Another sign that the GOP is coming apart at the seams is their continuing discussion about how to do their debates differently in the next presidential cycle. They want many less of them. They don’t want them hosted by unfriendly news outlets, which means that Fox News and maybe ABC News are the only outlets in the running. Now there are thinking of letting shock jock radio hosts like Limbaugh, Hannity, and Mark Levin host a debate. I sat with Duncan at the ACORN debate and I agree that it was pretty good. I don’t agree that a debate hosted by radio shock jocks would be good. At least, it wouldn’t be good for the candidates or their party. The difference is that ACORN was a community organization dedicated to helping people on the margins of society. Limbaugh, Hannity, and Levin are charlatans and entertainers. The ACORN debate featured questions that you won’t hear Wolf Blitzer ask because he doesn’t use a check cashing joint, take out tax rebate advance loans, or have a ballooning mortgage he can’t afford. His neighborhood isn’t riddled with bullets, either. The cops didn’t stop and frisk his son.
But a shock jock debate would be all about the right’s manufactured heat fever dreams. In other words, it would be about lies that Republicans are afraid to admit are lies. The whole point would be to keep everything safe within the bubble where those lies are never challenged. But to anyone who hadn’t marinated in that bubble for the last five years, it would appear like a lunatic asylum having a lecture series.
Bad idea.
We’ll have to disagree. Why not let Rusty and Sean Insanity moderate their debates? The only way for the GOP to reform is to get crushed in election after election, probably through the middle of the next decade.
Sadly, I worry that this crushing will not trickle down to the state level.
I trust that it will, given time, as demographics shift, old folks die off and the sociopaths get more and more careless in letting their masks slip.
Even if it doesn’t, as long as it spreads throughout the national level it will be a benefit.
As to state level, what we need is a party organization dedicated to strengthening the state parties so they have resources and autonomy to react dynamically to events on the ground.
This exactly. Here in this red state that could be a pick up opportunity the local Democratic party has been having public spats all over the local front page about who gets to serve on the election board for the upcoming non-partisan newly combined city/county government. The local party has had 5 chair persons in the last 17 months.
At the state level, the last chairman had to resign because of some client misrepresentation in his law practice and he got verbally spanked by the state bar. Plus the state party has NO money whatsoever. Yeah,an opportunity in this state. But there is no real functioning party apparatus. Sad, really. Angers me too.
What state is this?
If they want to have Rush Limbaugh hosting a debate, I am all for it. Put the crazy front and center and let people see what happens.
It’s not a good sign for our democracy, but this is the kind of thing that would help us absolute decimate the GOP everywhere. Even the rural folk who listen to this stuff would be shamed into voting against the clowns.
I’m starting to think that our democracy really can’t function properly with the GOP acting the way it is now. It depends on opposition in a fundamental way, but it also depends on that opposition being commited to not wrecking the country if they don’t get their way.
Hell, the modern GOP would wreck the country even quicker if they DID get their way.
That said, I think Rush or Hannity enforcing their foaming-at-the-mouth ideology on the Presidential candidates would be excellent, but I’m a partisan Democrat. I’d even organize people to tune in. Levin would be the best, though- outrageously unpleasant to the non-wingnut ear.
Ironically the most “troublesome” debates in 2012 were hosted by ” friendly” networks. And romney’s worst performance ( please proceed) was of his own making.
Let them do whatever they want. It will solidify the crazy but if not that then something else will. Until they die off that is what it is going to like..
The stuff about keeping the debates to Fox and maybe ABC, or just having fewer of then are not particularly crazy. The Democrats won’t have their debates on Fox, and it’s hard to see how the 17,000 debates they held last time around did them any good at all.
But having Sean Hannity get up there to grill Chris Christie and Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz about whether Huma Abedin is secretly a space alien is a terrible plan. It will help the candidates who can’t possibly win the general, and even if they end up nominating someone who has a snowball’s chance in hell, they’ll just have spent the last six months stuffing him into an increasingly awkward series of boxes to prove to themselves that he really is the right kind of Constitutional conservative.
This is the point I would have made if I hadn’t read it first on my way to the bottom of the page. Something like this would totally fuck a guy like Christy and anyone else who takes occasionally moderate positions. It would make it more likely someone like Cruz of Paul or Santorum {snicker} is nominated.
That would be great but if they steal the general election god help us.
On the other hand, when Romney went moderate after debate #1 the right saw how effective it was and shut up. With enough money and time people will forget how extreme they were in the primaries. Remember, they think “no one could be that crazy so it can’t be true.”
The right may have gotten quiet but Romney’s prevarications did not help him. His eagerness to tell anyone and everyone exactly what they wanted to hear made him a tin target in a state fair duck shooting gallery. Obama won resoundingly in the type of economy that could have easily sunk him. Against a moderate Republican with a modicum of political skill and credibility, it would have been a tight race.
Sounds like what happened in 2012 with the “Journalists.”
What they fail to understand is that their ideas are unpopular and downright loony regardless of who asks the damn questions. The only thing they get right is the idea of fewer debates because the less exposure the better.
And does anyone think Chris Christie wants to participate in this clown show?
If things keep going the way they’re going, even Christy may eventually get fed up with the Republican party. I don’t think he’d switch as it wouldn’t do him any good at the state level. But I could see him accepting a cabinet appointment or diplomatic station in a Democratic administration.
I don’t see Christie settling for anything less than the nomination for Vice President. The many has large aspirations.
However, I do think the splintering of the GOP is bound to happen. Either the GOP establishment will get tired of losing national & statewide elections, or a moderate will get nominated and the TP/Libertarian Nut Jobs will rebel against the GOP and form their own 3rd party.
Either way the Dems have to stay together. If the GOP splits, the moderates and independents will be the first targets from the Democratic coalition.
And this cycle (after apparently being mightily wooed in 2012 by Romney’s people for VP) he’ll accept nothing less than the P nom — unless and until his primary campaign efforts have fallen short and he has no other choice but to look carefully at accepting another VP offer.
As for Dem unity, it will be there provided Hillary is sane and sensible and non-bellicose in her FP pronouncements. I think she will be — the lesson of 2002 being still in the forefront of her mind — but we’ll see.
Loudmouth schoolyard bully Christie getting a diplomatic post? I don’t think so.
Oh, come on! Could you imagine Christie as ambassador to Japan? That would be so awesome. ;0)
I cannot imagine a better job for someone with Christie’s temperament than Governor of New Jersey.
Please, FSM, please, let the talk show guys moderate the GOP debates. Teh Crazee has been going on for long enough now that it won’t win any new convert, but plenty of people who don’t follow politics closely can’t wrap their minds around the idea that one of our two major parties has gone off the deep end. If anything can get through to them that yes, it can, and they have, it would be that Alternate Reality Circus.
I would love to see the Democratic primary candidates in a debate run by Fox/Newsmax. That would be awesome.
I’m sure we’d learn all sorts of things about them, their ability to stand up for themselves, their answers to the arguments of the right, etc.
The first Dem primary candidate to kick Steve Doocy in the nuts gets my vote and $50 donation.
Remember Gingrich’s strategy during the debates in 2012?
Bitch at the moderator for asking hard kweschuns, and listen to the morons applaud.
Yep, Joe, that was pretty much Newt’s path back to brief relevancy during the GOP primaries. Why answer the moderator’s questions when you can slice them to ribbons instead? Newt’s a “historian”, so he knew how wildly entertained the Romans were when the Christians were fed to the lions. Thanks for that rich laugh in memory of those good, good times.