ALEXANDRIA, Va. — When the Republican presidential campaigns reserved a meeting room at the Hilton Hotel here, they did so under the name “Family Dinner.” That suggests a bit more unity than actually exists among a bunch of highly-competitive political operatives. But most agree that after the debacle in Boulder, the present GOP debate system needs to change.
In recent days, there has even been talk of a far-reaching overhaul. But the changes discussed at the gathering here Sunday night are more fixes to the system rather than fundamental restructuring.
There is one point of solid consensus: The Republican National Committee has exercised too much control over the debates. “We had no input,” Ben Carson campaign manager Barry Bennett said before the meeting. “We were told what the schedule was and who the hosts were.” Bennett noted that the next debate, in Milwaukee, is just nine days away, and the campaigns have not yet been given basic information on its format. “That’s unacceptable,” Bennett said.
If there was any main theme to the meeting here Sunday night, it was: Campaigns, not the RNC, should work with the networks to shape the format of debates. No more top-down directives from the RNC. The campaigns welcomed news, which broke just before the meeting, that RNC chief Reince Priebus had removed key aide Sean Spicer from debate management and replaced Spicer with another RNC official, Sean Cairncross. But the problem, in the campaigns’ view, is too much RNC control of all aspects of the debate, not any one RNC aide.
So what are they going to do about it? After the meeting, top Bobby Jindal adviser Gail Gitcho read out the action items from her meeting notes:
Along with Gitcho, other participants stressed the importance of the first item. “We’re going to negotiate directly with the sponsors [networks] about format,” Bennett told reporters after the meeting. “We all get to decide whether we’re going or not, so we’ll all get some say into the format. We’ll do a group conference call for every debate sponsor with every campaign.”
That would be a welcome development for the campaigns. But the basic RNC-planned structure — the number of debates, their location, the news organizations conducting them — will remain in place. Blowing up the system, this is not.
As far as the individual campaigns are concerned, all wanted to have more say in the format, but beyond that there were real differences. The Chris Christie campaign expressed satisfaction with the system and isn’t pushing for change. The Jeb Bush campaign was not taking the lead in demanding change. The Carson campaign called the meeting and did take a leading role but agreed to smaller changes than Ben Carson had discussed. The Trump campaign will agree to change but did not push for radical restructuring. The Rubio campaign is fairly happy with things as they exist now.
Several issues were left undecided. The “undercard” candidates all want inclusion on the main stage, perhaps by splitting the field of 14 randomly into two equally-featured debates. Campaigns want more discipline on subject matter — to ensure, for example, that a debate on the economy will actually be on the economy. And some want more input into the location of debates; in a campaign focused on Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, why have the first three debates been in Ohio, California, and Colorado?
There will be more talks to address those issues. The bottom line from Sunday is that the changes will give the campaigns more control, and the RNC less control. But it appears there was no discussion of what has sometimes been referred to as “going rogue” — that is, the candidates, angered by Boulder, in full revolt against both the RNC and the television news organizations that produce the debates.
The Carson campaign, in particular, has been thinking out loud about fundamentally restructuring the political debate as it is known today. “I think we can look beyond television partnerships,” Bennett said before the meeting. “Facebook and Twitter and Google and YouTube — they would all host the debate. They would all provide the media feed to every television broadcaster in America. It is 2015, and not 1980. We can do things a little differently … there’s no reason to choose one network and only broadcast on that network.”
That’s a big idea, and one that will likely become reality someday. But not now.
