Tag: Debates

Tweet of the Day, This Is Why I Only Intend To Watch The First Democratic Debate edition.

Interesting thought that occurred to me after reading this tweet:

Is there going to be a single moment in the Democratic debates where a candidate says I’m sorry if my opinion is unpopular among the base, but I’m right anyway about any topic at all? Or is it going to just be an ‘out-Left the other candidates’ snoozefest? I’m kind of betting on snoozefest.

DNC nervously refuses to host more debates.

The wagons are being circled: “Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is closing the door on adding more Democratic presidential debates, and said a controversial clause penalizing candidates for participating in unsanctioned debates would stand.” The number will stay at 6, and never mind the complaints from inside the party. No, really, the Democratic leadership is determined to never mind them.

Before we go any further: that Hill article noted that there were two dozen or so primary debates in 2008, which does admittedly sound a bit high. Six, on the hand, is… well, if you weren’t really expecting to have a contested primary then I suppose six would have seemed like plenty. As it stands right now, though, the Democrats are perilously close to having a contested primary despite the fact that their only alternatives to Hillary Clinton are currently Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley. As a former Democrat myself, the idea of that is giving me sympathy heartburn despite the fact that I want to see such a glorious trainwreck happen. Continue reading DNC nervously refuses to host more debates.

CNN modifies second debate eligibility rules.

Smart of them: “CNN is amending the criteria for its Republican presidential debate on September 16, possibly opening the door for Carly Fiorina to join the other top-tier candidates on the stage.” But here’s the buried lede:

As of Tuesday, only three polls recognized by CNN have been released, and it appears there will not be enough to make a fair editorial judgment before the September 16th debate, according to the network.

The network said that from August through mid-September 2007, there were 16 polls released. During the same period in 2011, 15 polls were released. Based on previous poll releases, CNN created its original criteria.

…Interesting. I knew that the polling was sparse; but I hadn’t realized that it was THAT sparse. Very, very interesting…

Remarkably, Jon Stewart’s last night was dwarfed by the GOP debate.

As I understand it, not only did the main debate get ridiculously more people watching it than did Stewart: the undercard debate actually had more watchers than Stewart, too. This relieves me, honestly. Because whatever you thought about the debates last night, they had a lot more semantic content in them than did Jon Stewart’s nightly Punch-and-Judy show. I’m honestly relieved that a large number of citizens in the Republic apparently agree with me.

QotD, Take These Changes In #RNC Debate Policy Seriously edition.

2012 burned just a few too many people just a bit too badly. Byron York:

…the party fully intends to change its debate structure. The reason goes beyond Republicans’ belief that holding 20-plus debates, as in 2011-2012, provides too much opportunity for gaffes and intra-party bloodletting. It also stems from GOP dissatisfaction with debates in which the moderators don’t seem to understand the premises of modern conservatism and engage in hostile or clueless questioning — or out-of-the-blue provocations like former Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos’ queries about contraception at a 2012 debate in New Hampshire.

Just what the RNC will do is not yet clear. But it is serious. Look for real change to occur before Republican presidential candidates meet again.

I should note, by the way, that this has to be a dynamic process. We’re going to have to go in and check the system every four years.

And the GOP primary debate hardball dance continues.

Nice sidestep on the debate issue there, Chairman:

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Sunday that his organization’s planned debate boycott was focused on NBC and CNN – which plan to air films about Hillary Clinton – and not companies which may produce those projects.

Priebus, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” was responding to a question from Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley about a report in The New York Times that Fox Television Studios was in the “early stages” of talks to produce NBC’s miniseries about Clinton, set to star Diane Lane. Fox Television Studios is a corporate sibling of Fox News Channel and the Fox broadcast network.

“The big question for me, Candy, is number one, which company is putting it on the air? Who is doing the work? I’m not interested if they’re using the same caterer or whether they all drink Diet Coke and I’m not boycotting Diane Lane,” Priebus said.

Continue reading And the GOP primary debate hardball dance continues.

Keeping the GOP primary debates in-house…

…and putting them on CSPAN sounds fine to me, actually.  More importantly, it sounds like doing that would make it harder for the Media to go after my party’s eventual candidate.  Frankly, the 2012 primary debates were a net loss for the GOP, thanks to a frankly vicious media campaign: so be it, but they only get one bite at that apple. I’ll take my chances with a new format, thanks – and if that hurts the Media’s ratings, well, maybe they should have thought of that before they started doing in-kind contributions to the Democratic party.

Moe Lane

PS: As Tom Clancy once noted: why should I trust them?  They’re reporters.

I would be happy to help moderate a GOP primary debate…

…in my official capacity as a RedState Contributing Editor:

One approach might be to start with a list of intelligent right-of-center people who will ask reasonable questions eliciting substantive responses. You can find them in abundance at such places as the National Review, the Weekly Standard, Breitbart.com, Townhall.com, HotAir.com, RedState.com, and, to be self-serving, PJMedia.com. There are plenty more, including, naturally, the Wall Street Journal opinion pages.

And to be as equally self-serving as Roger Simon is being.  But, honestly, the current system is as just as awful as Roger describes.  Remember all that stuff that we were yelling at the computer screen during the debates?  Wouldn’t it have been great if we were the people asking those questions? …Well, could we have made matters worse? Continue reading I would be happy to help moderate a GOP primary debate…

Did the Left’s panicked response to first debate make things worse for Obama?

Jonathan Last has an interesting thought:

[H]ere’s my question: Imagine a world in which, during and after the debate, the left didn’t have a collective, public freak out. In other words, a world in which a still-functional Journolist-type of operation was able to corral lefty elites and get them into something like a coherent message instead of having them set themselves on fire over Twitter. Imagine if they had gotten some message discipline and taken a line more like Republican heads did after the second and third debate–Yes, our guy probably lost this on points, but this was a strong performance and blah-blah-blah.

Would it have made any difference? The debate would still be the debate, and the insta-polls would have been the same. But if Chris Matthews and Andrew Sullivan and their fellow travelers hadn’t micturated on the carpet in public panic, would the story out of the Denver debate been anything more than, Strong performance by Romney, Obama needs to up his game.

Continue reading Did the Left’s panicked response to first debate make things worse for Obama?

Mitt Romney demonstrates how to achieve an honorable separation from George W Bush…

…while at the same time eviscerating Barack Obama. Below are two video clips, and the relevant transcript.   I created a shorter and a longer version: some people like the thirty second clips, and some people want the full version for full effect.  Also, note that I’ve cut out the bit where Romney hammered Obama for lying about Romney’s contraception position, and the bit where Obama whined about not having yet more time to say nothing in particular: while important in general, neither bit is relevant to this specific discussion.

Enjoy!  I certainly did – and I like George W Bush, mind you.  But the way that Romney pinned Bush’s deficits to Obama’s insanely higher ones was choice.  Bet you Obama never contemplated that he was going to have to defend his predecessor there, afterwards…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Continue reading Mitt Romney demonstrates how to achieve an honorable separation from George W Bush…