"the internet is a series of tubes"

insightful post from eriposte @ The Left Coaster

The GOP and YouTube

excerpt:

George Allen's "macaca" moment was just an internet video version of Goldwater's television moments in 1964. No wonder, GOP politicians were provided a list of rules by the NRSC to avoid "macaca" moments. This latest incident - Republican politicians like Giuliani and Romney running away from internet media like the complete sissies they are - is but a symptom of the underlying dynamic I have discussed here. I believe these YouTube-style debates involve two risks for today's GOP politicians - the possible exposure of the widespread, outside-the-mainstream extremist sentiments among their pseudo-con[servative] base on national TV (sentiments that the politicians may feel forced to distance themselves from, reluctantly, during the debates) and the inevitable mainstreaming of internet TV (which the GOP has little control over) as a credible alternative medium, via their involuntary endorsement. These risks could reverse decades of systematic efforts to conceal and whitewash the real nature of GOP extremism - an extremism that has been proudly imbibed by the leading lights of today's Republican party. As the shift to the internet becomes more pronounced, the risk that moderate or liberal Republicans (and independents) will get more exposed to the extremism of the GOP - and then bolt the party - becomes higher every passing day.

Read the full post - and comments

---