Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus is already launching an effort to work the refs for the 2016 primary debates. You've probably already heard that he sent letters to NBC and CNN demanding the networks drop planned film projects on Hillary Clinton. His motivation?
"The fact that these folks, including many people that are at NBC, one of which is a major bundler for Barack Obama, would be surprised that we would actually exercise our own right to filter who deposes our candidates and who doesn't," Priebus told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "I think I'm being very reasonable here."
Priebus accused the last election cycle's moderators of promoting the Democratic Party and characterized the 23-debate schedule in the 2012 campaign as a "traveling circus."
"My point is this. We have to control the referees that we're bringing into our playground," he added.
OK, so firstly, LOL, and secondly, "playground"?
And thirdly: sorry Reince, but the most humiliating moments (and there were many) of the 2012 debates had absolutely nothing to do with moderator bias.
A moderator did not:
*make Rick Perry forget his own agenda
*make the audience boo an American solider
*decide the Herman Cain should be allowed to participate
*make the audience cheer the idea of letting an uninsured man die
When Mitt Romney said "I'm running for office, for Pete's sake, we can't have illegals!", he was responding to Rick Perry, not the moderator.
It wasn't a moderator who made Michele Bachmann go walkabout during a commercial break so that when the live broadcast began her podium was empty. She chose to leave the stage - against the advice of the crew - to get her make-up redone.
When the November 2011 CNN debate started off with "I'm Wolf Blitzer and yes, that's my real name", there was no one who prompted the front runner to reply with "I'm Mitt Romney—and yes Wolf, that's also my first name." It was purely through his own initiative that Mitt Romney got his own name wrong (his first name is "Willard," and his middle name is "Mitt")
And nothing but his inherent dishonesty caused Romney to claim in a later debate that he did not actually know what his own ads said.
Rick Santorum offered up, from his own free will, his opinion that global warming was a hoax - he wasn't somehow goaded into it.
It is true that during one CNN debate Wolf Blitzer asked Newt Gingrich how he would pay for his moon base. But the neither the network nor the moderator forced Gingrich to make the speech in which he proposed the moon base in the first place. So is asking the logical question - how are you going to pay for it without raising taxes - really so outrageous?
I will grant that there was one truly awful moment created by a moderator's "gotcha"question. Remember when every single one of the Republican candidates said they would not accept a hypothetical deal in which spending cuts outweighed tax increases 10-to-1, thereby ripping to shreds the facade of fiscal responsibility?
Problem is: that debate was on FOX.
I guess, Reince, if you want to hide the crazy, you've got no place left to go. Cancel all the debates and the primaries as well and just let Roger Ailes pick your candidate for you.