As the Republicans fume at the RNC over Wednesday night’s debate, what’s a party chair like Reince Priebus to do but go on the Hannity show for a little Republican Rehab?
An article in Politico describes a field of GOP candidates in revolt against the RNC:
Republican presidential campaigns are planning to gather in Washington, D.C., on Sunday evening to plot how to alter their party’s messy debate process — and how to remove power from the hands of the Republican National Committee.
Not invited to the meeting: Anyone from the RNC, which many candidates have openly criticized in the hours since Wednesday’s CNBC debate in Boulder, Colorado — a chaotic, disorganized affair that was widely panned by political observers.
On Thursday, many of the campaigns told POLITICO that the RNC, which has taken a greater role in the 2016 debate process than in previous election cycles, had failed to take their concerns into account. It was time, top aides to at least half a dozen of the candidates agreed, to begin discussing among themselves how the next debates should be structured and not leave it up to the RNC and television networks.
Hannity sugarcoated the dissent. He described it as the Ben Carson campaign reaching out to the others to discuss how to improve the debates. Hannity specifically said he thought Priebus was not to blame.
CNBC was a different story. With unintentional hilarity, Hannity complained that CNBC’s debate moderation was “arrogant, obnoxious, biased, shallow, agenda-driven.” As if arrogant, obnoxious, biased, shallow and agenda-driven doesn't describe Hannity to a tee.
“I said in 2008, the media is dead in America. Journalism’s dead,” Hannity continued, “and I’d now argue, it’s now buried as of what last night happened in Boulder, Colorado.”
This, from the guy who either lied about or couldn’t comprehend an AP article explaining the number of refugees the U.S. plans to take in.
But Priebus was more interested in soothing ruffled GOP feathers.
PRIEBUS: I just can’t tell you how pissed off I am. …It was insanity. I mean, just sitting there seething through this thing. I mean, other than thinking about hitting the circuit breaker in the auditorium – it crossed my mind. You know, these are people who put on a pretty decent show in the morning on CNBC. They did a debate four years ago that was a decent debate. Obviously, we had assurances that it was going to be straight-up finance, which is what they do every day. And what was delivered was just nothing but a crap sandwich.
Priebus promised a full-scale review of all future RNC debates - and that CNBC would be blacklisted.
PRIEBUS: I guarantee you we’re gonna make sure that CNBC isn’t hosting and moderating another debate with our candidates. ...Here’s what I will tell everyone. Everything’s going to be re-evaluated and reset. Every debate on the calendar is going to be re-evaluated, reset, look at the format, the moderators, everything.
We’re gonna have meetings with all the candidates, we’re gonna make sure that we can do everything possible to make sure that last night doesn’t happen again. …Every debate from here on out is going to be re-evaluated.
Hannity went on to play a clip of Ted Cruz suggesting Hannity as a debate moderator. It was a point Hannity brought up several times during the show.
Priebus did not say yes or no to the idea.
So will Republicans only debate on Fox News now? Let’s not forget Donald Trump threw a huge hissy fit over Fox’s bias in the first debate (which Roger Ailes immediately hid from). The next debate will be hosted by Fox Business Network and The Wall Street Journal. It should be verrryyy interesting.
Watch Priebus below, from the October 29 Hannity.
Not ready for that 3am phone call as near as I can tell.
So, as much as *we*’d like to see the GOP Klown Kar have all their debates on FoxNoise, they, unfortunately, would still wind up on the REAL networks (such as they are).
Also, don’t forget that the first debate pulled in more non-regular viewers of FoxNoise for that ONE night than the network gets in a whole year of their regular shows.
If you want to know how deeply Hannity and Priebus have taken the deep dive into the vat of Kool Aid, with a straight face they’re not only rejecting liberal MSNBC ever conducting a debate of Republicans but seriously suggesting right-wing Fox News rightly should conduct a Democratic one. No hypocrisy there. Well, maybe. The comedy goes off the charts with Sean talking about what a grand job the great journalists of GOPTV™ would do at a Democratic debate putting himself amongst them.
That pretty much sums up the ridiculousness of the Fox News liberal mainstream media perpetual diaper fill. A reliable partisan hack like Sean with no training in journalism, just punditry, sees himself as the benchmark of objectiveness moderating a Democratic debate and nobody else is qualified.
Personally, I thought the CNN debate run by Anderson Cooper was the best of the bunch. Priebus’ “patty cake” bulls**t to the contrary. And, because everyone knows I’m a partisan Fox News hater incapable of objectivity, I’d place GOPTV™’s debate 2nd.
