Romney vs. The Snowman

In this corner you have Mitt Romney, fresh off a first place (but with less than a third of the vote total) finish in the Iowa straw poll opted-out by Giuliani and McCain.

In the other corner you have the American people. Or, if you're Mitt Romney, "the snowman."

The GOP CNN/YouTube debate is back on. The debate, the source of much confusion over who would agree to participate and when and, in fact, whether it would be held, will now occur on Nov. 28.

Romney, however, is the sole GOP candidate who has not committed to participating.

Romney previously told the Manchester Union Leader, "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman." Billam the snowman, not surprisingly, doesn't agree.

This is more than cuteness and light.

For one thing we - and by we I mean the people of the United States - are the ones that will be both submitting the questions for the CNN/YouTube debate and the ones deciding, via our votes, who will and who will not be our next President.

Although Democrats have been widely considered superior to Republicans in the use of the Internet, Mitt Romney has actually been a Republican leader online. Romney has a staggering 287 videos on YouTube. MittRomney.com, according to Hitwise, is the second most popular GOP website (although his 13.93% market share greatly trails the 45.38% of GOP online favorite Ron Paul).

But, alas, there is a difference between Mitt's success in drawing online traffic and what he could expect to encounter in the debate format. The former is scripted while the latter is not. As the sole remaining holdout, Mitt's reluctance to participate stands in contrast to his overall online success and raises doubts about his comfort with the medium when forced to deviate from a controlled script.

More than 1,100 videos have been submitted already for the GOP CNN/YouTube debate. The Democratic version of the debate "averaged 2.6 million viewers and was the most watched debate by those 18-34 in cable news history."

The snowman clip represents a single voice in a growing collection of voices enhanced and empowered - finally! - by this historic CNN/YouTube process. The Internet is about connecting with new people, but it needs to be a two-way street. If Romney only wants to draw people to carefully controlled, campaign websites, he is missing out on the full power of Internet. He may think he's doing better than the rest of the Republican pack on the Internet, but, until he opens himself up to the American people, he is sorely mistaken.

Back to you Mitt.