Why don’t I just copy the phrase “and so the bar is lowered again on our politics” and repaste it? Because I have to say it again: and so the bar is lowered again on our politics: it now seems as if Republican candidates could show up to for a debate moderated by one of America’s most prominent birthers, Donald Trump.
It’s hard to see how the Republicans want to seriously try and capture the bulk of independent voters with this development, which again continues the image of a party fixated on appealing to its base and rewarding or enabling the most extreme political polemics:
It’s officially a reality television Republican primary now.
Donald Trump is pairing up with Newsmax, the conservative magazine and news Web site, to moderate a presidential debate in Des Moines on Dec. 27.
“Our readers and the grass roots really love Trump,” said Christopher Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media. “They may not agree with
him on everything, but they don’t see him as owned by the Washington establishment, the media establishment.”Mr. Trump’s role in the debate, which will be broadcast on the cable network Ion Television, is sure to be one of the more memorable moments in a primary season that has already delivered its fair share of circus-like spectacle.
Mr. Trump’s own flirtation with running for president this year seems almost quaint (whose birth certificate was he all worked up about?) compared with more recent distractions – like allegations of adultery and sexual harassment, gaffes that seemed scripted from a late-night comedy show, and a six-figure line of credit at Tiffany & Co.
But despite being derided by liberals – President Obama likened Mr. Trump to a “carnival barker” for his repeated assertions that the president was actually foreign-born – the real estate mogul carries weight with a certain element of the conservative base.
Rush Limbaugh carries more weight. Limbaugh has more political clout, too.
And that sway seems particularly strong with the Tea Party wing of the base, which will be a decisive factor in the early primaries that are likely to determine the nominee. The debate, which unlike many recent ones will not be limited to a specific topic like national security or the economy, is set to happen just a week before the Iowa caucuses.
Newsmax sent candidates the invitation on Friday afternoon. It began, “We are pleased to cordially invite you to “The Newsmax Ion Television 2012 Presidential Debate,” moderated by a truly great American, Mr. Donald J. Trump.” Spokesmen for several candidates did not immediately respond to questions from The New York Times about whether they would accept.
Though presidential candidates may initially balk at the idea of appearing in a debate where Mr. Trump – with his bombast and The Hair – is the one posing the questions, they may ultimately see it as an invitation they can’t refuse.
It’s so sad to see the GOP turn its back on its heritage of appealing to a wide variety of Americans who seek an alternative to the Democratic Party.
John Avlon notes this as well in his latest piece on The Daily Beast about how serious, more thoughtful Republican politicians such as Jeb Bush and Chris Christie have passed on 2012 and what it means to the party:
The center-right seems to have been entirely eclipsed. After all, this is the farthest-right Republican field in recent memory. Romney can be considered a centrist only if you accept that he has been lying since he started running for president—after all, he campaigned as the social-conservative alternative to Mike Huckabee in 2008.
Jon Huntsman has drafted the best fiscal-conservative policies in the field, according to The Wall Street Journal and pledged to end “too big to fail,” but he is reflexively attacked as a RINO and can’t seem to break out of the low single digits. Pandering to conservative populists seems the surest way to get ahead in the short run, and yet that ends up making modernity the enemy. And the Republican Party needs a modernizer.
The good news is that there’s evidence of an appetite for it. Back in March 2011, when Mitch Daniels’s call for a truce on social issues was making waves among the conservagencia, a Wall Street Journal poll found that “Nearly two-thirds of Republican primary voters said they would be ‘more likely’ to vote for a GOP primary candidate who says the party should focus more on the economy and the deficit and less on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion. Only 8% said they would be less likely to vote for such a candidate.”
But for the time being, that pent-up demand for something different is denied, as litmus-test politics—specifically on social issues—is the suffocating norm. Each of the above candidates was preemptively attacked as insufficiently conservative by some corner of the movement. This is what happens when our politics starts to look like a cult—dissent is seen as disloyalty.
And so, back at the roadhouse, the coulda-been-a-contender candidates watch the serial implosions unfold on television at a time when a generic Republican does better against President Obama than any of the declared candidates. The economy sputters, and a sense of drift and disappointment hangs in the air. The background soundtrack playing on the jukebox is an old poem put to music: “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Embracing Trump as a moderator won’t help the impression that if you are center right in the GOP you need not apply. And if you apply, you better be ready to show your birth certificate.
FOOTNOTE: It’ll be interesting to see which candidates show up, decline or say they can’t attend since they have to go to a bris or something. Jon Houseman has already reportedly declined (but then he’s an “old school” Republican and this was to be expected.)
SOME OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
—Firedoglake:
Are we a democracy or are we some poorly written Saturday Night Live sketch parody of a democracy? It is getting harder and harder to tell.
Just when I think the Republican primary couldn’t get any weirder or more depressing, it has submarined to new depths previously unimaginable to me.
–The Atlantic offers these 10 (tongue in cheek) reasons why it’s good for Trump to moderate the GOP debate.
—MSNBC’s First Read:
[Trump spokesman Michael] Cohen told NBC he had no list of confirmed candidates, and wasn’t able to name the venue yet. He also stressed that it is not a “Donald Trump Debate,” just that Trump would be moderating.
Still, the debate keeps with the outsized role Trump has played in the primary process since ruling out running himself for the GOP nomination. Most of the other candidates in the race have met with Trump, though, who has continued to opine on the race — and even flirt with an independent bid for the presidency.
Trump might do a great job of spotting and calling out the Republican flip-floppers, since nobody flip-flops like The Donald.
I can’t picture Trump moderating a debate without becoming a participant in it, but Scott Pelley proved that you can do just that and somehow still maintain the title of objective moderator, so have at it, Donald!
At first glance it seems like something Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and the entire writing staff of Saturday Night Live would come up with as practical joke. The only way it could get better is if every candidate was required to dress up as the animal that they felt best represented their foreign policy views.
So what are the odds of this Cirque du Toupee actually happening? It’s unclear…
Apparently the GOP is no longer content to confine their high comedy to their choice of candidates: Now we’re getting the moderators involved. And I really can’t imagine where we go from here. Once you’ve had a debate for the Presidency of the Freaking United States hosted by Donald Trump, how do you top that?
I know this sounds crazy, but I’m beginning to think Republicans don’t really take this whole “government” thing very seriously.
I can think of a very good reason why a serious Presidential candidate would not show up for this debacle-in-waiting. The center of attention will, as it always be with events in which he is involved, Donald Trump, not the candidates on the stage. It should make for good television, but only because it will be so laughingly absurd.
Trump is nothing but a showman, a P.T. Barnum for the reality television age who knows how to package aspirational messaging to the masses of not-yet-actualized millionaires that buy his books, and somehow connect to his paper-thin rhetoric. Put simply, Trump’s messaging is bad for America — whether it be his casual description of his good relationship with “the blacks,” or his quixotic and divisive quest for President Obama’s birth certificate — Trump has consistently been on the wrong side of what most reasonable people call good judgment. And yet, the GOP presidential candidates are now asked to cede to him the authority of moderating a debate on which of them would ostensibly lead our country out of its current woes? I call b.s.
And so should any GOP candidate who calls themselves a serious candidate. Jon Hunstman appears to be leading the pack on this, telling Business Insider via email “Lol. We look forward to watching Mitt and Newt suck-up to The Donald with a big bowl of popcorn.”
Candidates who take their candidacies for president seriously should follow suit, and this should be a litmus test to demonstrate who is willing to admit that the charade of politics evidenced by a Trump-moderated debate is exactly the problem that the United States faces, and who wants to be the next political Snooki.
What next, Michele Bachmann as moderator, asking herself softball questions? She’d still get them wrong*. Moderator Grover Norquist running the show in order to push his tax cut policy in the form of a question? Rush Limbaugh at the mic asking the candidates about their positions on health care as he pops a few Oxycontins? Herman Cain’s wife assuming the role of moderator in order to publicly grill and humiliate her wayward soon-to-be ex-husband? Of course, by the time this debate rolls around, Hermie’s candidacy will be nothing but a rancid-pizza-scented memory….
…I’m hearing Trump’s hair will demand its own seat. In fact, who knows, Donald the Wonder Mouth could very well hold a simultaneous book signing since he’ll already have a table, a captive audience, cameras, and all the publicity he could dream of.
And speaking of publicity, that is the only justification for any of these candidates to show up, despite any misgivings they might have about appearing with someone like Trump under these circumstances.
Sure, if they accept, they run the risk of having America see them begging for the approval of a reality-TV host and birth-certificate-conspiracy pusher. But if they refuse, they run the risk of having the Republican base see them spurning the approval of their favorite reality-TV host and birth-certificate-conspiracy pusher. A visit to Trump has already become something of a ritual pilgrimage for GOP hopefuls; the Newsmax debate basically dares them to take the courting public. (Update: Jon Huntsman, who made a point of not going to visit Trump earlier in the campaign, refused the invite with the response, “LOL.”)
