Posted on 01/22/2016 8:05:51 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The message from the RNC seems clear enough: media outlets that want to engage as debate hosts have to remain uncommitted in the race. "A debate moderator can’t have a predisposition," RNC spokesperson Sean Spicer said as he confirmed that National Review had been disinvited from the February 25th debate in Houston after publishing its “Against Trump” issue yesterday:
The RNC announced it had disinvited the National Review from a GOP debate the magazine had been set to co-host on Feb. 25 after its latest issue -- called "Against Trump" -- featured essays slamming the real estate mogul from leading conservatives including Glenn Beck, Erick Erickson and Russell Moore. …
Trump has faced accusations both of being too extreme, risking moderate voters for a GOP ticket, and of being a fake conservative with a long history of liberal views.
The National Review’s attack issue is perhaps the most visible example of conservatives struggling to take down the billionaire, who holds a prohibitive lead in national polling, as well as in the first primary state of New Hampshire.
The Houston debate has had a rocky history already. The RNC stripped NBC from the debate earlier this week, an aftershock of the October 30th debacle on CNBC. The event will now be broadcast by CNN, with Salem (Hot Air’s parent company) as the broadcast partner.
Maybe the city of Houston should watch its step, eh?
National Review’s publisher Jack Fowler told BuzzFeed News that he had hoped to discuss this with the RNC first, and that the decision will be a “deprivation” to voters:
The publisher of the conservative National Review suggested on Thursday that the Republican National Committee is "depriving" its party by disinviting the magazine from hosting a debate because of an anti-Donald Trump symposium it published.
National Review publisher Jack Fowler told BuzzFeed News in an email Thursday night that he was not surprised that the RNC had rescinded its invitation to the magazine to co-host a GOP debate next month. "That said I would argue that the RNC should have waited for someone to complain, if someone was going to," Fowler said. "The presumption is that our moderator / participant would not have asked an intelligent / fair question."
"But maybe the RNC based the decision on something along the lines of -- you guys just crossed a line (for a debate participant). I’d like to see their statement, if / when it comes out," Fowler said. "After all, it’s their party and they can deprive [it] if they want to."
Well, it didn’t take long for the complaints to come, at least on Twitter. Trump unleashed several broadsides against National Review before and after issuing this statement calling the publication “a dying paper”:
"A DYING PAPER" Trump dismisses National Review editorial https://t.co/IG7N7iViSG
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) January 22, 2016
The symposium of writers published by National Review probably wouldn’t have triggered the RNC action. It’s well worth reading, too, as it includes a number of long-time conservative thinkers, including our own Katie Pavlich. Guy Benson summed up my thoughts on this yesterday, though:
I agree with them. Also, this won't work. https://t.co/aFi91HlT7b
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) January 21, 2016
The RNC probably felt it had to act because of the in-house editorial announcing NR’s opposition to Donald Trump rather than the collection of individual essays, and the NBC fight may have something to do with that, too. The CNBC debate showed an almost explicit contempt for the GOP candidates on the stage, especially Trump, which is why Reince Priebus cut them out of the remaining debates this cycle. He needed to show voters that he means to protect Republicans from media bias. Having done that, how could the RNC not follow through when one of the other debate partners explicitly and institutionally declares itself opposed to one of the party’s frontrunners?
Nevertheless, Fowler won’t regret the decision. The fight will raise NR’s profile, especially among conservatives who care about policy, and more importantly sets a marker for the future if and when it comes to a Trump presidency. Trump gets one more bête noire to target on the Right. The RNC gets to underscore itseven-handedness as a referee when it comes to dealing with debates and the media. In this case, everyone can claim a victory.
