Chris Christie is among the offended.
The Republican presidential candidates are in open revolt over what they consider outrageous and unfair questions at Wednesday night's CNBC debate centered on the economy.
Ted Cruz, of course, had his biggest moment of all three debates so far by complaining during the debate itself, but he wasn't alone. Later in the debate, Chris Christie tried to grab some of Cruz's glory by responding to John Harwood's attempts to get him to give a specific answer to a question as asked by
saying that "I’ve got to tell you the truth, even in New Jersey what you’re doing is called rude." More of the candidates, though, had their staffs working the refs—in this case, Republican National Committee officials and the media.
RNC Chair Reince Priebus responded to the pressure quickly, with a statement saying:
"While I was proud of our candidates and the way they handled tonight’s debate, the performance by the CNBC moderators was extremely disappointing and did a disservice to their network, our candidates, and voters. Our diverse field of talented and exceptionally qualified candidates did their best to share ideas for how to reinvigorate the economy and put Americans back to work despite deeply unfortunate questioning from CNBC," said Chairman Priebus.
Deeply unfortunate questioning? Like asking about their tax plans? Priebus has every reason to jump in to defend his candidates, though. It's not just that they're his candidates, it's that the RNC substantially controlled the debate planning, so Priebus is one of the people the campaigns are likely to be pissed at.
And so it is:
In an interview shortly after the debate, Barry Bennett, manager of the Ben Carson campaign, called the session here in Colorado "unfair to everyone" and said the current debate structure should not remain in place. "I think the families need to get together here, because these debates as structured by the RNC are not helping the party," Bennett said. "There's not enough time to talk about your plans, there's no presentation. It's just a slugfest. All we do is change moderators. And the trendline is horrific. So I think there needs to be wholesale change here."
Bennett is vowing to get together with the campaign managers for Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina to push for change to the debate format. Meanwhile, several of the candidates are making the morning-after media rounds and using their time to
complain about the "liberal media." That's a big part of what this is about, of course. Everyone can sense that it's time for
someone to get out of this race, no one wants to be that person, and attacks on the "liberal media" always go over well with the Republican base. It's a "don't make me be the loser of the week" strategy.
And speaking of the loser of the week:
At one point during the debate, Jeb Bush campaign manager Danny Diaz began pounding on the control room door, shouting at the CNBC producers about how the network wasn't giving equal time to all the candidates, a source with a rival campaign told CNN.
Complaining about how little time your candidate got is a time-honored tradition (and to be fair, the Bush campaign has grounds for irritation in that lower-polling candidates got more time than him, in violation of the usual norms), but rumors circulating that you were pounding and shouting backstage during the debate is next-level stuff.