Republican National Committee threatens to pull nominees from official president

[SVPete]

Republican National Committee threatens to pull nominees from official presidential debates

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/13/republicans-threaten-to-ban-presidential-nominees-from-debates.html

In a letter sent to the Commission on Presidential Debates and obtained by NBC News, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel accused the organization of failing to enact reforms that “would restore trust in the debates process.”

“So long as the CPD appears intent on stonewalling the meaningful reforms necessary to restore its credibility with the Republican Party as a fair and nonpartisan actor, the RNC will take every step to ensure that future Republican presidential nominees are given that opportunity elsewhere,” McDaniel wrote.

“Accordingly, the RNC will initiate the process of amending the Rules of the Republican Party at our upcoming Winter Meeting to prohibit future Republican nominees from participating in CPD-sponsored debates,” she continued, adding that the GOP and its voters have “lost faith” in the commission.

This is probably more that two decades overdue. Moderatorial partisanship has been blatant since ... GHWB? RWR? It became painfully blatant in 2008 or 2012.

[Ralph Wiggum]

At the rate our country has become bifurcated on so many levels (entertainment, sports, politics), it appears that everyone will only hang out at their own comfortable place.  Much longer and complicated to discuss here, but we can save that for elsewhere and further discussion.  It is way beyond reasoning with many nutbag leftists.

In the last 20 years, we've seen Snuffleup-his ass, Candy Crowley, and Chris Wallace torpedo Presidential candidates with bull-crap loaded questions.

I have opinions on a few particular debate moderators, but I'll leave that up for discussion.

[SVPete]

Step-In-Awful-Stuff was campaign staff for Dukakis and Clinton, and was a spokesliar-hitman in Clinton's MalAdministration. He shouldn't have been hired by ABC at all, let alone be a Presidential debate "moderator".

[Eupher]

Well, knock me over with a feather.

McDaniel finally showing some balls. She probably has bigger balls than Reince Priebus ever thought about having, but that ain't saying much. GOP still has a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

[SVPete]

RNC Signals It Will Bar Candidates From Debates Hosted By Commission On Presidential Debates Over Bias Concerns

https://www.dailywire.com/news/rnc-signals-it-will-bar-candidates-from-debates-hosted-by-commission-on-presidential-debates-over-bias-concerns

The letter from McDaniel to the commission laid out the Republican Party’s history of reaching out to the commission with concerns that have led to a loss of faith in the organization.

Some of the top concerns laid out in the letter included:

* Waiting until after early voting had already begun to host the first presidential debate;

* Making unilateral changes to previously agreed-upon debate formats and conditions, in some cases without even notifying the candidates;

* Selecting a moderator who had once worked for the Democrat nominee, a glaring conflict of interest; and

* Failing to maintain the organization’s strict nonpartisanship, with a majority of its Board Members publicly disparaging the Republican nominee.

McDaniel called for the commission to adopt the following changes to address the party’s concerns:
...
* Enact a code of conduct prohibiting CPD officers, directors, and staff from making public comments supporting or opposing any candidate, or otherwise engaging in partisan political activity in connection with the presidential election, with meaningful consequences for violations;

* Establish transparent criteria for selecting debate moderators that would disqualify individuals from consideration who have apparent conflicts of interest due to personal, professional, or partisan factors;
...

Better yet, here's the RNC letter, https://prod-static.gop.com/media/documents/RNC_Response_Letter_to_CPD_01.13.22_1642086188.pdf .

[SVPete]

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel On The RNC’s Divorce from the Biased Presidential Debate Commission

https://hughhewitt.com/rnc-chairwoman-ronna-mcdaniel-on-the-rncs-divorce-from-the-biased-presidential-debate-commission/

HH: ... For many years, I’ve been like Cato the Elder talking about Carthage. The Presidential Debate Commission must be destroyed is my version of Carthage must be destroyed. Carthago delenda est. And you destroyed it yesterday. And you are the hero of the hour. Would you tell people, well, let me just put it this way. Is the divorce final?

RM: The divorce is not final. We do have some hoops to go through. We’ve got to get the RNC members to pass a rule change. So that won’t actually happen officially until August or spring at the earliest. We just, we have some things to do, but the Debate Committee that the RNC had voted unanimously that we want to remove ourselves from the Commission on Presidential Debates.

HH: Now I have many, many grievances going back to Candy Crowley throwing the 2012 Election…

RM: Yeah.

HH: …to moderators before, to the 2016 rules and the obvious bias to Hillary, to the 2020 cancellation of the debate, to the makeup of the debate moderators in 2020. What broke your back? I mean, what got the committee to finally say we are done with you, you are a biased arm of the DNC even if you have some token Republicans on there?

RM: Well, I think for us, it’s that the Commission had no interest in working with the Republican Party, which represents 74 million voters. And what they’ve done is they’ve set up a system where we’ll only work with the nominee. But by the time the nominee’s in place, which is after the convention in 2024, the debates are all set. So they have total control and a total monopoly. And there were three things that were really egregious in 2020. They picked a moderator that worked for Joe Biden. They started debates after a million votes had been cast. We asked them to start debates before early voting starts. And I think the third is they had members of their commission that were vocally disparaging the Republican candidate and allowed to stay in their role. And so this has been a cushy job for decades. They have a total monopoly. And we said can you just guarantee us that you won’t pick a moderator that worked for the Democrat candidate? They won’t even say yes to that. And I think…

HH: Who is the moderator who worked for Biden? Would you remind people?

RM: It was Steve Scully.

The Debate Commission was basically kicking the can down the road, stonewalling, playing games to run out the clock so that changes could not be made in time for the 2024 debates. McDaniel called out their BS, early.

I don't think any "reforms" made by the commission would be real, so I hope this ends up being a nuclear strike on the commission's existence.

[SVPete]

Here’s How We Know the RNC’s Demands for Presidential Debates Are Reasonable

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/01/15/heres-how-we-know-the-rncs-demands-for-presidential-debates-are-reasonable-n1549711

When it comes to partisan news coverage, it doesn’t get any worse than MSNBC. Yet, even MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle couldn’t find anything objectionable about the Republican National Committee’s demands for reform of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD).

“They want the debates to happen before early voting starts, term limits for the commission’s board, and a ban on any partisan political activity for the people in the commission,” Ruhle said. “I am a mere mortal. I have never been involved in debates about debates, but when I read those three, I kind of think, I don’t know, they sound reasonable.”

The RNC said it will not allow Republican candidates for president to participate in the CPD’s presidential debates unless these reforms are made.

"Memo" to the Commission on Presidential Debates: When you've lost MesSNBC ...

[Drafe Hoblin]

My fatigued opinion in January, 2022:  I don't think we need 2-Party Presidential debates anymore.  The phenomenon has become an embarrassingly archaic whistle and buzzer expo.