Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Republicans: Change the way you do primary debates

Why does the GOP let the Democrats set the primary agenda?  For decades now, Republican presidential primary debates have been mostly moderated by liberal mainstream media Democrats. (When was the last time anyone called George Stephanopoulos anything but that?).  We've had umpteen debates almost all moderated by agenda driven liberal media types who's goal is to get Barack Obama reelected in November.  They pick out their Republican media darling who they think they can beat and boost up his/her credentials until the convention, the lower the boom.  They loved John McCain last time around, and now they all love Mitt Romney.

I know it is way too late to fix the GOP debates during this election cycle, so lets look to the future.  Why on earth should we have debates during our primaries moderated by people and networks who want to bring down our agenda?  That's madness.  Up until recently we were reliant on using the networks to broadcast our message, but this is changing rapidly.  The older generation who relies on the Big Three networks, are just a small portion of who is looking at the candidates or the news these days.  At 55 I'm no youngster, but I do not rely on, nor have for some time, on the mainstream media to tell me what is going on in my world in 18 minutes.  We now have a multimedia environment on the internet that can communicate our ideas without burdening ourselves to the Tiffany Network.  Without getting into details or endorsing any particular media format,  I'm making a modest proposal.  During the next primary cycle, lets skip the traditional media of the past, and as Republicans, have debates that are on subjects that are of interest to us.  I don't want to watch a debate where Rick Santorum gets brow beaten about his pro-life message or Mitt Romney on his "magic underpants" at a time when we as a country have very serious issues to deal with.  Foremost domestically is the economy, and abroad is the possible nuclearization of Iran in the near future.  Whoever is the president in 2013 is going to have to deal with both.  These need to be discussed, not Romney's Mormonism, or Santorum's conservative pro-life Catholic values.

The liberal media has one goal and one goal only, to get Obama reelected and maybe take back the House.  They have been using the Republican primary debates as a tool to get their people elected and at the very least set the agenda for decades, and it is past time for this to stop.  We now have the New Media capable of getting to voters without using the fossil networks to tell us where we need to focus.