The Democratic National Committee has faced relentless criticism for setting up a limited presidential debate schedule, but conservative author Ann Coulter thinks Republicans could have learned something from it.
As of now, the Democratic debate schedule as approved by DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz only includes six primary debates, while the the Republican National Committee sanctioned 11. Though it was logical for the RNC to have more debates given the sprawling field, many Democrats also thought their candidates needed more debates to compensate for Clinton’s outsized name recognition.
In an interview Tuesday with the Washington Examiner media desk, Coulter, who supports Donald Trump for the GOP nomination, said her party would have been better off copying the DNC.
“We don’t need 17 more debates,” she said (though there are actually only eight left). “Three more would probably be enough. We’re trying to pick a presidential nominee, not make stars of cable news hosts. Republicans have got to start looking at what Democrats do, not what they advise the GOP to do. How many more debates will Hillary be participating in?”
A potential problem with Coulter’s proposal is the fractured support for the 14 remaining candidates.
Ben Carson and Trump, neither of whom have ever held public office, are first and second in national polls among Republican voters. At a distant third is Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has seen an upward trajectory in his numbers after two strong debate performances. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush are behind with about 7 percent.
The remaining candidates are all between 0-5 percent.
“It doesn’t have to be exactly the same [as the Democrats’], we have more candidates,” continued Coulter. “My only point in citing their schedule is, look at what they do, not what they tell the GOP to do.”
By “they,” Coulter means liberals in the news media, who she and others believe have played too big of a role in the Republican debates.
After the third debate in October, hosted by CNBC, some of the candidates, including Carson and Ted Cruz, complained that the moderators and formats have been unfair. Their campaigns met to write a list of demands for future debates, though the effort seems to have fizzled after other candidates — Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina and Trump among them — declined to join the effort.
Coulter agreed that the moderators have been unfair and called them “partisan Democrats,” but she said the candidates would serve themselves better if they stopped complaining about it.
“The nastiest questions, as usual, were for Trump, but he didn’t whine about media bias,” she said. “He attacked the question, then answered it.”
The next GOP debate will be hosted by Fox Business and The Wall Street Journal on Nov. 10.
