RNC Takes a Stand Against Biased Presidential Debates
By: Spencer Brown
The debate commission is just as unfair and imbalanced against the GOP and alternative media and in favor of democrat moderators and media in the arrangements of the debates as MBFC is in dealing with liberal and conservative news and opinion sites.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
RNC Takes a Stand Against Biased Presidential Debates
Source: AP Photo/Julio Cortez
After the 2020 debates (read: circuses) in which President Trump faced off against Joe Biden and Vice President Mike Pence went toe-to-toe with Kamala Harris, the Republican National Committee is warning the commission responsible for organizing debates that GOP nominees won't be participating in 2024 debates unless reforms are made.
In a letter dated January 13 to the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) — the entity that has organized presidential debates since its founding in the late 1980s with the cooperation of the Republican and Democratic National Committees — RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel made Republicans' complaints clear.
Due to what the RNC calls inaction on the CPD's part, the RNC says it will amend party rules to "prohibit future Republican nominees from participating in CPD-sponsored debates." McDaniel explained:
The RNC has a duty to ensure that its future presidential nominees have the opportunity to debate their opponents on a level playing field. 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. 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.
"The RNC’s concerns strike at the core of whether the CPD credibly can provide a fair and impartial forum for presidential debates," McDaniel's letter states.
The CPD's past "failures" highlighted by the RNC include:
- 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
For its part, the Commission on Presidential Debates has ignored the RNC's repeated complaints and requests for reform and accused Republicans of seeking to make presidential debates more partisan, even though the reforms Republicans seek aren't unreasonable. Among them: term limits for CPD directors, a debate before early voting starts, a code of conduct preventing CPD officials from public partisan comments, transparent moderator selection criteria, and a code of conduct seeking to prevent moderators from inappropriate or biased treatment of nominees.
As McDaniel outlines in her letter, CPD's inaction is not for a lack of trying by Republicans. Going back almost a year to March of 2021, the RNC has met with and raised its concerns with CPD leadership. In June, the RNC made its complaints more formal in a letter explaining that "actions have damaged the RNC’s faith that the CPD can provide a fair and impartial forum for presidential debates" and "proposing reforms to address these concerns."
Throughout 2021, the RNC checked in with the CPD, but no reforms were announced or promised. As a result the RNC is now seeking to amend its rules to ban its nominees for president and vice president from participating in CPD-sponsored events. Instead, McDaniel pledged that the RNC will "take every step to ensure that future Republican presidential nominees are given that opportunity elsewhere."
It's anyone's guess what that opportunity would look like for the next Republican nominees for POTUS and VP, or whether the Democrats' nominee would agree to a debate outside of the CPD's control.
While the decision is sure to ruffle feathers at the CPD and in the Democratic party, the choice is a bold one and a long time in the making. Subjecting Republican candidates to biased moderators, special requests from Democrats, and unequal rules is unnecessary and even foolhardy. Remember then-candidate Romney being corrected by "impartial" moderator Candy Crowley? The mic-muting debacle during the Trump v. Biden debates? The absurd plastic barriers separating Pence and Harris? The political theater that has clouded what should be a critical opportunity for Americans to hear divergent visions for the future of the country too often made the moderator or debate stage into the story. And as then-candidate Trump proved in the 2016 GOP primaries, sometimes stepping away from the debate stage to speak directly to voters in a different format can be a winning strategy.
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Debates haven't had a point in decades.
no matter what kind of idiotic thing any republican official says, the right will defend it as long as trump agrees.
how pathetic
The GOP issues against the debate commission long predate Trump.
By "biased presidential debates" I would assume they mean any presidential debate that uses fact checkers.
Here's a liberal magazine making the same case:
Whatever purpose these debates may have served at some point in the past has been overrun by media excess and politics’ cynical machinery. If they once functioned effectively as a showcase to contrast the essential differences between the candidates or to test their leadership and critical thinking skills, they now exist as a strange sort of political ritual that celebrates form over function and optics over authenticity. Really, they are just a thing we now do every election season, without fully understanding why we do it. What could we possibly learn from three debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, besides the fact that it’s time we did away with them entirely?
But sure, like everything else to those obsessed with Trump, it somehow involves Trump.
And now we see what happens when you assume incorrectly.
Its amazing how far your arguments have fallen as you try and defend Trump.
The RNC is anticipating Trump will be the nominee in 2024. Since his performance against Biden (screaming at Biden and the TV audience, lying constantly, telling the Proud Boys to stand by ) was judged to be the most disgraceful in American debate history, of course the RNC doesnt want any more debates.
This has nothing to do with Trump.
The debates probably won him the Presidency in 2016 and the third one certainly helped him close the gap with Biden in 2020.
If Joe Biden or Kamala "doesn't read her breifings" Harris is the nominee, the debates can probably only help Trump or any other Republican nominee.
To a select few (but FAR too many), EVERYTHING IS ALL ABOUT TRUMP!!!
There is not a single one of those that is fair and not biased against conservatives.
No one said a thing about not wanting any debates.
That the third one was actually only the 2nd due to insane limitations put on the second to cancel it, yet another GOP grievance against the democrat debate commission
But Trump! 😿😭
Whoops, forgot about that.
No, they are mainly a moderator and msm event designed to create manufactured gotcha moments against the GOP nominee and so their biased fact checkers can manufacture democrat talking points and their insta polls can say the democrat won
yeah, the shilling for the Democrats has gotten beyond egregious. Ever since Candy Crawley conspired with the Obama campaign to lie for him, moderators have just gone all in on trying to protect Democrats who can't debate without help.
The set up for the questions are given more time than the time to answer them.
The moderators want to be the star and get "that a boys" from his/hers peers.
Do away with them entirely. They serve no purpose anymore to the public.
Exactly! The debate commission can reform or wither away on the vine.