Opinion Forum

Should We Change the Republican Candidate Debates?

January 11th, 2012

An article about debates among candidates for election as Venezuela’s president made me wonder whether this is a good idea:

This week Globovision started a new series of shows, with a real debate that is not a debate. In short: they taped on the same day the 6 candidates with more or less the same questions and without the other ones knowing what the heck they replied. And they are playing these shows every night at 8 PM starting last night with Diego Arria. I suppose the format is better in that you do get to see the candidate more in depth than the previous “debates”….

That couldn’t be much worse than our current debates; even having them moderated by stars of Daily Kos and Team Obama might be an improvement — at least they might feel a need to seem objective. Strike that; they wouldn’t. In any event, the Globovision format could be an improvement over the absurd ways in which our presidential candidate debates have generally been conducted.

Globovision has long been anti-Chávez and has, therefore, been under heavy fire from the regime to the point of nearly being put out of business. That may yet happen and it seems unlikely that the folks asking the questions will be head over heels in love with el Presidente. It does seem likely that the candidates will be given roughly the same amounts of time to respond to the questions. In addition, the need for the candidates to answer the same questions in a vacuum, unable to make debating points by distorting the responses of the others, would be refreshing.

What have we got to lose by trying it?

(This article was first published at The PJ Tatler.)

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: candidates, debates, election, Republican, U.S., Venezuela
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

3 Responses to “Should We Change the Republican Candidate Debates?”

larry | January 12th, 2012 at 2:25 pm

Dynamic Dan
As the old saying goes “you must of read my mind”.
The current string of Republican debates are showing the party at its worst. With all the in-fighting I find it difficult to believe that all the participants belong to the same party.

Tom Carter | January 12th, 2012 at 10:08 pm

Anything would help! I don’t know about the Globovision idea; it may be a bit over-the-top, but maybe not.

How about a few more FEC rules? God knows, there are plenty of them already. A few more:

— No debates before March 1 of the general election year.

— No state primaries before April 1.

— All candidates required to accept federal funding, period, with the rules that go with it.

— No political ads by any person or group with 30 days of an election, primary or general.

— No journalists or lawyers allowed to moderate debates; only military officers, police officers, and fire fighters.

I know, I know — about as doable as testing voters to see if they have any clue what they’re doing before they vote. Hope springs eternal….