I’ve read this through several times and can’t quite figure out why Newt Gingrich would say this.
“As your nominee, I will not accept debates in the fall in which the reporters are the moderators,” he said, “because you don’t need to have a second Obama person in the debate.”
Doesn’t Gingrich owe his South Carolina victory to ABC News and John King? Hasn’t he ridden media bashing in debates to the front of the GOP pack, twice? It makes no strategic sense for him to ban reporters from moderating debates. He needs them, to some extent, serve as foils.
So, I guess, he doesn’t really mean it. If he is the nominee and debates are scheduled with reporters as moderators, Newt Gingrich is not about to turn away from that. He knows as well as anyone that debates are his time to shine. He knows what media bashing has done for his campaign.
Personally, I would like to see someone other than reporters moderate debates. The media are 90% or more Democrats, stacking the deck against Republicans. Gingrich is dead right about that. That’s precisely why Newt needs them.The mainstream media is not trusted or liked. They’re the perfect targets of Gingrich’s justified rage.
It would be worthwhile to mix in moderators who are prominent for having done big things — a Norman Schwartzkopf to ask questions about military and foreign policy, a successful entrepreneur, a religious figure, etc. I’m no fan of Rick Warren’s, but didn’t he moderate a pretty interesting forum/debate in 2008? We would get much broader set of questions from a broader and more interesting slice of America if we cycled in moderators who aren’t reporters. I’m all for that.
But just issuing a blanket ban on reporters? It won’t work, and Newt Gingrich of all people wouldn’t want it to.
I ask why should he? I mean the media has been very kind to him in these debates as moderators. They have been cordial, truthful, thoughtful, and have asked very pointed and important questions vetting him publicly. I think that the media should be able to vote the president in, whoever they are as they know better than we crackers. Duh?
Have you forgotten Bernard Goldberg, and what he wrote in the WSJ before he wrote “Bias”?
What is wrong with a political scientist that does not want to play, “gotcha”, moderating debates.
Of course Newtonium doesn’t mean it… he’s a career politician, after all, and he’ll say whatever he thinks will get him a bump in the polls.
“Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaaaasssse don’t fling me in dat brier patch!”
Newt wants debates; wants the news media to want debates in order to show him up; wants the news media to insist to Obama that there must be debates in order to bash down this arrogant upstart.
In short, Newt is baiting the reporters and Obama in order to ensure that he gets what he wants.
Obviously Newt actually means what he says about the media bias, and wasn’t simply using them as a foil to gain popularity.
He WANTS to eviscerate Obama, not Brian Williams.
Easy enough to prove. We’ll see if Newtonium sits out the next debate moderated by a reporter.
I confidently predict he won’t unless he’s dropped out of the race by that point.
In other news, Ron Paul has declared he doesn’t want the debates against Obama to be conducted from a seated position and Rick Santorum wants to conduct them while kneeling the entire time.
Since none of them are going to be present at the general election debates, all of these requests are being completely ignored.
To save Mitt Romney’s vocal chords, empty platitudes will be handed out ahead of time to him and Obama ahead of time…after each question they can simply feed the appropriate mindless answer into a slot at their podium and the teleprompter will read it to the audience in the candidate’s voice.
When Gingrich says things like this, it makes the Lunar Colonization idea seem almost rational.
Almost.
I think when you are selling yourself as “The Great Debater” and then you start saying that you are losing debates because “the other guy lies about me!” and you wont take part in any debates where (Gasp!)there are liberal press folks about, I think it tells us that “The Great Debater” is finished with all this fancy-schmancy debating gimcrackery and has moved on to perfecting his “cranky old man” act.
Because the reporters for the most part are economically illiterate and woefully undereducated. They do not understand politics apart from certain liberal ideologies, and their focus on navel gazing embarrasses anyone hoping for a grown-up discussion of serious topics. I think back to the vapid questioning in the first couple of debates where each candidate was asked what food they were, or some such idiotic questioning. In view of what is happening in the rest of the world, why would anyone care about what these reporters are asking. I don’t blame Newt at all. In fact, I’m glad he’s brought attention to the dull tools.
On the one hand, I get it. We’ve all moaned a time or two about the woeful bias and ineptitude of the reporter-moderators.
On the other hand, it’s hard to hold onto your title of Great Debater if you refuse to debate.
It would be refreshing and perhaps (gasp) enlightening to have special issue debates moderated by respected leaders in varied fields.
There are a wide range of people other than reporters who could be moderators. The quicker the lamestream media gets shunted aside the better off we will be.
Academics, think tank fellows, authors, and columnists are just a few possibilities. How about Victor Davis Hanson as moderator? Or Richard Posner?
There are a wide range of people other than reporters who could be moderators. The quicker the lamestream media gets shunted aside the better off we will be.
Academics, think tank fellows, authors, and columnists are just a few possibilities. How about Victor Davis Hanson as moderator? Or Richard Posner?