Republicans: Boycotting NBC and CNN

last updated 8 January 2015

Republicans are no longer willing to be patsies for the liberal media, said Emily Miller in The Washington Times. The Republican National Committee last week hit back at NBC and CNN over their plans to air major retrospectives about the life of Hillary Clinton, approving a resolution that bans the networks from hosting any 2016 primary debates unless they scrap these public-relations efforts for the likely Democratic nominee. “We’re done putting up with this nonsense,” said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, blasting the projects as “extended commercials” for Clinton. Priebus is “no doubt right about the bent of the Hillary programs,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. NBC’s miniseries will star Diane Lane as the former First Lady, “and you can bet she’ll come off as a sympathetic and glamorous heroine.” CNN’s documentary will likely be similarly flattering to its subject. But liberal media bias is a fact of political life, and Priebus’s boycott will only create the impression that “he’s acting as Lord Republican Media Censor.”

The GOP’s boycott isn’t really about Hillary Clinton, said Byron York in WashingtonExaminer.com. Priebus’s real agenda is to limit the number of primary debates and seek more conservative-friendly moderators. In the 20-plus debates of Republican candidates in 2011 and 2012, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, et al descended into an endless series of attacks on each other, creating “more bloodletting, division, and sometimes embarrassment for the party than enlightenment of voters.” Next time, the GOP will strictly control the debate season, so that it helps—not hurts—its eventual nominee.

Good luck with that! said Andy Ostroy in HuffingtonPost.com. Granted, the GOP stands a better chance of winning elections “if it stops its candidates from actually speaking.” But the 2012 election results strongly suggest that the party has a dire need “to expand its reach among voters,” nor further limit it to “the rabid conservatives watching Fox News.” It’s also a terrible idea to allow only conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin to moderate debates, said Jamelle Bouie in TheDailyBeast.com. They’ll demand the candidates swear allegiance “to the unpopular, right-wing beliefs of their audiences”—including hatred of reproductive rights, Muslims, and Hispanic immigrants. “In which case, it will be all the problems of last year’s primaries, amplified, and turned up to 11.”