Two Republican presidential candidates pushed out of Saturday’s New Hampshire debate are assailing ABC and the whole skewed debate process as rigged to make money and pick Big Media’s favored candidate.
Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore told Secrets that regulations should be put in place to block networks from providing hundreds of hours to favored candidates just to win more advertising dollars.
“Why should any network be able to give millions of dollars of free time to their selected candidate so that they can make money on advertising? This is wrong. It is a corruption of the political system. It’s undermining of American liberty. It’s misuse of the First Amendment,” he said in a telephone interview from New Hampshire, which holds its primary Tuesday.
ABC’s picks for Saturday’s GOP debate excludes Jim Gilmore and Carly Fiorina.
Fiorina called out ABC and top newsman Stephanopoulos, a former campaign and White House aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton, as only interested in getting the Democratic front runner elected.
“The network of George Stephanopoulos wants to tell you to sit down and shut up and elect Hillary Clinton,” she said in an email. “Citizens: It is time to take our country back,” said Fiorina, who with Gilmore, were banned from ABC’s stage because their national polling numbers didn’t meet the network’s standards.
With only nine Republican candidates left, said Gilmore, “there is more than enough room” on the debate state to add him and Fiorina. He noted that the first debates had 10 candidates on stage.
Gilmore said that he is following his strategy and actually has “no expectations” for the New Hampshire results. Still, military veteran remains confident and is already planning his march to the next state in the primary process, South Carolina, where his conservative Virginia record, support for gun rights and foreign policy experience should help.
His outrage at how cable and TV network news has skewed coverage to Donald Trump and others polling higher is new and it’s given him a populist line of attack on the media, which has bragged about how it’s won new viewers and ad dollars by hyping Trump.
“I’m very unhappy about the way they behaved,” said Gilmore. “It’s a corruption of the political system and when I become president it’s going to change.”
His plan is to require networks to translate their free coverage into donation amounts. “At the very least the national cables and networks are going to have to report how much in donations they’ve given to their selected candidates by way of free television. That at the very minimum, you know you can do that. I’m not trying to censor what people say, but I do believe we can regulate illegal political behavior and that’s what they’re doing,” said Gilmore.
“It is not just speech, it is behavior, and that is regulated and if we’re going to regulate people’s contributions and political activities of candidates trying to get before the public, then by God we can regulate the TV networks picking their favorite candidates and giving them millions of dollars of free campaign contributions,” he added.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
