I'm at CPAC, and the big news just broke that Mitt Romney has dropped out of the race.

In the video below, James Joyner of the conservative blog, Outside the Beltway, discusses how he "scooped" the story thanks to smart tagging of a blog post he wrote yesterday. (The gist is that he titled a blog post, "Mitt Romney Quits Race?" yesterday and thanks his high Google pagerank, that blog post is sending him a lot of traffic.)

Back in March of last year, a video mashup shook up the political scene, when some anonymous tech sleuth had the audacity to attack Hillary Clinton. The video was posted at YouTube under the name "ParkRidge47," a sly reference to Hillary Clinton's childhood home town. The message: Hillary Clinton is Big Brother, or at least, Hillary Clinton is having an Orwellian "one-way" conversation with America -- and one candidate, a-la-Apple Computers classic 1984 Superbowl ad, can change that. It closed with a scroll directing people to the website of Hillary's chief rival, BarackObama.com.

Cue the video in the event that you were not one of the 4,000,000+ viewers who watched it:

After the unmasking of the video-masher, the popular thinking was that the 2008 elections were going to be fraught with these kind of new, or modern media, attacks. To my knowledge, there hasn't been another viral video that has "tipped," (as Malcolm Gladwell might put it), at least not the same way the Vote Different video did. Instead, I think we've seen a proliferation of campaign-based web videos. Nothing challenged Phil de Vellis's little masterpiece.

At least, that is, until about two weeks ago. Cut to the new video:

This video too was posted by an anymous YouTuber, though, to be fair, it appears "keithhib" is a McCain fan. No surprise there--I think last weekend's debates showed that Mitt and John aren't the best of friends. Self-disclosure: I find myself squarely in the McCain column as well.

Now maybe some of you don't remember Max Headroom (see YouTube clips here). Wikipedia has this on file, " artificial intelligence, known for his surreal wit and stuttering, distorted, electronically sampled voice."

You get it? Max Headroom, the contrived marketing device is Mitt Romney, or something like that. Now leaving aside whether Romney has flipped or "evolved" on several issues--the video doesn't really hit that note--one fact is certain: Mitt has probably outspent most of the other GOP candidates on advertising. So there's a certain guerilla nature to this video.

Now for some analysis: the Max Headroom / Mitt Romney mashup isn't perfect, in fact, it leaves something to be desired. The "Vote Different" ad was more than a minute in length; the "Max Romney" vid is half that.

Is this video in any way effective? Will it go viral like the Hillary-1984 mashup? If not, why not? Do the Romney folks have anything to be worried about? Will a lot of people just be saying: that's cute, but so what? I'm interested to see what TechRepublican readers think.

Matt Lewis of Townall has the inside scoop on a pretty neat tele-marketing strategy Mitt Romney is using to connect with Iowans (en masse):

According to one senior Romney aide, last night the Romney campaign hosted a tele-townhall conference call for values voters in Iowa. Approximately 20,000 households were called, and close to 5,000 households participated, I'm told.

Conservative leaders Jay Sekulow, David Keene, and Mark DeMoss were speakers on the call.

According to my source, this wasn't merely a persuasion call; Listeners were instructed to press "1" on their phone if they wanted to caucus. They were then given instructions on where (and how) to caucus.

Considering that only about 75 to 80 thousand Iowans are expected to participate in the Republican caucus -- and that temperatures are very cold -- this seems like a wise way to campaign.

When I worked at the U.S. House of Representatives, we used a similar tele-townhall strategy to connect with constituents. My boss would talk about issues like the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, energy independence, and the Global War on Terrorism.

The technology is tremendous because it's a great use of the candidate/Member's time (callers are always on the other end of the line) and it is rather cost-effective. A number of phone vendors on the Republican side are now providing this service so it shouldn't be hard to find one.

It's just 16 hours old, but today's Mitt Romney speech has already become the #1 most viewed UStream video, according to the site's recorded video list.

