At last week’s debate, Republicans threw a little red meat to their base by attacking the “liberal media” (which is a fair label to pin on The Stranger, but not CNBC). The crowd at the debate loved hearing about how the media is biased against Republicans, so they’re taking the attacks one step further with a scheme to wrest control of the next debates out of the hands of the networks.
In a memo being circulated right now, the GOP’s demands range from reasonable to a little weird. No more lightning rounds! No more candidate-to-candidate questions! The temperature must be kept below 67 degrees! That last one is almost like Steve Aoki’s concert rider demanding six pairs of crew socks in every dressing room.
The demands are coming out of a meeting this weekend in Virginia that convened representatives from most of the campaigns. They drafted up a bunch of demands, but whether the networks give in to them remains to be seen. Currently, the RNC does all of the negotiation with networks, so it’s unusual to see the campaigns themselves jumping in to meddle with the process. Is this a sign that the relationship between the candidates and the RNC is souring? I wouldn’t be surprised. Party leaders must be exasperated that the clown-car candidates aren’t dropping out faster.
And now we have this debate takeover, which is essentially a vote of no confidence in party leadership. One particularly toxic idea they’re kicking around: mandatory 30-second opening statements, aka the most boring idea in the history of television. Nothing’s going to send viewers clicking away like a politician droning for even 30 seconds about whatever they want. That would essentially mean that the first 10 minutes of the debate would be an infomercial.
Also, they want control over all on-screen graphics, so no overlays of a CGI hamburger disappearing into Chris Christie’s mouth while he talks. The memo demands that candidates not be forced to raise their hand to indicate that they want to answer a question, and stipulates that the cameras not show empty podiums when candidates wander off to the bathroom during commercial breaks.
These still all draft suggestions—a final version of the demands will go out to the networks sometime this week. Probably. Or maybe it’s all a publicity stunt to the remind viewers that the GOP candidates hate the media and the media hates them.
“We need to understand that the media is not going to be fair,” Fiorina told Fox & Friends, which is a little rude since I suppose you could consider that show “the media.”
The next debate is next week, on November 10, and will air on Fox Business Network. Who knew that even existed? At this rate we’ll be watching the candidates going at each other on the Puppy Channel.
No big surprise, the candidates are apparently already delighted by the Fox format, so they won’t be asking for any changes. “The format that Fox has given them is fine,” said RNC’s chief strategist and communications director Sean Spicer.
Meanwhile Donald Trump continues to say horrible things about women (the head of the Democratic National Committee is a “crazy… highly neurotic woman”) so hopefully we’ll see him reveal more about the bad blood between the candidates and RNC.