And … that has already begun:
Biggest traffic day ever on @NRO. Indeed we are finding new readers. Hundreds by the minute. https://t.co/hWfhPzUULk
— Jack Fowler (@jackfowler) January 22, 2016
Matt Welch’s response at the libertarian Reason is worth pondering, too:
There’s one thing this dispute symbolizes, aside from the ongoing (and long-running) battle for the soul of the modern Republican Party. And that is this: Many or even most of the people who make a living working in politics and political commentary--even those who think of themselves as outsiders, such as nonpartisan libertarians--inevitably begin to view their field as one dedicated primarily to ideas, ideology, philosophy, policy, and so forth, and NOT to the emotional, ideologically unmoored cultural passions of a given (and perhaps fleeting) moment. Donald Trump--and more importantly, his supporters, who go all but unmentioned here (Ben Domenech is an exception)--illustrate that that gap is, well, yuuge.
Yes, Trump is nobody’s conservative, but it’s not at all clear that many voters really care about such things. His rise is a rebuke to the stories that political commentators have long told themselves, and to the mores they have long shared even while otherwise disagreeing ideologically with one another. You can despise Donald Trump (and oh Lord I do), and appreciate National Review’s efforts here, while simultaneously wondering whether his forcible removal of a certain journalistic mask might also have some benefit.
To some extent, it’s the same blinders that some in the GOP wore in 2012 about Barack Obama’s enduring appeal, too. This time, they have a head start on figuring it out.
If you want more ((reality))
poke you head outside this thread.
The RNC against the wall and a rock. They are about to get everything they deserve. TRUMP CHANGE. These guys are history. The writing is on the wall and fresh paint awaits. They’ve made a living off their politics, OUR LIFE, for far too long. They are now ripe to get a dose of their own medicine. AND I, for one, CANNOT WAIT TO SEE IT HAPPEN!!
Trump
to TRIUMPH
All aboard the TRUMP TRAIN.
Woo Woo - about to leave the station!
Now boot Meeginn from next weeks’ debate. For hosting that foolishness last night.
I'm sorry, but celebrity has no effect on me. I can't, in clean conscience, vote to elect a guy just because he was on TV and says things he knows will tickle our ears and cause tingles to run up our legs.
Just because he can act the part now doesn't mean he'll make a good president later.
Government is SUPPOSED to secure the borders. The wall WILL take government to prevent interlopers and aliens from hording in and with the will of the citizens conduct a manageable and legal immigration policy. It WILL require the GOVERNMENT to provide security and personnel and management and upkeep of the wall and the border.
So yes, in one sense Trump is for government - to do what it is SUPPOSED to do.
Maybe I LIKE that kind of big government, and that is the suspicion of Trump, that he just might have government big enough in will to DO what it is SUPPOSED to do.
I was a subscriber of NR back in the days of WFB, but stopped after NR spent a decade building up what the Republican establishment is today. NR is partially reponsible for the Republican party distancing themselves from the base, becoming the Chamber of Commerce crowd that turned the Republican Party into the open borders-amnesty club on behalf of cheap labor benefactors, as well as the entire elitist attitude that pundits should tell the base what to think and that pundits choose the nominees and not the base.
In effect, that is what NR now is - or thinks they are. Pundits who must tell what the base is to think, and pundits who must choose the nominee and not, for heaven’s sake, the voting base that is supporting the front runner Trump - in fact, what NR is saying is that THE BASE has a “checkered past” and is not “true” in as much as they see Trump as not being their “bellhop” to their “punditism”.
You, the Republican base, is as much the guilty of what they falsely stereotype and attack Trump with. YOU the base are not bot enough to their punditism. YOU cannot be “trusted”. Look at you yell. Barbarians. You think YOU can dictate immigration policy? You think YOU can war against ISIS? You?
The pundits of NR helped Rove’s “American Crossroads” that clearly is only for “moderate” Republicans. They attacked Pat Buchanan in the same manner they attack Trump.
The reason Trump is “not conservative” to the pundits is because he isn’t for open borders and amnesty and has the “bombastic” gawl to even speak about it.
That is it. It is about that.