One previous Romney videostream, from the YouTube debate, is on the first page of results with another following on the second. A recent Obama foreign policy discussion broadcast on UStream received about 2,000 views on each of its clips, and also ranks high amongst the recorded shows.

Romney is the first Republican candidate to jump into the UStream waters. On the Democratic side, Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Dodd, Kucinich and Gravel have all run live video through the site. Though a little later in the cycle, it's gratifying to see a Republican leapfrog the Democrats in effectiveness their first time out.

The takeaway: UStream is fertile ground for politics and growing everyday. (Disclosure: I'm a political advisor to the site.)

Today's speech was simulcast live by Townhall.com, Michelle Malkin, HotAir, and Captain's Quarters. As Michelle noted, there's no MSM commentary and no annoying newscrawl in a UStream video. I didn't watch the speech on CNN, but I'm told by those who did that the presentation was marred by a conspicuous "facts about Mormonism" graphic that ran next to Romney's remarks.

Michelle also notes that, "Unlike other Web 2.0 companies I’ve dealt with, Ustream is open and receptive to conservative users." The company was founded by two military veterans.

As Patrick wrote yesterday, Mitt Romney is broadcasting his "Faith in America" speech via UStream.tv. Smart move. No silly downloads. No reason to turn on the TV.

Via Mitt's UStream Channel, you can participate in an online chat while watching the speech.

We'll embed the stream in this space shortly. Pardon the technical difficulties:

Tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. EST, Mitt Romney's "Faith in America" speech will be webcast live using UStream.TV , a YouTube-like site for live video. The speech will play live on MittRomney.com, Romney's profile page on UStream, and just like a YouTube video, it's a Flash widget that's embeddable directly on your blog. Bloggers wanting to create a sticky experience for their users can embed the player in a post starting at 10:30 a.m. and invite readers to give their play-by-play reactions in a comment thread.

Obligatory full disclosure: I am an advisor to UStream, and am really pumped by the possibilities of live, free online video for politics. Just like online video pre-YouTube, live web streaming was "broken" pre-2007. Doing live video on the Internet was out of reach for all but the most the elite clientele. It cost thousands of dollars to stream a single event, rent the sat truck, hire the crew, etc. Now, it can be as a simple as a Webcam + EVDO card -- or any combination of a streaming-enabled camera and Internet connection.

In another innovative use of the medium by a conservative, Michelle Malkin has already used the service to hold live, interactive conversations with HotAir readers. (Each UStream video features a chat room where users can pose questions and talk with each other.) Your speech, conference, seminar or other live event can now be sent out live over the Internet -- and you don't have to be a Presidential candidate either.

Kudos to Mitt Romney's team for being the first Republican campaign to jump in.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, perhaps the most influential tech blogger, plans to host a tech-focused podcast interview with Governor Mitt Romney (Slatecard Profile) later this week:

Technology is becoming more and more a part of mainstream life. But the journalists who have access to the 2008 presidential candidates usually aren’t prepared to talk tech, and so the candidates’ positions on digital issues are often left unexplored. We want to change that, and have been reaching out to the presidential candidates to talk one-on-one with us about the issues that are important to our readers.

Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican candidate for president, was the first to respond, and we will be recording a podcast discussion with him in the next week. What we talk about on that podcast is largely up to TechCrunch readers.

Snaps to Mitt for being first to take on the challenge and props to Arrington for playing a role in this important election.

So how can you get involved?

Arrington, in true Web 2.0 fashion, is asking his community what questions they want Mitt to answer:

We’re finalizing the high level questions we’ll be asking Governor Romney (and other candidates in the future). Please let us know in the comments what tech-related issues are important to you; what would you ask if you had the chance? Issues to think about:

* the role of technology in education - what role should government and technology companies have
* the growing digital divide in the U.S. and around the world
* immigration and visa issues
* the role of government in protecting personal privacy online
* Mobile spectrum allocations and ground rules
* How should the U.S. engage with China: technology, human rights and censorship issues
* the role of free markets; helping U.S. technology companies compete worldwide Net neutrality
* Intellectual property issues - copyright, patent and trademark policies

So what question do I hope Mitt answers? I'd prefer to find out where Mitt Romney is on Net Neutrality.

