Republican candidates are uniting on at least one thing: debate moderators need to clean up their act. And, they're drafting a list of demands to make them do it.
From its first moments when the moderators of Wednesday's Republican CNBC debate left the candidates to wait on stage while the chatted for ten minutes before introducing them and beginning debates, the CNBC moderators displayed their disdain for the candidates participating in the forum and the positions they wanted to covey to GOP voters.
About one-third of the way into the debate, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had had enough of the snotty, arrogant questions designed to get the candidates to break out into open civil war - and he pushed back against the moderators' biased questions, eliciting cheers from the other candidates, the audience (and this reporter sitting alone in front of his laptop and TV).
From then on, every time a moderator asked a biased question to a candidate, the presidential wannabe attacked the question and pointed out the bias of the moderator. By the end of the evening, what was supposed to be a debate between candidates turned into a contest between a team of candidates and their opponent moderators.
The moderators lost the battle, but the candidates are continuing the war. On Wednesday evening after the debate, Byron York spoke to Ben Carson's campaign manager:
In an interview shortly after the debate, Barry Bennett, manager of the Ben Carson campaign, called the session here in Colorado "unfair to everyone" and said the current debate structure should not remain in place. "I think the families need to get together here, because these debates as structured by the RNC are not helping the party," Bennett said. "There's not enough time to talk about your plans, there's no presentation. It's just a slugfest. All we do is change moderators. And the trendline is horrific. So I think there needs to be wholesale change here."
Bennett said he will call Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski Thursday to propose a unified call for change. "Corey and I talk regularly, so I will talk to him," Bennett said. "I will call Frank Sadler (Carly Fiorina's campaign manager), I will call those guys and say listen, we can choose our own network and our own format. We don't need to be led around like prize steers."
"I think at this point, if five or six of us get together, who generate the largest portion of the audience, we can force change," Bennett said.
Reporting from Colorado on Thursday, Fox News' Carl Cameron reported that the candidates' teams had, indeed, begun their discussions. He shared a video tape of comments made by Ben Carson earlier that day before a speech he was to make in Lakewood, Colo..
Carson confirmed he had asked his staff to reach out to other campaigns “to talk about a change” in how the debates are conducted. Dr. Carson said the priority was to select moderators who would allow the candidates to state their positions without interruption from either the moderators or the other candidates.
“I think maybe it has the possibility of being a very important moment in American politics,” he said of the debate, “because it so clearly demonstrates the need for a change in format.” Echoing the complaints of other candidates, Republican officials, and most of twitter, Dr. Carson said of their moderators, “You’ve got be really bad for the whole audience to boo you."
Generally, a primary debate becomes a landmark in deciding the popularity of the individual candidates, and that might have happened last night. However, the CNBC debate will be remembered as the night where the moderators were so bad that the candidates decided to wrest control of the moderator selections.
At the very least, do not expect CNBC to be hosting any Republican debates for the next few presidential campaigns.
The report from Carl Cameron is embedded below: