Republicans and others on the right are generally quite practiced at complaining about how unfair everyone is to them, especially the media. When not blaming their electoral losses on mythical election fraud, they often explain away lost opportunities by claiming they would have won if it wasn't for those meddling media types.
This pattern was repeated once again during and after the 2012 presidential election and is even still being repeated to this day. Recognizing the negative consequences of their primary debates that highlighted just how out of touch the GOP base is with the rest of the country, they mistakenly assign blame for that not on their extremist candidates or their extremist base, but on the media and debate moderators.
And so they are now taking steps to ensure that no such negative consequences result from the primary debates in 2015 and 2016. They of course are not taking steps to moderate their extremism. They instead are trying to manage the stagecraft of how they present their candidates to the dual, but wildly divergent, audiences of the primary debates: their far right base and the rest of the country.
They want to limit the number of debates and also exercise more control over who is allowed to moderate the debates.
Though it doesn't refer to a GOP primary debate, this quote from an AP article at ABC's site is nonetheless telling:
The RNC rule does not explicitly pick debate moderators, but its members were openly critical of CNN journalist Candy Crowley, who moderated a debate between Romney and Obama. During that debate, Crowley corrected Romney's erroneous claim that Obama had not called the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, an act of terror.
Republicans, including Romney's top aides, were furious that the moderator interjected herself into the debate as it was happening. It remains a point of frustration for GOP leaders.
Crowley had the temerity to interject facts while Romney was attempting to lie.
Though it happens far to infrequently, there are indeed times when simple facts can dispel right wing and Republican lies. The GOP's efforts to exercise tighter control over their primary debates are designed to limit the amount of such pesky facts interfering with their lies as much as possible.
They may even largely succeed in minimizing the number of Aikenesque cringe-inducing gaffes. But even if they succeed in limiting the number of embarrassing and damaging remarks from their candidates, they will be doing themselves no favors.
Their main problem now is being so out of touch with the rest of the country. Walling themselves off even further from mainstream voters in their primary will do them no service in the general election.
They will be even further pressured to outdo each other in a mad dash to ever more extreme far right positions and braggadocio. This scheme will blow up in their faces.
But the base will get its red meat and be very, very happy. So there's that.
Cross posted at 5 Seconds to Midnight.