In case his staff needs some help with the issue, here's two conservative arguments both FOR and AGAINST the issue:

* Conservative Argument FOR Net Neutrality
* Conservative Argument AGAINST Net Neutrality

What question would you like to see Mitt answer? Make sure you let Arrington know with a comment on his post.

I conducted a little facebook experiment and thought it fitting to post prior to Sam Brownback leaving the race (hums tune "Another one bites the dust")

Here are the numbers of facebook friends for each republican candidate as of September 12th.

1. Ron Paul 23,141
2. Mitt Romney 17,204
3. Fred Thompson 12,718
4. John McCain 9,989
5. Mike Huckabee 4,548
6. Sam Brownback 2,664
7. Rudy Giuliani 980
8. Thomas Tancredo 851
9. Duncan Hunter 654

Total Friends 60,063

Ron Paul in the lead, no suprise there. Rudy Giuliani still in triple digits! That was a bit of a shocker.

Here are the results as of today October 18th (% change in parenthesis)

1. Ron Paul 31,617 (+36.6%)
2. Mitt Romney 19,431 (+12.9%)
3. Fred Thompson 17,688 (+39%)
4. John McCain 12,001 (+20%)
5. Rudy Giuliani 7,041 (+618%)
6. Mike Huckabee 6,489 (+42.6%)
7. Sam Brownback 3,061 (+14.9%)
8. Thomas Tancredo 1,007 (18.3%)
9. Duncan Hunter 822 (+25.6%)

Total Friends 99,157 (+65%)

Best Status Update:"Thomas [Tancredo] is challenging Mitt Romney to a trap shooting contest, loser drops out."

Worst Use of FacebookDuncan Hunter - A Flag for a profile picture, no information, no applications, no photos and no mentiont that he is even running for president.

Best Growth - Rudy Giuliani 618%Followed by Fred Thompson 39%Worst Growth - Mitt Romney 12.9%Followed by Sam Brownback 14.9%

According to these numbers the next to drop out will be Mitt Romney and Thomas Tancredo :-)

I'll be continuing to track these numbers and will be interested in see how the friends count compares to the actual vote. I've also got the numbers for the democrats and they put the republicans to shame. Obama has more friends than all the republicans put together.

What do you think about this data?

Patrick Hynes, author of Ankle Biting Pundits and John McCain's modern media guy, takes a swipe at the SaveTheDebate coalition (of which I'm a co-founder), arguing that we're letting Mitt Romney "off the hook" too easily:

...but it is terribly difficult for me to take such an effort as “Save the Debate” seriously if they continue to let former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney off the hook for blowing off the debate they endeavored to save.

If the debate were next month, Patrick may have a point to take up with me and others if Mitt had yet to accept an invitation. However, the debate is scheduled for November 28 -- more than three months from now.

I asked Kevin Madden, Mitt Romney's press secretary to comment on the upcoming YouTube/CNN debate, and he said, "We have had regular contact with CNN, we are aware of the date they have settled upon and we will, of course consider the invitation when we make decisions about our travel schedule for late November."

In other words, Mitt's not saying "no." He just isn't in a position, yet, to say "yes."

Let's give them some room to make a decision that we're all comfortable with. Fortunately, the debate's not going anywhere.

It's hard to make Mitt Romney look bad, but Mike Huckabee pulls it off. The topic is the forthcoming GOP YouTube debate, to which all the Republican candidates have now committed—another online grassroots victory!—except Romney.

The irony is inexplicable: of all the candidates, Republican and Democrat, Romney boasts the most number of videos in his YouTube account (284, as of Sunday night; Huckabee has 81).

Romney:

Huckabee:

Melissa Jenna was unsuccessful in trying to change Romney's mind (ironic, huh?). Perhaps Billiam the Snowman will sway him:

Cross-posted at No Straw Men.