One week from today, the first debate featuring all but two of the key GOP contenders for the presidency will occur. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, businessman Herman Cain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum will participate in the debate on the campus of St. Anselm College, from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. EDT on Monday, June 13.
Incredibly, once again, GOP primary voters will only get to see their would-be nominees through a lens ground by traditional media. The event is being sponsored by CNN, local television station WMUR and the New Hampshire Union Leader.
CNN Chief National Correspondent John King will moderate the debate, with reporters from the local outlets. No doubt these are fine journalists, but like King, they will almost certainly carry with them all the biases and predispositions of the mainstream media.
If Dr. Charles Xavier could leave his X-Men films to read the minds of these and other journalists, how many do you suspect he would find who support a right-to-life amendment, oppose same-sex marriage, are eager to slash the corporate tax rate?
We all know this built-in bias exists, but still the candidates (except Sarah) agree to play by rules dictated by media that is overwhelmingly opposed to their election.
Expect the standard stunt questions on abortion in the event of rape or incest, weapons of mass destruction, evolution, global warming, or any of a dozen other dog whistles to the left designed to create the moment that replicates across the Web, that seeks to wound prospects by defining the GOP field as outside the mainstream.
They will do so even as the panel glides over the issues of national security of the United States and the woeful economic conditions in the land that ought to dominate. Imagine FDR participating in debates in 1931 and being asked about anything but the Depression and the adequacy of Hoover’s response to it.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus promised on my radio program last week to release soon the schedule of a set of GOP-organized debates with GOP-selected questioners. Those forums ought to give plenty of time to each candidate to address the most important issues facing the country.
On June 18 in Des Moines, for instance, I will be moderating a forum on deficit reduction for StrongAmericaNow.com, but we need a dozen such focused conversations that minimize the role of the questioners, not a dozen mainstream media carnivals that turn on the whims of MSMers.
The downgraded role of the questioners in such a forum tears at the hearts of television producers who are looking for “moments,” for dramatic clips that can be repackaged into highlight reels and promos and spliced into demo tapes by talking heads looking for a step up in market or pay.
Serious debates about serious subjects also destroy the ability of the MSM to prepare the political battlefield for President Obama. I doubt very much that King wants to ask a question that Fareed Zakaria passed along to him from the president.
That’s not the way the game works. Rather, the questioners simply stay away from statements about the president’s performance that reflect the views of the GOP primary audience and thus protect the viewer from the facts that ought to define the debates: 9 percent unemployment, anemic growth, Medicare on a path to bankruptcy, the malignancy of Obamacare.
Faster, Chairman Priebus, faster. The Chance the Gardener presidency is killing the economy, bankrupting the nation and endangering our allies. Voters deserve debates in which the only people in the room not aware of those facts are those who are asking the questions.
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