In 2008 National Review endorsed and promoted Senator John McCain. During the primaries endorsed and supported Mitt Romney. In 2012 National Review endorsed Mitt Romney for President.
NR had already become the Romney of the 2000-2010 decade. Romney today attacks Trump with the same words NR is using right now.
They will like to claim if William F. Buckley, Jr. were alive today, he would also be attacking Trump. Bull **** he would have. Anyone who has read Buckley’s book “The Unmaking of a Mayor” and followed Buckley’s Mayoral candidacy for Mayor of NYC in 1965 knows such a claim by these pundits is b.s. and self-serving, Buckley ran with an oratory and bombastic and pundit- contrarianism that would make Trump proud.
Buckley was attacked in the same manner Trump is. He set the ground work for a “bombastic” Goldwater and “an entertainer” Reagan. And WFB was attacked for being “New Yorker” who was born in NYC, was a suspect as a “liberal intellectual” and “from a rich family” (the son William Frank Buckley, Sr., a lawyer and oil developer).
I say Buckley would be SUPPORTING Trump. And he would be critical of these pundits.
Political pundits now think they should choose the President. Â Just like the Republican establishment. Just like some radio hosts. I think it should be the people’s choice.
National Review club of pundits are out of touch with the base, the voters, and in part responsible for the establishment the people are against and the entire mess we are in today.
I am an American first, a Republican second. The pundits say someone like me is a Duck Dynasty idiot unworthy to be part of the process, that I need a nose ring to pull me here and there.
By the way. “Duck Dynasty†star Willie Robertson just endorsed Donald Trump at the 16th annual Outdoor Sportsman Awards in Las Vegas on Thursday night. Perhaps NR should hire him to write articles, perhaps I would subscribe.
There ARE RULES regarding moderators. No NR pundit which has already made clear their agenda. Nor do I want Megyn Kelly of FOX. As far as the RNC, even they are not going to make that error - all it would do is give Trump hunderds of thousands of more votes if an agendist from NR was sitting there.
I am not convinced any of them aren’t “amnesty guys.”
But you will support a candidate whose whole candidacy is based on Reality TV values?
(This campaign is just so he can have Apprentice: Presidential Edition)
He won't really do it. He needs cheap labor for his businessesss. He won't do anything he's saying he will. He's trying to sell you a product - himself.
I posted this before, so I'll just re-post it here....
Check out something called "mirroring." It's a sales trick all good salesman use. Trump is "mirroring" us, or holding a "verbal" mirror in front of himself, so all we see in this mirror is .....us. Who can be against ....us? Who could not vote for.....us? If you take a minute and look behind the mirror (the manufactured "verbal" reflection of ourselves), you'll see the real man hiding behind it.
Used car salesman use this trick every time. If you cross your legs, he'll very subtly cross his legs. If you scratch your nose, he'll scratch his nose. If you tap your finger, he'll very subtly tap his finger. He'll be a perfect, subconscious reflection of ....YOU. By the time the wheeling and dealing is over, you'll think the guy is the most honest, trustworthy guy you ever met. Why, you'd have to distrust YOU in order to distrust him because you're two peas in a pod - or so he got you to believe. He used the "mirror" technique you get you to buy a car that won't make it a mile down the road before it blows a head gasket!
. That's why Trump all of a sudden is just like us. If we want borders closed, he wants borders closed. If we want lower taxes, he wants lower taxes. If we want to stop abortion, he wants to stop abortion. It's a 180 from all his past beliefs, but you won't notice that unless you take the time to notice the guy hiding BEHIND the mirror.(And you'll be shocked at what you discover).
This is good!
But,I voted for Ted for my senator before I knew he was a Canadian! ;)
Give it a Rest.
I like TRUMP and plan on voting for him.
If Ted is still in Texas,I might vote for him again for my senator.
“I’m sorry, but celebrity has no effect on me”
Feel better now?
I never felt bad. Was I suppose to? What did I miss?
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