by someone so opposed to what you are trying to accomplish, and so many pitfalls that it boggles the mind they would all agree to this. We all have got to stop giving credence to Lefty rags and broadcast media. Stop helping them stay alive. Starve them into oblivion. Giving them a forum for their stupid, poisonous nonsense is just plain dumb. Giving them an opportunity to trip you up is just plain suicidal.

Erick, please push your plan loud and hard and get the candidates to join your sensible alternative. The candidates have the perfect opportunity here to show that they stand for honesty and integrity if they will refuse to honor someone who changes the rules in the middle of the game. Push this please, Erick! Thank you.

Really? This is pathetic. If this is what you have to stoop to in order to get the “conversations” off the ground, that’s just sad.

Now I think having the conversations is itself a good idea. But this whole “those guys suck so debate with us instead” thing is just pathetic.

“Consenting”, not “Consisting”
Otherwise great post.

one week after another event, on GBTV, with major democrat figures in an interview hosted by Rush, and with Ann and Sean asking the questions.
Maybe they can have Eric Holder, Charlie Rangel, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to answer some of the questions that bitter clingers would like to have answered.

1. Starving stories that might help the GOP of oxygen. (Hat tip to Markos for that colorful language.) Prior to the 2008 Presidential campaign, Doug Feith wrote War and Decision, which told a Bush 43 insider’s story on how/why key decisions about Iraq and Afghanistan were made.

Writing a book is a commonly-accepted way to get your side of a story out. People review your book, comment on it, allow you to respond—and you get to have your say, especially on topics where your opponents (and the media) are mischaracterizing your positions or ignoring them altogether.

But what happens if they refuse to thoughtfully review your book? That’s what the WaPo did with War and Decision. They did a quick, hash-job review of it and then refused to talk about it any further. They starved Feith’s story of oxygen.

2. The WaPo’s performance in the ONE press conference President Obama held before the Porkulus vote.

Hard, pointed questions from the media might have imperiled Porkulus’ passage or forced revisions in it….with a potential savings of billions of dollars of our children’s/grandchildren’s money. (They’re going to pay the Porkulus bills—we won’t. We borrowed…well, stole… the Porkulus money from them).

What did the WaPo reporter do with his one question during this critical news conference? He asked Obama about Alex Rodriguez and steroids in baseball.

I guess the ESPN reporter at the press conference was supposed to do the press’s due diligence mission that night?

The candidates should ignore their questions and just bash the WaPo.

For this to work, ALL of the candidates will have to agree to do it. It can’t just be Newt. The WaPo’s not that dumb. Once they realize he’s going to bash them, they’ll stop asking him questions.

and tell them to boycott the debate. The more people who do this the better.

Yes, why waste time for Democrat soundbites? GOP should have strict rules on moderators, i.e. no Democrats!

Jennifer Rubin, formerly with Commentary Magazine, now writes for Washington Post, is an outstanding analyst and commentator.

There is a case to be made for releasing traitor Jonathan Pollard (although not one I make) because of extraordinary sentence.

Even if there is no alternate location, I’d prefer all the candidates say they are “too busy washing their hair” to come to this debate. Even Herman Cain.

Even if there is no alternate location, I’d prefer all the candidates say they are “too busy washing their hair” to come to this debate. Even Herman Cain.

It’s time for candidates to reward Newt for not attacking them, in an effort to unite to put the focus on beating Obama. A win-win situation.

At the moment when the leftist questions begin, reasonable candidates should provide their next 30 seconds to Newt, giving him appx 2-1/2 minutes to correct Ms. Journolist.

Romney, Perry, Cain, and Santorum should barter time to Nrwt for this purpose. The audience would love all involved for doing it.

outlet any of these debates take place, the moderators are going to be liberal. There is no way around that. Period. There is no conservative voice in the MSM, LSM – whatever name you want to give it. That voice does not exist. So, why attend? Many conservatives don’t even watch television anyway so which audience are the candidates trying to reach? If it were me, I either wouldn’t attend or I would discuss with my fellow candidates that, under no circumstances, are we going to let liberal moderators define our candidacy. Who advises these candidates, anyway? Don’t they know which way the wind blows?

