“They’re a partner. They’re just not our boss”, he said.
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“It sounds to the audience as if one is spinning the question in a way that presupposes the candidate’s candidacy is illegitimate”, she told AP.
GOP campaign operatives began arriving at the Hilton Alexandria Old Town at around 5:30 p.m. Sunday and headed straight upstairs to what had been code-named “family dinner”.
Most of the details of what various campaigns wanted was already made public heading into the meeting.
The campaigns, which met Sunday night outside Washington, D.C., are united in their desire for more substantive and focused debates, but have yet to agree on specific goals.
One proposal that is certain to be discussed, sources said: Splitting the debates up into two randomly assorted groups of seven candidates, allowing all 14 candidates an equal platform without crowding the debate stage.
The debates would be streamed on Facebook or YouTube, essentially acting as prolonged pitches for each candidate.
But the revelation that the RNC will no longer be a part of the debate process has not yet been reported until now. But the campaign of businessman Donald Trump, represented by manager Corey Lewandowski, threatened to boycott if the Spanish-language network that Trump has clashed with was granted a debate.
“Bush campaign manager Danny Diaz recommended that Telemundo be reinstated after being dropped along with NBC”, Costa and Weigel wrote. During Wednesday’s debate, moderators asked Donald Trump if he is a “comic book version” of a presidential candidate, and at one point they were booed when they asked Ben Carson about his ties to a controversial supplements company.
But the decision by the campaigns to wrench more control away from the RNC suggests that effort backfired.
The CNBC team reportedly took a long, “shell-shocked” flight back to New York after the debacle, and presumably will learn from the experience. On Friday, the committee announced it would suspend the next debate hosted by NBC News and Telemundo over the way the CNBC debate played out, which campaigns have complained was poorly moderated and intended more to bruise the candidates than enlighten the voters.
Sean Cairncross, the RNC’s chief operating officer and former chief counsel, will take the reins from committee spokesman Sean Spicer, who had served as the chief negotiator.
The Sunday evening meeting was initiated by Dr. Ben Carson’s campaign.
Trump, on the other hand, who has been the clear leader in the GOP primary polls for more than three months, has been accused of fanning anti-immigrant flames.
But the campaigns have other plans. Campaign staff for Sen.
“I have enough self-awareness to know that this is the bumpy time of a campaign”, said the former Florida governor once regarded as the betting favorite for the GOP nomination. Rick Santorum pushed for being included on the main stage of debates. Undercard candidates like Sen. Lindsey Graham and Gov. Bobby Jindal simply want to participate in the primetime debates.
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CNBC could and should have borrowed a page from the generally excellent Fox News debate in which each candidate was pointedly asked to explain a particular shortcoming of their campaign or political philosophy. “The way it’s always been done”, he added, referring to the fact that the RNC claimed a central role this year, trying to avoid a repeat of the debate process in 2012, which was seen as unruly and ultimately damaging to the eventual GOP nominee, Mitt Romney.
