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Republicans Opting Out of Debates?
Headline: R.N.C. Signals a Pullout From Presidential Debates. Is the RNC really about to do something that isn’t stupid? All I know is my gut says, “Maybe.”
The Republican National Committee is preparing to change its rules to require presidential candidates seeking the party’s nomination to sign a pledge to not participate in any debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
The nonprofit commission, founded by the two parties in 1987 to codify the debates as a permanent part of presidential elections, describes itself as nonpartisan. But Republicans have complained for nearly a decade that its processes favor the Democrats, mirroring increasing rancor from conservatives toward Washington-based institutions.
They aren’t even debates. They’re just Media Operatives asking banal questions followed by the politicians giving canned answers their handlers wrote for them. The only politician to respond spontaneously in any of them was Trump. They are never informative, since the candidates are only repeating the talking points from their stump speeches. The media is just looking for its “Gotcha” moment, like Gerald Ford denying the existence of Soviet troops in Eastern Europe, or Mitt Romney talking about the binders full of women he had strapped to the top of his car or something.
And these things are almost always moderated by Democratic Party Activists with bylines … Candy Crowley, John Harwood, Chris Wallace, Lester Holt, Martha Raddatz, Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper. That the Republicans on the supposedly bipartisan CPD agreed to this shows their utter incompetence and uselessness.
Now, if we can just get rid of those scripted “Townhall Meetings,” where Democrat activists pose as “Undecided Voters” to ask Republican candidate questions like, “As an independent voter, my biggest issue is Climate Change. If elected, will you pledge to shut down all coal mining and oil production in the world, and if not, why do you hate the children, who are our future, so much?” It would actually be fantastic to see real voters ask real questions of the candidates; rather than media operatives repeating questions fed to them by their colleagues in the Washington DC Bubble.
While the eventual nominee could decide to debate, there’s far more energy in the G.O.P. base behind abandoning institutions than there used to be.
It never occurs to them to blame failing institutions (journalism, media, government) for this.
Published in Journalism
I thought Biden was felt to have won the debates with Trump!
Cathartic perhaps. Accurate, absolutely.
First debate the President wouldn’t stop talking. It was less Biden winning that Trump losing. He was far better in the second debate.
Biden couldn’t win a debate with a waffle iron.
I disagree. I’ve seen John Gill do it.
I don’t think anyone actually wins presidential debates in the US anymore. It’s all spin. And the result is often debate about how biased the debate was.
Personally, I can’t call it a BS detector, but boredom. Though I watch the debates when I can, I never learn any positions or see how the candidates think. Well, actually, I think I could see how Trump thought, but what I saw of Biden was how he was prepped to answer questions.
I’m still trying to work “I was one of those children on that bus” into my daily conversation.
There is one notable exception, Romney’s absolute clobbering of Obama in their first debate. After that initial walloping, Romney ran out of steam and started playing defense.
Naw. He just sent his surrogates — CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS…
To be fair, I can’t debate when I am a toaster.
I agree if we’re talking about the general election. There is never anything said that you didn’t already know.
When it is a debate of members of the same party running for the nomination, the debates can be good. It gives you a chance to learn a little bit about candidates whose names may not be very well known outside their own states. But I hated how the Republican presidential debates were run for 2016. If there are too many candidates to put on the stage at once, and you have separate debates, fine. But the candidates should be chosen randomly for which debate they will participate in. When some authority says these are the A team and these are the B team, a lot of people aren’t even going to watch the B team debate. Having watched those debates, I certainly wasn’t persuaded that the A team was collectively smarter than the B team. And the questions they were given stunk.
First of all these aren’t real debates. Not like any debates I’ve ever seen. With debates you know the question and have time to prepare a thoughtful answer.
What they are are multiple, simultaneous short-form interviews. With unknown questions (gotcha questions) tailored to and asked of each interviewee. With a short time allotted for responses. This whole “Candidate B, since you were mentioned in the Candidate A’s answer, you have time to respond” thing is ridiculous. For example, if you all ignore Tulsi Gabbard, she gets less camera time. And if you pile on the weakest, least-winnable candidate and he or she gets time to respond, you further freeze Gabbard out.
The advantages of a mic-timed round-table. If you want to raise your voice and shout over someone you can. As long as you want. You just have to know that your overall mic’d time is limited. If you have short epigrammatic thing to say, you can squeeze it in and say it. If you’re naturally passive, quiet, and you want to take five minutes and present a 12-point response, you can. If you’re interrupted too much the moderator with the gavel can intervene and tell you to let the speaker finish. But you both have to remember that this is cutting into your overall times. And if you want to bring the conversation back to a more important point, you can (or you can try).
This is how the world works (or should work) except for the time clocks. Those who have something to say, end up saying it. Those who have good questions in rebuttal, argue them.
AND you, the audience, get to see how people lead, what they focus on, and how they refocus the conversation, and how they control the room (for good or ill). You see how quick they are on their feet and how swift each is on the uptake. And if they add to the conversation that lead to clear answers or merely sidestep issues and have flowery goals or promises. And if you’re a non-dominant, shy personality, do you really think you’d make a good president, a good leader of the free world?
And I assure you, platitudes and the fact that your father was a bar tender or a postman won’t cut it.
But most of all you get to see their personalities – in unscripted situations. For example, do you really think Hillary’s saying “What difference, at this point, does it make?” would not get a round of loud, hard, castigating responses?