RNC to broadcast outlets: No ‘gotcha’ questions, or else

[Commentary] When the Republican National Committee levels a threat, take note. Last October, it expressed dismay with the work of CNBC moderators at the third GOP presidential primary debate. Those folks, said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, messed up. “While debates are meant to include tough questions and contrast candidates’ visions and policies for the future of America, CNBC’s moderators engaged in a series of ‘gotcha’ questions, petty and mean-spirited in tone, and designed to embarrass our candidates,” Priebus wrote in a letter to NBC News Chairman Andy Lack. Commentators liberal, conservative and ideologically quirky sided with Priebus’s judgment.

The RNC, accordingly, suspended NBC News’s participation in the Super Tuesday GOP debate in Houston (TX) on Feb 26. For a couple of months, the event’s status hung in limbo. Jan 18, the RNC resolved things, dropping NBC News and handing the event to CNN, which has already produced two GOP debates — one in Simi Valley (CA) in September, and another in Las Vegas (NV) in December — and which is scheduled to do another debate in March. Apparently the RNC didn’t pay too much heed to the argument that CNBC and NBC News are overseen by different management teams. The switcheroo will leave a tangled alliance at the center of the debate: CNN will partner with original debate co-hosts Telemundo (a property of NBCUniversal) and National Review; Salem Communications, which has partnered with CNN in its previous dates, will also participate.