This has to be a first!  One candidate is taking over control of other candidates to dictate who, what, when, where future debates will be held.  Please tell me the networks will not go along with his dictates.

Well, that's how corporatism works, flowergirl. Some people ( maybe many ) get their knickers knotted over government controlling business, but very few get worked up about the possibility of the rich and powerful controlling government.  In this case, who is running the Republican Party? 


 

Goose wrote:

To be fair, it's not Trump's bank account, but his poll numbers that give him this power.
If half of the republican voters had not decided to abandon responsible citizenship, you wouldn't have Trump or Carson even on the radar screen.

Completely agree. 

Trump is smart to negotiate debate terms directly. As the candidate at the top of the polls, why should he be involved in trying to satisfy the needs of a Christie, Kasich, or Jeb who are struggling to gain traction through the debate schedule.

The RNC really is screwing the pooch on this election cycle. They needed to do a better job at weeding out the wannabees who are running on one or two issues, like a Huckabee or a Rand Paul, and who have no path to the nomination. 

They Republicans are about 90 days out from the Iowa and the media is spending more time on the inside-baseball, behind the scenes stuff than they are the candidates themselves.
 

It's called leverage.

Rongone wrote:

I wish I would have had that option when I was going to school. Let's say me and a small group of students didn't like the way subjects were taught, and especially the questions we were asked on tests (primarily because we couldn't answer them). So, we got together, drew up a set of rules that suited us, and presented those rules to the teachers. Then, we tell the teachers if they don't abide by those rules, we won't participate in the testing.

That sounds like that would work out pretty well for the students . . . right? Maybe you could apply that process to everything in your life . . . family, friends, workplace . . . Everything would be discretionary based upon the desires of a small group. That sounds like a basic tenet of our representative republic . . . Right?

No, that's wrong. Totally wrong. What you have here is a bunch of self engrandizing, smug, privileged, self centered jerks that don't like being challenged (wow, that's what I look for in a president). Much less do these jerks have even a vague understanding of what exactly a debate is.

What is even funnier is that now that they are the focus of a large public backlash concerning their wussy reaction to being questioned in a debate setting, the same candidates that sat down "in a family dinner setting" to develop the rules by which they would agree to a debate are now falling out of line and saying they have no problem with facing up to hard questioning. Did they all have flip-flops on at that family dinner?

What's even stupider is that these so-called debates aren't really debates at all. They are political candidates posturing behind podiums to spout their stump speeches, attack other candidates, and trying to come up with the best one liner of the evening. What a joke!


Hey, don't forget to vote today. Remember, we get the government we deserve.

I get the point of your rant Rongone, but we need to blame the system and not the individual candidates.

The RNC sanctions these debates. The media begs for them. The debates drive fundraising for the committee and ratings and ad revenue for the networks. 

If the candidates are going to be forced into them, I don't blame them for wanting to get an approach and a setup that works best for their particular campaign. 

For the record, I won't be watching anymore GOP debates until the field is whittled down to a more manageable level. I agree that the responses are canned, the candidates are not given enough time to provide any thoughtful responses (given they have any) and they end up devolving into back and forths between a few candidates while the majority of the field in generally ignored.