I didn’t do much thinking ahead about ”To YouTube Or Not To YouTube” debate because, as you and all of Ed’s readers know (or can rummage through his archives to remind themselves), I didn’t think it would matter much one way or the other.  Yes, it’s an obvious lib media ambush, but not necessarily a memorable one if the candidates keep their wits about themselves and gut out the foolishness-suffering for an hour or two.

So how is it that this exercise in political Karaoke is back on?  Simple - CNN kicked the date ahead a couple of months.  Scheduling conflicts were the excuse cited by Giuliani and Romney in the first place, and this move seems to accomodate them.  Rudy has agreed to appear, which pretty much drags Romney into it, and FDT as well, assuming he can get off his “front porch”.

But I don’t think it’s quite that simple.  There’s also the matter of the re-scheduling putting this mass YouTubing in much closer proximity to the Iowa and New Hampshire contests.  Skipping this farce in September would be one thing; doing so not much more than a month before the first primary votes are cast would make impressions, for weal or for woe, that would be a lot more difficult to shrug off if they proved to be unfavorable.

The irony is, of course, that the same thing applies even more strongly to any gaffes the front-runners are provoked into - which, from CNN’s standpoint, is the whole point of using this format.  Ed is, I think, wasting keystrokes “hop[ing] CNN does a better job selecting the questions.”  They’re going to choose the most insulting, insipid, vapid, contemptuous, embarrassing queries they possibly can in order to so collectively humiliate the remaining Republican field that it will almost not matter what answers they give.

What has changed about the YouTube encounter is that CNN has significantly raised the stakes - both of ducking it and of taking part in it.  Now it does matter - and that makes it a “box canyon” that Republican candidates will find correspondingly more difficult to bypass, even while knowing that going through it will run even bigger risks.

Anybody want to tell me again how the “legacy media” has lost its stroke?  Maybe they’re fading at the margins, but their clout seems largely intact if they can compel the Pachyderms to run a telegraphed gauntlet.