. Both Giuliani and Romney - less so Thompson - have been very, very available to all sorts of people at stop after stop, and both do all sorts of media without preconditions. They answer all the questions.

What they are wise to avoid is a set-up ambush using gimmicks that separate the ambush from the planner. See my post below, but the YouTube formay allows nameless, faceless MSM lefties to hit below the belt and then shrug their shoulders and say “It wasn’t my question.”

The odd couple of Josh Marshall and our BTR colleague Rick Moran take Ruffini’s side in full taunt-mode, asking, in essence, “If they can’t face Youtube, how can they defeat the terrorists or stand up to Ahmadinejad?!?”  Like anybody’s going to do that in the next few years in any case.  While our esteemed leader Ed Morrissey equates the YouTube format to political “Let’s Make A Deal”.

So, the moment you’ve all been waiting for - what do I think about this?  I honestly don’t think it matters one way or the other. 

None of these pre-primary “debates” have been serious, useful, or determinative undertakings as it is.  They’ve been glorified mass press conferences with a stage full of be-suited figures trying to get a talking point in edgewise.  YouTubing it just conflates the process with the “reality TV” craze, and that in turn is simply a more technological adaptation of Bill Clinton going on M-TV fifteen years ago and being asked what kind of underwear he wears.  He dignified the heretofore undignifiable and answered the question, and the rest is history.  There is no turning back of that clock.  The difference between hostile “journalists” firing hostile questions and wacko technogeeks asking Mitt Romney if he’s a mysognist because he has so many sons is simply one of degree.

However, I hardly think that skipping this “ambush” is a sign of Republican chickenheartedness, either.  As Apollo Creed told Rocky Balboa in the rematch with Clubber Lang, “It doesn’t take a brave man to stand there and get your face beat in.”  Particularly when it’s being done by wacky lefties dressed up like snowmen, Randi of the Redwoods, and Gumby.  I hardly think that the fate of the GOP itself hinges on enduring an evening of political karaoke.  Particularly for the three front-runners, who have absolutely nothing to gain from the effort.

Maybe YouTube will become the twenty-first century townhall meeting.  If so, I don’t see the harm in Pachyderms declining to be queried as to when they stopped beating their wives, and letting the format mature into one that can be a constructive part of the electoral process, instead of the garish partisan spectacle CNN doubtless has in store.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin, Mark Steyn, and a majority of hits at hotair.com say, “Bring…It…On!”  But Double-H’s producer, Duane Patterson, embeds this YouTube of Santa Claus, no less, and makes a very salient point:

If you answer by trying to out-Santa Santa, you’re pandering. If you tell the truth and say what too many children in this country face has to stop, but there are plenty of private relief agencies, many of them faith-based, that are much better suited to help with the immediate problem, and that it’s not up to the government to be the nanny state, you come off as sounding cold and heartless. 

And that Santa video is, by Hugh’s report, the most sane of the lot.

So, what we really have here is a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t proposition.  If the Republican field follows Ruffini’s advice, they’ll be helplessly framed and humiliated no matter how witheringly and combatively they parry these groin-shots (and none of them will be withering or combative; that manly tendency has been either bred or medicated out of them, except maybe for Fred Thompson, and he’s still in his holding pattern).  If they go with Hewitt’s counsel, they’ll be laughed at as yellowbellies.

The difference, I think, is that in the latter case there won’t be any on-tape gaffes to haunt a particular candidate(s) for the remainder of the campaign.  Which is, of course, the whole point of this exercise from CNN’s point of view.

As I say above, Thompson, Giuliani, and Romney have nothing to gain from participating.  But let the small fry have at it, and see what they can do.

Again, it’s not like it’ll make any measurable long-term difference.