GOP turns ear to Web users for '08 platform

WASHINGTON — National Republican leaders unveiled a Web site Friday that they hope will encourage grass-roots participation in the shaping of the party's 2008 platform.

Republican leaders say they think the site, www.gopplatform2008.com, will create an online community allowing anyone with access to a computer to offer ideas, to comment on others' ideas, and submit videos about their views.

"I feel certain we'll get some great ideas," said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., co-chairman of the Republican platform committee. "Will that be the majority? I have no way of gauging."

What the site certainly will generate for the Republican National Committee is a ready-to-go database of contact names for future fundraising. Users will be required to register to comment.

The Internet has become one of the primary battlegrounds for the presidential campaigns as they seek ways to galvanize their followers. Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has used the Internet to raise tens of millions of dollars from donors who've never given to a campaign before and has staffed his campaign with Web-savvy entrepreneurs, including one of the founders of the Facebook Web site.

A study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project last month found that Obama started the campaign with unquestionable technological edges over Republican John McCain.

The project interviewed 2,251 adults between April 8 and May 11, and found that Obama backers are more likely than McCain backers to sign an online petition, seek e-mails from campaigns, give money online and volunteer for the campaign.

Republicans hope the Web effort will heighten interest in the drafting of the platform, generally something done largely unnoticed, and keep the party's most conservative and religious members engaged even as voter surveys show they're less enthusiastic about McCain than they were about Bush in 2000 and 2004.

Merkel to Obama: We'll find solution

BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has a message for Barack Obama: We can work it out.

Merkel had signaled unease over a possible Obama speech at Berlin's historic Brandenburg Gate. A Merkel spokesman, Ulrich Wilhelm, said Friday that while details had not yet been worked out, "we are confident that we will reach a mutual and good solution which does justice to the interests of all involved."

While Berlin city officials had said they were delighted with the idea, Merkel questioned whether it's appropriate to bring a foreign election campaign to a site that symbolizes Germany's Cold War division and its reunification.

Obama's trip to Europe is being treated as big news in London, Paris and Berlin.

British papers were buzzing about his expected arrival on July 18.

Information from The Associated Press and The Washington Post is included in this report