Yeah, obviously the Republican candidates should agree to participate in the YouTube debate. So far McCain and Paul have been the only ones to sign on, and Romney and Giuliani have been signalling that they may skip it.

The Dem one was fun to watch, and it drew in the highest 18-34 year old demo of any primary debate in cable news history. Events like this provide an opportunity to connect with younger voters (well, in most cases younger potential voters) in a way that no other event can, because of the sheer size of the youth audience.

Although the vast majority of the questions seemed to come from Democrats, there were one or two that I'm guessing weren't from Democratic primary voters (the gun "baby" guy, or the "what now" Iraq fellow for example).

As a Dem, I obviously think it would only be fair that CNN chooses a similar mix for the GOP debate. That said, I fully expect that most of the questions that will be asked will be, as David said, from a generally conservative standpoint, which is fine. The Dems didn't talk about immigration, and the Republicans probably won't talk much about universal health care. There's a reason why primaries are separate from general elections.

If enough candidates participate in the September one, I think this will be an opportunity for CNN/YouTube to perfect the model they just tried out. Don't try to duplicate the Democratic debate from a technical standpoint- make this one better. Institute some sort of voting mechanism (not necessarily by view count or star ratings, but perhaps by number of comments, which at least would indicate a controversial and hopefully interesting question) so that viewers can at least participate in some way in the selection process.

We need a second debate to confirm that this wasn't just some crazy fluke experiment, and that the user-submitted video question format is here to stay. For the sake of the format, I hope the Republicans will be as willing to step up to the plate as the Dems were.

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