Herman Cain has a plan to 'fix these God-awful debates'

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last updated 2 November 2015

Herman Cain says he's pinpointed the big problem with presidential debates: journalists. After last week's CNBC-hosted Republican debate, the Tea Party activist and 2012 Republican presidential candidate wrote a column proposing what he thinks are the best steps for the Republican Party to take to avoid another network ever trying to do "what CNBC tried and failed spectacularly to do on Wednesday — boost their ratings and promote their on-air personalities."

The crux of Cain's solution lies in ditching journalists as moderators and saying goodbye to the media's "tough questions":

So fire the media from the moderator role and reconsider the whole idea of whether you even need moderators, as opposed to a dispassionate referee who announces topics, enforces rules and otherwise sits there and keeps his mouth shut. Someone in that role wouldn't even need to be seen on camera. The debate is not about him, after all.That's what the journalists who get asked to moderate don't understand. It's not about them. It's about picking a president, and they consistently fail to direct the debates in such a way that we are helped in doing so. [Herman Cain]

While we're at it, Cain adds, we should just go ahead and nix the questions, which are "really not necessary in debates." Instead of "Trump being asked about what he said about women, Cruz being asked about shutting down the government, Carson being asked about his math, Rubio being asked about his attendance record, Bush being asked about his poll numbers," Cain proposes that every candidate get "latitude in deciding where to go with a given topic."