The thought occurs to me the reason the libs have been so willing to host these debates is their strategy of creating wonderful quotes and sound bites to be used against the eventual nominee in the general election. The GOP candidates are falling for this at their peril. Eric, I like your plan. These candidates should abandon the liberal’s debate trap and concentrate on only conservative forums from now on. They’ve given the libs enough ammunition already>

After the 2010 midterms interview Chris Matthews asked Bachmann if she was hypnotized. Her “hows that tingling going for ya” response drove Chris even nuttier than he already was for months after that exchange. Even Chris Wallace after a mild rebuff from Newt still is “ego” upset. Those on the left, (in the media) are not going away now or in the general election. I say take them on, now. Michele can do it we know Newt will have no problem and I think Herman is up to the task. Romney will try to be polished and will get a pass I’m guessing Santorum will give as good as he gets. It’s Perry who will have to step up to the plate and help make these moderators look like what they are, petty ideologues.

We have Obama destroying our economy with irresponsible spending, creating new entitlements we can not afford, creating class warfare, pitting citizen against citizen, promoting class warfare, using our tax money to provide abortions and running our government as if he was a king.

His Attorney General has lied to Congress, gotten good people killed with his political hijinks, allowed the racist Black Panthers to walk free, given foreign terrorists rights as if they were citizens, obfuscated out immigration laws for political purposes and trampled our laws he has sworn to protect.

His EPA is destroying our businesses, killing the energy production sector and trying to regulate the air we breath.

And the people that want to be our candidate are going to bow before his propaganda engine whose single goal is to destroy them?

Proof positive, there are currently no leaders or people of conviction and unwavering principle in this Republican race.

is one where our candidates sit at the moderator’s table and the media hacks are on stage and they get pelted with questions sent in via Twitter and email. We’d finally get our chance to corner them and find out their real motives and put them on the spot with ‘gotcha’ questions. Newt would love it! We’d ask why they never vetted Obama and why they ignored the troubling information about his associations, why he still refuses to release college applications, funding sources and transcripts. The pollsters could tally their performances and we could decide which news outlets/talking heads are worthy of our time and which ones are sent packing

No matter the debate or the questions, if GOP candidates were smart, they’d give us the red meat we so crave: frame every question-biased or otherwise-back on Obama. We are tired of debate sponsors, including FOX, fulfilling their own agendas by starting fights amongst our candidates. I would respect all our candidates more if they’d have stayed above the fray, not taken the bait and instead, showed their strength and resolve to go after Obama. Based on what’s happened to Bachmann’s campaign, I’m not the only one. I am not interested in investing any more time to see who can throw the best sucker punch at a fellow candidate, all of which have their share of skeletons in the closet. I want to see which one is 100% focused on defeating Obama and which one is the most fearless in calling him out on his failed and dangerous policies. We want John Wayne in True Grit; not Eddie Haskell in Leave it to Beaver.

The candidate conversations Erick is launching will be the one and only chance for intelligent, productive discussion for conseratives to rely upon in making up their minds in their pick for the nominee.

.

Go ahead, attend the debate. Answer the economic/financial questions in the first hour. Then, once the moderators turn to the social issues — IGNORE them.

Just wait for them to finish their “question” and then go into Lincoln-Douglas mode: expand on previous economic answers. propose questions to the other candidates, etc. Just totally ignore whatever blather about social issues spews from the mouths of the Bloombergian/Wapoites. Every “answer” should be preceded by this formula:

“Thanks for that question, but in accordance with our original agreement that this debate focus on economic issues, I’m going to speak more about yyy.”

Oh…and do Erick’s “conversation” thing, as well.

He was convicted of giving classified information to a friendly nation (which it should have received according to treaty, the only one EVER to be convicted of this, given a life sentence after the judge threw out the plea agreement, because of “secret” information provided by the anti-Semitic Sec. of State, without then receiving a trial. The “secret” info turned out to be actual the work of a American spying for Russia, who did not receive a life sentence and has already been released. The only reason that Jonathan Pollard is still in jail is because of the anti-Semitic State Department, which would gladly throw Israel under the bus. And if he had not given Israel this info, Israel would not have been able to destroy Iraq’s nuclear reactor and left American soldiers in Desert Storm in harms way from that.

that republicans usually/always cave to the dems to be bipartisan/be reasonable, etc. etc.

Wasn’t there a post here recently that said republican candidates need to remember these rules and rule 1 was something like remember the liberal media wants you I don’t remember if it was dead or disgraced, etc. Someone should mail all the campaigns a copy of that (good work whoever did that post).

and tea partiers than they are of the MSM?

At least for the primaries. The things that we want to hear as conservatives will be used against them in the general.

I don’t know, but it makes me mad they won’t do something with Red State.

