If you can鈥檛 stand the heat鈥�
Have you noticed that every one of these candidates say, ‘Obama’s weak. Putin’s kicking sand in his face. When I talk to Putin, he’s going to straighten out.’ Then it turns out they can’t handle a bunch of CNBC moderators at the debate.”
President Obama at a New York fundraiser last Monday night
It looks like some Republican presidential candidates want to take their ball and go home.
After they had a tough time facing a fusillade of questions from CNBC’s debate moderators, they decided they’d had enough.
They want nice debates.
Representatives for a number of the candidates huddled in Washington, D.C. last Sunday, to come up with plans that would force the TV networks holding debates to treat them with kid gloves.
They went armed with a list of complaints about moderators and the questions they’ve asked.
In other words, they were saying, “Mommy, Mommy, that man is picking on me. Make them stop.”
“If you have never voted in a Republican primary in your life, then you don’t get to moderate a Republican debate,” said Ted Cruz during a campaign event.
I’d be willing to wager that Fox News host Megyn Kelly has voted in a Republican primary, but Donald Trump publicly trashed her for weeks after she asked him a few tough questions at the Fox News debate.
Kelly’s response to that recent meeting, by the way, was “Do you want a foot massage too?”
Dr. Ben Carson, the current frontrunner, suggested that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to bypass the TV networks carrying debates, in favor of streaming them over the internet.
That is a bad idea.
The American voter should have an ample opportunity to see just how ill-conceived Carson’s candidacy really is.
There’s also some talk about there being too many Republican presidential debates, since there will only be 11 this election cycle. They’ve forgotten there were 20 debates in 2012, and 21 in 2008.
After the campaigns held their meeting in that Washington, D.C. hotel, they released a letter with a laundry list of demands for networks planning to hold debates.
The ink had hardly dried on that letter, before some of the candidates announced they weren’t going to sign it.
John Kasich, Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina balked.
And Donald Trump said he would hold his own negotiations with the remaining networks holding debates.
Christie went even further. “Whatever debate they set up, I’ll show up and I’ll answer questions that get asked. If I think it’s a dumb question…I’ll say it’s a dumb question,” he says.
That’s not a particularly brave stance, since Christie is polling at 3 percent, which is 26 percent lower than the current national leader – Carson.
Crying crocodile tears about debate questions after the debates have taken place, has become a uniquely Republican thing to do this year.
Trump railed about Megyn Kelly’s questions, and that led to a lot of talk about “gotcha” questions being asked by “liberal” moderators.
Last week, Trump fielded questions at a campaign event and he was asked a number of questions about why he felt debate moderators have treated him and his fellow Republicans unfairly.
He, instead, claimed that Hillary Clinton was treated with kid gloves during the Democratic presidential debate.
“She was only given softball questions,” Trump claimed.
“They didn’t talk about the emails,” he added.
Well, either Trump didn’t watch the Democratic debate, or he hasn’t read the debate transcript.
In fact, Clinton was asked two questions about Benghazi, and two more about her email controversy.
If there’s a need for anything to be changed about Republican debates, it’s a real time fact-checker.
There’s Ben Carson’s declaration that he had no connection to a pharmaceutical company, when it’s clear he clearly had.
And there was Carly Fiorina’s unforced misstatement about the number of women who had lost their jobs during the first term of the Obama administration.
In the meantime, hardliners who complain about the tough questions they’re asked, make them easy targets for the guy who holds they office they seek.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net