Well, there’s usually precious little on TV the week before New Year’s, so I’m up for it. Let’s just hope that, if this event goes through, they take it all the way. I want the candidates seated around a long table in the boardroom, while Trump invites them to argue why their opponents should be fired. And I want it preceded by a team challenge, where Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich lead two groups of primary rivals in running an Iowa diner for the day. I hear Rick Perry grills a mean burger!
Politicians, pundits, journalists, you can tell yourselves that the party will sober up any day now and send a Mitt Romney/Mitch Daniels ticket out to battle Obama/Biden, while sending the teabaggers and birthers and Tenthers and climate-change deniers and other lunatics back to the fringe where they came from. But if that’s what you believe, it’s just denial on your part. If it wasn’t obvious before, it’s obvious now — you have to stop treating the GOP as a serious political party that’s still competent to participate in the governing of a great nation. You have to recognize that this is a party that’s gone completely off the rails — if it’s not Jerry Sandusky, it’s certainly the Charlie Sheen of political parties. It has to be dealt with before it does more harm to itself and to others.
If you’re a current or former elected or appointed Republican official, quit the party now. If you’re a journalist, acknowledge in every story you write about the GOP that the party has lost touch with reality and is in desperate need of help.
This debate, should it actually come off, will be the World Cup for the reality-challenged. Among news sites, only The Onion is less fact-based than NewsMax, and it has the virtue of being hilarious which NewsMax does not. As for The Donald, he is presently the most ridiculous man in America not currently serving in Congress.
December 27th will be the first day most people have ever watched or heard of Ion Television, which appears to do nothing but air reruns of rejected network shows and the unfunny riffs of TBS-reject, George Lopez.
I hear Herman Cain’s wife is pissed and she wants her husband to drop out of the race, but how can he pass on an opportunity like this?
Right now Mitt Romney’s campaign is huddling trying to figure any conceivable way they can avoid being seen at this debate. Perhaps they can devise a cloaking device.
Every time we think this circus can’t get stupider and more depressing, we get let down.
This Fox News poll is a little old (September), but for the sake of context, consider this: While 10 percent of Republicans are more likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by Trump, 18 percent are less likely to do so. (Seventy-one percent don’t care.) But if you poll all voters, 31 percent say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by Trump while only 6 percent would be more likely.
Many of the candidates have met with Trump this cycle. Newt Gingrich is slated to meet with him Monday in New York.
The 2012 GOP presidential primary race has been marred by scandals and buffoonery galore over recent months, including sexual harassment accusations, human gaffe machines, and Tiffany shopping sprees. Republicans need someone who can bring class back to the party—someone who understands when it’s appropriate to let the f-bombs fly and who knows the proper way to eat pizza. They need someone who has “enormous balls.” And to that end, professional used car salesman Donald Trump will moderate a GOP primary debate.
As if the presidential primary season wasn’t already playing out like a crappy reality show, Celebrity Apprentice TV star, wig model — and let’s not forget former presidential hopeful — Donald Trump will moderate a Republican debate in Des Moines on Dec. 27. Trump, whom President Obama has likened to a “carnival barker,” is pairing up with Newsmax to put on the debate, which will air on cable network Ion TV.
No word yet on which candidates will accept this once-in-a-lifetime offer — or whether Trump secretly plans on firing them all instead.
Who’s going to kiss the ring of a guy best known in national politics for telling lies about Barack Obama’s citizenship? Not clear yet. Newsmax’s Christopher Ruddy tells me there’ll be “news next week” about the attendees. Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul is diplomatic but non-committal: “We just received the invitation, and we’re taking a look at it.” But two high-minded candidates who have struggled for traction have already said they’re out. Tim Miller, spokesman for Jon Huntsman, typed out “LOL” when I asked about the debate.
“We look forward to watching Mitt and Newt suck-up to The Donald with a big bowl of popcorn,” said Miller. (Huntsman, on Twitter on elsewhere, has tweaked the other candidates for traveling to New York for secretive meetings with the celebrity TV host/builder of ugly hotels.)
I asked Buddy Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana who’s unexpectedly become a gadfly candidate, whether he’d show up for the debate. It would be his first.
“Yes,” he said, “driving a clown car with a bumper sticker that reads, ‘Really people? Is this what the debates have come to!?'”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.