Posted on 10/13/2020 4:40:39 PM PDT by Kaslin
You can’t debate your opponent if you have to debate the debate commission first.
The privately-run Commission on Presidential Debates has decided to protect Joe Biden by any means necessary. Despite the event falling well beyond the relevant quarantine period following President Trump’s recent bout with COVID, this ostensibly “non-partisan” group took the unprecedented step of cancelling the second debate, which was scheduled to be a “town hall-style” affair in the battleground Miami market. In its place, the CPD unilaterally announced a “virtual debate.”
Obviously, President Trump declined. No one — not even the most ardent Biden supporter — wants to watch a 90-minute Zoom call in which Joe can read his answers off a teleprompter or cued by aides, as he has been caught doing several times already. The very notion that the President of the United States would ever have participated in such a farce is ridiculous. It was proposed simply to be rejected — a fact made all the more clear by the Commission’s refusal to do the most obvious thing and simply move the two remaining debates back a week.
The ploy was apparent almost from the moment the Commission overstepped any previously perceived authority and decreed that the second debate would be held virtually. Within hours of the Commission’s decision that it was too dangerous to hold a town hall-style debate, the Biden campaign announced it would be holding another canned “town hall” with former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos — suspiciously speedy timing for a campaign and a candidate better known for a much more plodding pace.
So be it. If the Commission on Presidential Debates were to officially endorse Biden, that would be a violation of their non-partisan 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. This was simply the next-best thing for these pearl-clutching establishment creatures that have dwelled in the swamps of the Potomac for decades, prioritizing their next cocktail party invitation at a Georgetown mansion ahead of honest and fair presidential debates for the American people.
Let’s just dispense with the notion that these people who make up the Commission are anything other than surrogates for the Biden-Harris campaign.
The Commission on Presidential Debates is a private group that is allowed to organize these debates only as a matter of historical coincidence. Whatever legitimacy the Commission once had was based on its supposed “non-partisan” nature, and that’s long gone.
As my former boss and five-term U.S. Senator and 1996 GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole pointed out on Friday, when it comes to President Trump, the Commission’s “non-partisanship” isn’t worth the IRS form it’s printed on.
“The Commission on Presidential Debates is supposedly bipartisan w/ an equal number of Rs and Ds,” he wrote. “I know all of the Republicans and most are friends of mine. I am concerned that none of them support [President Trump].”
Senator Dole’s comment is, if anything, an understatement. The leading “Republican” member of the commission, for instance, chairman Frank Fahrenkopf, was a long-time ally of arch-Never Trumper Senator John McCain, and actively sought to kneecap Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential debates.
The President’s troubles with corrupt debate organizers are nothing new. Even as he dominated the GOP primary debates in 2015 and 2016, he was decrying a system run by and for the Republican donor class — people who cheered for Jeb Bush and booed as then-candidate Trump called out the lies and hypocrisies behind the Iraq War. By the end of those debates, he had won over most GOP primary voters. They chose to reject the establishment and nominate Donald Trump despite those “impartial” organizers’ best efforts to sink him.
The only thing the Commission on Presidential Debates has done this October is discredit itself in the same manner the GOP establishment did in 2016. With that in mind, we’ll hope to see Joe Biden on October 22 for the second debate. It’s up to him if he wants to show America that he doesn’t need the Commission to protect him by agreeing to another matchup, standing on his own, exposed for all Americans to see for themselves.
We need to see their sources and uses of Funds.
Trump should rally and help senators.
I hope future Republican candidates will set their egos aside and refuse to participate in any debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Not
Babylon
Bee!
Well, Collins certainly needs help - in more ways than one.
When their moderator was an intern for Biden, well that says it all.
Trump is fighting everyone. It’s crazy.
Not her, she needs an exit plan.
I think that the campaigns ought to be able to select moderators.
Instead of mainstream media members who are known to have a liberal bias, imagine if each campaign could pick two moderators so that we had a panel of four asking questions at debates. Imagine if we had people such as Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh on our side asking incisive questions of the lakes of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
p
I think they already have.
Three debates. Each campaign picks one, then the two moderators agree on the third. No agreement, no third debate.
There’s no need for a commission. Just have two opponents talk to each other for an allotted amount of time. With opening and closing statements. No need for bushwackers.
Collins is going to lose her reelection bid.
Maine is a “Rank-Choice” voting state. If none of the candidates reach 50% + 1, then they count the 2nd choice that voters selected on their ballots to see who has 50%+1 and so on down the ballot.
That is why there are a lot of “Straw Men” running in the Maine Senate race this year (7 in total).
The debates and the commission are a farce. They are mostly fixed, skewed, planned, and influenced toward so called progressives no matter how inept, backward, radical or stupid they are. The whole process is geared toward one thing only...influencing the outcome of the election.
I like Dan Bongino’s idea: have mark levin and Rachel maddow as co-moderators. I think they’d both act appropriately and their bias would be on the table for all to see and evaluate. Much better than this BS where are partisans are represented as not partisan
I think their general ‘idea’ is anyone but Trump. It’s the same philosophy that existed in 2016. In the general public...it’s not selling.
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