CNBC Caves to Trump's Debate Demands

Yes, and Ben Carson's. I tend to agree with Josh Marshall: their demands were actually reasonable. No question that CNN GOP debate when on way too long.

You will never find a bigger political junkie than me so I think that if I was getting a little restless by that third hour so were most other people. And if you remember that debate, it didn't exactly end on a high note.

Jake Tapper's final question was for each candidate to pick a secret service code name and one of the other questions he asked in the final hour was what woman would each candidate like to see on the $10 dollar bill.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/when-gop-debate-started-i-was-young-man.html

You might think that a closing statement is 'canned' but surely it would be better than what your code name would be.

"When I first heard the news that Donald Trump was threatening to boycott the next Republican debate (news about Carson came later), I thought it was another example of Trump's signature tendency: he cannot thrive without drama and enemies. But I confess that when I heard the demands, I thought they had merit."

"To be clear, it's definitely also Trump's love of drama. But here's my thinking on this. The Democrats' debate had opening statements and closing statements. While the opening statements were going on I was hearing people say that Fox did better by going straight to questions and dispensing with the canned opening remarks. I think that may be right that it made for better television. But I think having them made for a better debate. Canned or not, it's valuable to see how a candidate chooses to present their campaign in a minute or two, without a forced question or a back and forth with another candidate."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/let-s-face-it-trump-and-carson-are-right

One way to look at it is this: the Dems' debate is being widely hailed as incredibly substantive and it had opening and closing statements so it's hard to argue that you need to pan those to have a better debate.

CNBC hasn't commented yet but according to Trump the network has acceded to his and Carson's demands. If they hadn't apparently only Jeb and Rubio would have been there.

"CNN reported that the Republican National Committee began calling candidates on Friday morning to inform them that CNBC had agreed to limit the debate to two hours."

"Trump and Ben Carson on Thursday sent a letter to CNBC demanding that the network limit the debate to just two hours and allow candidates to give opening and closing statements. The two Republican presidential candidates said they would not attend the debate unless their demands were met."

"The boycott threat followed a chaotic phone call between the Republican National Committee and representatives for the candidates. According to Politico, aides for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) demanded that CNBC include opening and closing remarks. And staffers for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said their bosses would attend the debate no matter what."

"CNBC said on Thursday said that the format for the debate had not yet been finalized."

"Our goal is to host the most substantive debate possible. Our practice in the past has been to forego opening statements to allow more time to address the critical issues that matter most to the American people," CNBC Spokesman Brian Steel said, according to Politico. "We started a dialogue yesterday with all of the campaigns involved, and we will certainly take the candidate's views on the format into consideration as we finalize the debate structure."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-cnbc-debate-2-hours

So who exactly believes that the GOP CNN debate was very substantive and issue oriented?

It was mostly a Jake Tapper authored foodfight where most questions were either directed at Trump himself or at others about Trump-most of the questions of course were negative.

Two hours is certainly a more watchable block of time and opening and closing statements won't make the debate less substantive at least. The main trouble is the GOP is not about substance.

It;s heart and soul is about Nixonian dirty tricks.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/10/has-modern-gop-reached-limits-of.html?showComment=1444441587728#c1460648126903104314

To be sure the trouble with the GOP debates are there are just so many candidates. To me in truth they should whittle down the field further. Get rid of the kids' table altogether.

As it stands now the kid's table as I understand it will include two people.

On this question I'm kind of the opposite of Rachel Maddow. She has been very vocal that it's not fair for the networks to use polls to relegate certain candidates to the kids table. I disagree entirely.

I think CNBC should probably relegate more people. You know the DNC has been criticized for only six debates but this is not so unreasonable when you consider we have just five candidates-and in reality only two viable ones.

Based on the first debate, I'd argue that we should have just three at the next one-as I do think that O'Malley is good in flagging the gun issue. But with such a small number of candidates we have the luxury of having candidates with no chance of winning.

For the GOP I just think that certain folks should not be invited to the debates-to make them better. I Mean Lindsay Graham knows he's not winning anything he's just a protest candidate over Syria.

Rand Paul hardly sounds like he enjoys his own campaign. So they really could consider winnowing the field out further. This I guess won't happen. But in any case I think this Trump-Carson demand were right and it can only improve things.