Getting Beyond "Gotcha!"

Jan. 12, 2007— -- "Gotcha" video is at it again, and this time the target is Mitt Romney. A video posted on YouTube this week of Romney's 1994 Senate race debate with Sen. Ted Kennedy shows a younger, slimmer -- and more liberal -- Romney defending his support for abortion and gay rights.

The posting prompted Romney, a presidential hopeful who hopes to court the Republican Party's socially conservative base, to once again declare publicly this week that "I was wrong on some issues back then."

The rising role of online video in politics has many pundits calling 2008 the "YouTube election." But it isn't just the "gotcha" videos that have made headlines -- candidates, social networking sites and grassroots activists have all scrambled to figure out the best ways to use the new medium.

In the emerging circus of online video, it's anybody's guess as to what will work best.

Without a doubt, the online videos that made the biggest stir in the 2006 midterm elections were the "gotcha" videos -- highlighted by Sen. George Allen's infamous "macaca moment" in which he was caught on tape calling his Democratic opponent's Indian campaign worker the derogatory term -- which many say cost him the election for Virginia's Senate seat.

"You often see the negative versions of [new mediums] work first," says Peter Leyden, CEO of the New Politics Network, a progressive think tank that recently released a report titled "Viral Video in Politics."

Leyden likens the "macaca-moment" of 2006 to the "mushroom cloud moment" of the 1964 presidential race, when President Johnson's "Daisy" ad -- which featured a young girl picking flowers before a nuclear bomb exploded -- marked the seminal moment that signaled the power of the new medium.

Jeff Pulver, an Internet entrepreneur who blogs extensively about online video and politics, agrees. "The power goes to the 'gotchas,' because at the end of the day, truth matters," Pulver tells ABCNEWS.com.