You've got to say this for the Republican presidential race—it's entertaining. All of the candidates are blaming their horrible debate performances this week not on the fact that they are all horrible, but on the debate itself—there's blame for CNBC, the moderators, and this is the best part:
the Republican party. Because civil war is what Republicans do (see the U.S. House of Representatives).
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. […]
Figuring that out could be contentious as each campaign has a number of different complaints about the process. Some—such as Bush and Paul—have griped about unequal speaking time. Others have complained bitterly about how polling is used to determine who qualifies for the prime-time and undercard debates. Some have insisted on giving opening and closing statements, despite the networks' desire to have the candidates spend as much time as possible clashing with each other on stage.
What every candidate wants, apparently, is a forum to provide extended campaign commercials without anyone asking them questions about stuff they've done and said that might give voters some insight as to what kind of job they'd do as president. Oh, and they all should have equal time to do that. And it shouldn't matter how shitty any candidate is doing in the polls—they all deserve to be on the grown-ups' stage. Meanwhile, RNC chief Reince Preibus is desperate to save his own job, and insists that
he's just as mad as all the candidates are that they had to answer actual questions. "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," he told Fox News.
“Everything is going to be reevaluated and reset. Every debate on the calendar is going to be reevaluated, reset, look at the format, the moderators, everything," he said. "We're going to have meetings with all the candidates. We're going to make sure that we can do everything possible to make sure last night doesn't happen again."
Oy.