Reeling after Mitt Romney’s loss to Barack Obama in 2012, the Republican Party gathered for a soul-searching exercise called the Growth and Opportunity Project.
Project leaders surveyed thousands of Republican voters, technical experts and elected officials. They talked with hundreds of disaffected Republicans and 2,000 Republican Hispanic voters to learn what went wrong.
In a 97-page report, they concluded: “The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself. We have become expert in how to provide ideological reinforcement to like-minded people, but devastatingly we have lost the ability to be persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who do not agree with us on every issue.” Here’s what the study said about presidential debates: “No debate will be meaningful if it is not challenging, vigorous and fair.”
Late Sunday, representatives of a dozen Republican presidential candidates, who were frothing over their treatment in last week’s debate, shut the Republican National Committee out of a meeting during which they essentially chucked its earlier guidance out the window. To please Donald Trump, who pledges to build a 1,000-mile wall between the United States and Mexico and boycott any debate sponsored by the Spanish-language TV network Telemundo, these Republicans want to scrap the only debate to be hosted by Latino media.
They agreed on kid-glove treatment for Fox News, the G.O.P.’s go-to outlet for “ideological reinforcement to like-minded people.” For other outlets interested in hosting a debate, they’re finalizing a list of demands. If these candidates get their way, they’ll ban media behaviors, including: asking the candidates to raise their hands to answer a question (Donald Trump again); asking yes/no questions “without time to provide a substantive answer”; showing audience or moderator reaction to candidates’ answers; and showing “an empty podium after a break (describe how far away the bathrooms are).”
Doesn’t this list leave too much to chance? What about hiding dangerous extension cords beneath the carpeting? And shouldn’t those vying to lead the free world be protected from word association games or geography bee questions?
Granted, the debate last week included some loopy questions. But nearly every time a candidate complained about the media, it was after he or she was asked to explain a policy proposal or past action that’s of legitimate concern to voters. The debaters seemed to find it unfair to ask that they explain how they might simultaneously slash taxes and the federal deficit; deport 10 million people overnight; or cut the tax code from 70,000 pages to three. Alas, too many in a field of 14 contenders seem to have concluded that advancing wild ideas and attacking those who would question them are good ways to get attention.
In 2013, the Republican National Committee recognized that the party’s chances were endangered by such demagogy. The party “is increasingly marginalizing itself, and unless changes are made, it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election in the near future,” the party’s report concluded. “When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their ears to us.”
Now it’s the R.N.C. that has been marginalized. If malcontent candidates get their way, the party leadership will be all but shut out of the planning for debates, a chief means for Americans to hear and weigh the ideas of the candidates. The debates are too important to be guided by a daffy document drafted by hotheads, demanding media outlets “pledge” that the temperature in the debate hall “be kept below 67 degrees.”
The ridiculous manifesto drafted Sunday is undergoing revision. The R.N.C. would do well to exert whatever influence it has. It is the party’s job, not the media’s, to save the Republican presidential candidates from themselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/opinion/gop-save-your-candidates-from-themselves.html?ref=opinion
Project leaders surveyed thousands of Republican voters, technical experts and elected officials. They talked with hundreds of disaffected Republicans and 2,000 Republican Hispanic voters to learn what went wrong.
In a 97-page report, they concluded: “The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself. We have become expert in how to provide ideological reinforcement to like-minded people, but devastatingly we have lost the ability to be persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who do not agree with us on every issue.” Here’s what the study said about presidential debates: “No debate will be meaningful if it is not challenging, vigorous and fair.”
Late Sunday, representatives of a dozen Republican presidential candidates, who were frothing over their treatment in last week’s debate, shut the Republican National Committee out of a meeting during which they essentially chucked its earlier guidance out the window. To please Donald Trump, who pledges to build a 1,000-mile wall between the United States and Mexico and boycott any debate sponsored by the Spanish-language TV network Telemundo, these Republicans want to scrap the only debate to be hosted by Latino media.
They agreed on kid-glove treatment for Fox News, the G.O.P.’s go-to outlet for “ideological reinforcement to like-minded people.” For other outlets interested in hosting a debate, they’re finalizing a list of demands. If these candidates get their way, they’ll ban media behaviors, including: asking the candidates to raise their hands to answer a question (Donald Trump again); asking yes/no questions “without time to provide a substantive answer”; showing audience or moderator reaction to candidates’ answers; and showing “an empty podium after a break (describe how far away the bathrooms are).”
Doesn’t this list leave too much to chance? What about hiding dangerous extension cords beneath the carpeting? And shouldn’t those vying to lead the free world be protected from word association games or geography bee questions?
Granted, the debate last week included some loopy questions. But nearly every time a candidate complained about the media, it was after he or she was asked to explain a policy proposal or past action that’s of legitimate concern to voters. The debaters seemed to find it unfair to ask that they explain how they might simultaneously slash taxes and the federal deficit; deport 10 million people overnight; or cut the tax code from 70,000 pages to three. Alas, too many in a field of 14 contenders seem to have concluded that advancing wild ideas and attacking those who would question them are good ways to get attention.
In 2013, the Republican National Committee recognized that the party’s chances were endangered by such demagogy. The party “is increasingly marginalizing itself, and unless changes are made, it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election in the near future,” the party’s report concluded. “When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their ears to us.”
Now it’s the R.N.C. that has been marginalized. If malcontent candidates get their way, the party leadership will be all but shut out of the planning for debates, a chief means for Americans to hear and weigh the ideas of the candidates. The debates are too important to be guided by a daffy document drafted by hotheads, demanding media outlets “pledge” that the temperature in the debate hall “be kept below 67 degrees.”
The ridiculous manifesto drafted Sunday is undergoing revision. The R.N.C. would do well to exert whatever influence it has. It is the party’s job, not the media’s, to save the Republican presidential candidates from themselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/opinion/gop-save-your-candidates-from-themselves.html?ref=opinion
