Sunday night's meeting of 13 Republican presidential campaigns to discuss how totally unfair the debates have been to all of them and decide what to demand for future debates has yielded up a letter to be sent to debate hosts. This is still a draft that none of the campaigns have formally signed onto yet, but it gives something of the tone of their summit. A lot of the letter focuses on basic debate stuff like the temperature of the room (below 67 degrees, for the sweat-prone) and what type of microphones candidates will use, but there are also some gems. First off,
what's the point of this letter?
The answers you provide to these questions are part of a process that each campaign will use to determine whether its candidate will participate in your debate. [...]
The campaigns’ will use the manner in which your debate(s) are run (and changes you say you will make from your past debates), the quality and fairness of your moderators’ questions, their enforcement of the rules and their ability to achieve parity in distribution and quality of questions and time among the candidates to evaluate whether the candidates wish to participate in your future debates.
A more potent threat from some than from others, to be sure. ... Moving on:
Will you commit to provide equal time/an equal number of questions of equal quality (substance as opposed to “gotcha” or frivolous) to each candidate?
Consider the questions that the candidates objected to as "gotcha" or frivolous in the last debate. Ted Cruz took a question asking Donald Trump for specifics on his sweeping promises and
translated it as "are you a comic book villain?" and a question asking Ben Carson how his tax plan added up as "can you do math?" Ben Carson
insisted it was "total propaganda" to suggest he had a relationship with a sketchy nutritional supplement company he absolutely had a relationship with. Marco Rubio responded to
a factual question about his personal finances by saying "you just listed a litany of discredited attacks from Democrats and my political opponents, and I’m not gonna waste 60 seconds detailing them all." These are the "gotcha" and "frivolous" questions the candidates are so steamed about.
The letter also offers a long list of things that debate hosts would have to promise not to do, like having candidates raise their hands to answer a question, "Ask yes/no questions without time to provide a substantive answer," and have lightning rounds. In short, quit trying to pin us down. We need time to provide "substance," by which we mean tailor our lies and try to avoid firm commitments that can be used against us later.
Really, these candidates are just looking for television time to lie uninterrupted and unchallenged.