Republican presidential debate clusterfollies

[KingOrfeo]

Conservatives were seething and hissing after last Wednesday's Republican debate, blaming the "liberal media" CNBC (seriously!) moderators for embarrassing the candidates by asking them hard questions.

Now Reince Preibus won't let NBC host the scheduled debate in February as previously agreed.

Meanwhile, the candidates/campaigns are demanding more control over the content and format of future debates.

What's more, they want to do that without the input of the Republican National Committee. Preibus is being sidelined.

This cannot end well.

 

[The_Trouvere]

In the general election one of the residents of the Republican Clown Car will have to go up against Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. They better get used to being asked tough questions right now.

 

[Nathan_Brazil]

Most of them really don't care about later.

They are not running in an attempt to be President.

Their efforts are purely to increase their profile and speaking fees. Making sense is not only not required, it is counterproductive.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I cant imagine Hillary or Sanders faring well with regards to their socialist credentials.

The libs already forgot about the 2014 election where they lost the Senate.

 

[KingOrfeo]

I cant imagine Hillary or Sanders faring well with regards to their socialist credentials.

Hillary a socialist?!

 

[Nathan_Brazil]

I cant imagine Hillary or Sanders faring well with regards to their socialist credentials.

The libs already forgot about the 2014 election where they lost the Senate.

Come on Noir, you know there is a difference between high turnout Presidential years, and off years.

Intellectual honesty please.

 

[KingOrfeo]

In the general election one of the residents of the Republican Clown Car will have to go up against Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. They better get used to being asked tough questions right now.

Yeah, well, they seem to have a problem with that.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Most of them really don't care about later.

They are not running in an attempt to be President.

Their efforts are purely to increase their profile and speaking fees. Making sense is not only not required, it is counterproductive.

Then why should they care how the moderators treat them?

 

[JackLuis]

Loser Republicans Want Debates To Be More Fair To Losers

Shouldn't they earn the nomination with their own bootstraps?

After boo-hooing about how last week’s CNBC-hosted Republican debate was SO mean and SO unfair — they tried to make Ben Carson do math, for fuck’s sake! — representatives from the campaigns had a stitch-n-bitch Sunday night, where they braided each other’s hair and expressed all their sad feelings about how it sucks to be them.

In addition to Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus’s Sternly Worded Letter to NBC that his precious snowflake kids running for president won’t be showing up for the next NBC debate unless they all get lots of hugs and kisses and candy and blowjobs, the candidates have written a Sternly Worded Letter of their own, threatening to deny Americans the entertainment of watching them debate each other on the teevee, UNLESS:

So, no asking “Gov. Huckabee, have you ever fucked a goat, yes or no?” without allowing him sufficient time to explain, “Yes, but the goat was asking for it.”

No showing the live studio audience sleeping through George Pataki remembering that time he was governor of 9/11.

No showing the candidates using notes — “America, Obamasux, freedom, America” — because god fucking forbid Republicans appear not to have all their rehearsed canned answers memorized in their heads.

And no ass shots, because ewwww gross.

Plus, they want a “pledge that the temperature in the hall be kept below 67 degrees,” presumably so none of them (Marco Rubio) looks like a shiny sweaty mess of Marco Rubio.

 

[JackLuis]

Not sure I believe this but:

Trump ditches fellow GOP candidates to negotiate separate debate deal with networks

Donald Trump will not join his fellow Republican presidential candidates, and will instead negotiate his own deals with television networks concerning future debates, the Washington Post reported.

The real estate mogul’s decision came a day after officials representing 11 GOP campaigns put together a letter on Sunday to be sent to network hosts. According to the Post, two of his senior aides attended the meeting, but came away unconvinced that any agreement would offer him “the most possible airtime” during future events.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Not sure I believe this but:

Trump ditches fellow GOP candidates to negotiate separate debate deal with networks

Jeez, just when you thought he couldn't get any more embarrassing . . .

 

[JackLuis]

http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/2748/7575/original.jpg?w=600&h​

No point in this, just thought it was true.

 

[Nathan_Brazil]

Then why should they care how the moderators treat them?

They don't.

Crocodile Tears.

 

[sr71plt]

I cant imagine Hillary or Sanders faring well with regards to their socialist credentials.

Given your prognostication record here, it's very comforting to see you post that.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Come on Noir, you know there is a difference between high turnout Presidential years, and off years.

Intellectual honesty please.

Turnout is influenced by the candidates.

If the GOP nominates Bush or Jesus or George Washington, Hillary wins. If the GOP nominates Santa, Santa wins.

