Republican National Committee; Time to Shift to Conservative Debate Moderators

After the CNBC debate Wednesday, the RNC promptly suspended its February 26 debate with NBC, despite the fact that both networks, while both owned by NBC Universal, have different editorial management and controls.

Sean Cairncross, the RNC’s chief operating officer and former chief counsel, will take the reins from committee spokesman Sean Spicer, who had served as the chief negotiator.

“I’m not going to complain about it, the fact is the media tries to divide us, tries to get us to kill each other and when they’re with Hillary Clinton it’s a love fest”.

Asked why candidates shouldn’t be challenged about their campaigns, Carson said: “There’s a place and time for that, but as far as I’m concerned, these debates are to highlight the differences in philosophy between the candidates – particularly when you have as many candidates as we have now”.

“I would like to see us be able to have a substantial opening statement, at least a minute, a substantial closing statement, at least a minute”, the former neurosurgeon said on ABC’s “This Week”.

Ahead of the meeting, Bennett said he did not expect all these issues to be resolved. “Tell us your biggest weakness, in 30 seconds” was a ludicrous way to open a debate about the future of the country.

Ginsburg told reporters that he spoke to Cairncross before the meeting, which he moderated. “I’m not anxious. Set up a debate and I’ll show up and I’ll do just fine”. “It’s a waste of everyone’s time when you do it that way, and sometimes things have to get pretty bad before people take action”. Easy: the subject matter experts from right-leaning think tanks and grassroots organizations, such as AEI, the Hoover Institution, the Heritage Foundation, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Federalist Society, American Conservative Union, National Taxpayers Union, etc. Each debate would be focused on a policy imperative, such as national security, tax reform, entitlement reform, and judicial appointments. The formal framework of a televised political debate – the rules about the length of time permitted for responses and rebuttals – should never be treated as strict limits on candidates.

This revelation also means a last-ditch effort by the RNC to keep control of the process has failed. One campaign manager, who was granted anonymity to speak about a private meeting, wrote: “Major question is if the RNC should be involved at all”. The campaigns, he said, “all want a greater transparency and accountability in the way the debate process is working”.

One complaint, Bennett said, is that campaigns aren’t given enough of a heads’ up on the plans for each debate, making it hard to schedule in prep time.

RNC Chief of Staff Katie Walsh announced the change in a letter to the candidates’ campaigns on Sunday evening, minutes before campaign representatives convened for a meeting outside of Washington, D.C., to discuss potential changes to the debate process.

Bush campaign manager Danny Diaz recommended that Telemundo be reinstated, after being dropped along with NBC.

“The RNC’s No. 1 priority is to provide the best debate format for our candidates. Their bias was showing, and it was despicable”, he said on “Fox and Friends”.

All campaigns sent advisers, except for Carly Fiorina’s, who said this weekend because of logistical issues her campaign wouldn’t be represented. “Two, they’re trying to cover too much ground with their questions…They were conceived originally as the idea that the candidates would debate each other, not the moderators”.

“It really was a fun Sunday dinner with a bunch of old friends”, Ginsberg said.