Since the Univision debate was rightfully scrapped, can’t they open up an opportunity for my favorite conservative websites — Newbusters, Red State?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reince_Priebus

I wish the Republicans would boycott this debate , it will only be a bunch of gotcha questions to destroy all of the candidates.
Good article!
We need to make Obama a one term President.
Perry is my candidate.

It appears the Republican Natiional Committee has a death wish! Or, they are simply so stupid as to not know that the “main stream media” has become so corrupted by the left wing radicals that they have no intention of offiering a fair debate, nor to comply with the promised structure of the upcoming debate.

WHY WOULD INTELLIGENT REPUBLICANS SUBJECT THEMSELVES TO SUCH BIASED MODERATION OF A DEBATE AMONG REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES?

If you support a candidate, I urge you to COMPLETELY BYPASS the idiots at the RNC and donate directly to your favorite candidate.

in the same area reserved for why the Republican Party is sometimes called the stupid party.

Now who wouldn’t want a man[?] that smart and knowing asking them questions? He then stated that due to it’s age why should we be bound by it. It follows that we may expect questions on vital national issues like,”do you believe in evolution”?
Just wait until he gets his high school diploma, a senior editor over at the Washington Post ? Why not, he knows as much as the rest.

I was asking myself the same thing when I saw the MSNBC debate. The moderators had it out for all the candidates, some more than others. Wa Po is likely to be a Perry bashing fest, because they would love nothing more than to destroy his candidacy, and they know he is one stellar performance away from almost locking the whole thing up. If Perry knocks it out of the park, Romney would lose any advantage he has, which is the idea he is the most electable. I see him as the weakest candidate, with his problems. But the is another story altogether.

The RNC is not run by conservatives. At least not the kind of conservatives who post here at Redstate. Why? The Republican Party at the “top” is not “conservative enough” because, at the “bottom” — the precinct level — not enough conservatives are “in” the Party with eligibility to cast votes for the Party leadership. The current make-up of the state’s RNC delegations was determined years ago by those Republicans who became voting members of the Party. (Each state gets 3 RNC delegates — the state chairman and two elected delegates, one male, one female.)

The precinct committeemen elect the state committeemen, who in turn elect the state chairman and the state’s two other RNC delegates. As I’ve been gently noting here for some time, occasionally, if we conservatives want our RNC leadership to be “more conservative,” then more of us need to become precinct committeemen where we live. Our RNC officers will become “more conservative” if, and only if, more conservatives become voting members of the Party.

About half of the precinct committeeman slots are still vacant in the Party, on average, in every locale across America. About one-third of the precincts have not even one precinct committeeman. Again, if you want to have a “more conservative” Party in terms of who’s running the show — the Party officers — then the ONLY way you can do that is to be in a position to actually vote for the officers. That starts by becoming a PC (or, for example, in the case of CA, by running for Congress, which, according to the CA GOP bylaws, gets you a voting slot within the Party and the right to fill a certain number of voting slot vacancies — I’m not an expert on CA; if anyone who is wants to chime in, please do).

And don’t expect those who are already inside the Party to explain all this for you. They won’t. Because it’s not in their self-interest to do so. But I’m not running for anything.

So I’ll tell you.

Thank you.

ColdWarrior

The #1 best thing we could do for our country, and frankly, the world, is liberate Americans from the drive by lame stream media. Seriously.

I’m tired of REPS just acknowledging media bias but continuously to bow down to them. Sick of it.

The only one fighting back is Gingrich. Wake up GOP!

We continue to compete with a freakin bowling ball tied around our ankles. It’s time to focus strategy to expose these morons and take them on head on.

The debate will be held at Dartmouth College in uber “liberal” Hanover NH. Not only will the moderators be lefties so won’t the audience. The candidates agreeing to this is beyond stupid. They are few votes to be had for Republicans in Hanover NH.

Why should the GOP trust the Washington Compost, a newspaper that coasts on its reputation in a one-newspaper city, a newspaper that is beholden to the Democrat interests that keep it floating, and a newspaper with a reputation as being anti-non-government? There is no reason,

Then at the other end of the table you have an organization founded by someone that’s the United States equivalent of Vlad Putin that thinks he’s God’s (oops, his own) gift to New York City, that is just as entrenched in the crony corporatism of Wall Street. A shame that any candidate has to waste an evening being tarred by these losers.

Oh, about the Perry Rock: Rick Perry was a Democrat way back in 1983!