The GOP loves to push losers like Dole and Romney and McCain, and the Right stays home. If the GOP nominates someone with balls, Hillary's toast.

The other thing (not talked about) is this: The next President fills many seats on the Supreme Court.

 

[KingOrfeo]

The GOP loves to push losers like Dole and Romney and McCain, and the Right stays home. If the GOP nominates someone with balls . . .

. . . he gets handed them by Hillary. Do you have any conception at all of how repellent a hard-right presidential candidate would be to the majority of American voters?! You don't seem to realize just how unpopular are your politics. See the Pew Political Typology -- Steadfast Conservatives make up only 15% of voters, add in the Business Conservatives and you've still got only 27%, and the Young Outsiders are not going to vote for any Tea Partier. You will never see one in the White House in your lifetime. Jeb or Rubio or Kasich is the GOP's only real shot at the WH this cycle.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Relevant toons.

 

[KingOrfeo]

The GOP is digging its own grave: How their debate tantrum hastens the party’s demise

Ted Cruz is also lobbying for dramatic changes in the debate process. Cruz is convinced, after last week’s CNBC debate, that there’s a left-wing conspiracy to torpedo the GOP’s chances of winning the White House next year. “What you have is a bunch of left-wing operatives whose object is that whoever the Republican nominee is, they want him as battered and bruised as possible so that the Democrat wins in November,” Cruz told a GOP crowd in Iowa this weekend.

Cruz, naturally, took it one step further, suggesting the RNC allow only partisan hacks to moderate the debates: “How about instead of a bunch of attack journalists, we actually have real conservatives? Could you imagine a debate moderated by Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin?” Setting aside the fact that CNBC is hardly a bastion of progressive thought, I’m not sure Cruz thought this one through.

I can easily imagine a GOP debate moderated by Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, and it would be a catastrophe for the Republican Party. That trinity of gasbags would tease every ounce of crazy out of the candidates on stage, alienating moderates and centrists across the country. Perhaps that would be good for Cruz’s personal branding, but it’d also be a gift to the Democratic Party.

<snip>

The rift between the RNC and the candidates will, eventually, prove disastrous for the long-term viability of the party. What the candidates are really protesting here isn’t the length or format of the debate. What they want is for the debate to resemble the echo chamber of Fox News and talk radio. They complain about the pressure to engage and confront one another, but isn’t that what debates are for? Ted Cruz wants sycophants to ask loaded questions that allow candidates to deliver rehearsed soliloquies, but that’s what stump speeches are for – debates are about forced collisions.

It’s revealing that amidst all the calls for protest and cancellations, the candidates agreed not to implement debate changes until after the upcoming Fox Business Network debate. According to the Washington Post, everyone in that room is “afraid to make Roger [Ailes] mad.” And they should be. Fox News is the fount of propaganda for the conservative movement. Fox is where candidates go to be fellated by know-nothing anchors who ask inane but friendly questions of GOP candidates.

This is what the candidates want, and it’s what they expect to get at the debates. If the candidates do get their way, and I assume they will, future Republican debates will mirror Fox News both in their biases and in their epistemic closure. They may be free of those pesky “gotcha” questions, but they’ll also be contrived propaganda parties for the base.

That plays well among the converted, but it won’t appeal to the rest of the country. If anything, it will hasten the demise of a Republican Party already struggling to win national elections.

 

[midwestyankee]

The GOP is digging its own grave: How their debate tantrum hastens the party’s demise

Key line: "That plays well among the converted, but it won’t appeal to the rest of the country. If anything, it will hasten the demise of a Republican Party already struggling to win national elections."

Cruz is much too smart to actually believe the bs that he's using to maintain the spotlight. All he cares about is winning the nomination and the people to who he appeals the most DO want to believe that there are institutional forces (i.e., the "lamestream media") aggregated against them as a way of explaining their miserable lot in life. He craves their attention, needs their votes, and will pander to them about as shamelessly as anyone in the game today. He is a performance artist with a much more subtle act than The Donald.

But if he should win the nomination, his policies and his professional history will make Barry Goldwater's performance in 1964 look like a stunning victory.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Cruz is much too smart to actually believe the bs that he's using to maintain the spotlight.

I'm afraid it might be much worse than that.

 

[midwestyankee]

I'm afraid it might be much worse than that.

Scary, if even remotely close to the truth. And it may well be.

 

[KingOrfeo]

More relevant toons.

 

[NeverEndingMe]

get a job, asshat