Several of the GOP’s major presidential candidates appeared on the Sunday talk shows to take aim at a single target: the first nationally televised debate hosted by Fox News. Candidates who have nearly reserved a spot on the main stage and those who will appear in a separate debate both trashed the structure of the first debate.
Fox News will hold a prime-time debate on Thursday for the top ten GOP presidential candidates as determined by national polls, while other candidates included in those same polls will have an opportunity to appear in an earlier debate set to air at 5 p.m.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson’s position on the main stage seems secure, but that did not stop him from criticizing Fox News’ debate structure.
“I’m on record as wishing perhaps more thought could be put into ways to include everybody,” Carson said on CNN. “I just don’t see why everybody can’t be provided an equal platform.”
The major candidate who joined the Republican field most recently, former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, took aim at the Republican National Committee’s role in crafting the debates. Gilmore is a former chairman of the RNC.
“This limitation by the RNC is improper,” Gilmore said on CNN. “It’s not their job and not their role. They shouldn’t be doing that. The decision of who’s going to be president of the United States doesn’t belong with the Washington establishment, the news media, and certainly not with the RNC.”
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, the runner-up to GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, will almost certainly not make the main stage on Thursday, and he thinks the rules are misguided, too.
The rules are “pretty arbitrary,” Santorum said on ABC. “These national polls are irrelevant. I was at one percent in the national polls four years ago and ended up winning 11 states, four million votes, the Iowa caucuses.”
RNC chairman Reince Priebus responded to the mounting criticism from the candidates on ABC by saying the debates are much improved over the last presidential cycle. He also highlighted the limitations placed on the Republican Party by federal law.
“The Federal Election Commission has rules,” Priebus said. “There are some things that we don’t control. Now that being said, CNN and Fox have agreed that every candidate, all 17, are going to participate in debate night. So we’re proud of the fact that everyone running is going to have an opportunity.”
Priebus continued to argue for a meritocracy on the debate stage based on poll numbers, and said Fox News and CNN are doing a “great job.”
“You can’t necessarily treat someone that’s polling at 18 or 20 percent the same as someone that’s polling at half of a percent or one percent,” Priebus said.
While Fox News’ debate will not air until Thursday, C-SPAN will televise a candidate forum on Monday in New Hampshire for at least two hours that will feature more than a dozen of the major GOP candidates for president.
