Politicos are tuning in to hear what Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will say about his Mormon faith this morning when he speaks at the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas.
The speech is much anticipated for its political ramifications and for its impact on voters in Iowa, but its transmission is also novel. It is being streamed live on the Web using USTREAM.TV.
The most interesting part is that USTREAM.TV has created a widget that allows users to embed the stream into their blogs, (thanks to Republican technology consultant Patrick Ruffini for the tip on his blog last night.)
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has edged ahead of Romney in the symbolically important race in Iowa, with a lot of the support coming from evangelical christians.
"Huckabee’s got 44 percent of the evangelicals, leading Romney 2-1 in a group that comprises 40 percent of the GOP caucus attendees," wrote the Des Moines Register’s political columnist David Yepsen recently. "He also leads Romney among those with the strongest anti-abortion views and those who have attended previous caucuses."
Pundits say that Romney’s speech is going to contextualize his religious beliefs. (His campaign has recently suffered from an anti-Mormon telephone campaign, as reported by The Politico.)
There’s a lot of commentary about the significance of this speech in relation to Democrat John F. Kennedy’s speech to voters in 1960 about his Catholic faith. You can both read and hear a recording of that speech at The Boston Globe. A video recording is also available on YouTube.
Other presidential candidates who’ve used the company’s live streaming service include Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Barack Obama. In fact, if you want to keep up to speed with the programming on USTREAM.TV, you can follow the programming on Twitter.
In the meantime, as of midnight, Huckabee’s launched a brand new peer-to-peer grassroots online recruitment campaign, in an approach that’s reminiscent of Republican Ron Paul’s grassroots-driven publicity and fund-raising push.
Here’s a part of the e-mail message that the former Arkansas governor sent out last night:
