GOP campaigns meet to try to fix debates, after complaints of liberal bias, ‘gotcha’ questions – VIDEO: Fiorina talks CNBC debate, Clinton, attack from ‘The View’ – Trump vows to take on ‘corrupt’ VA – COMPLETE CAMPAIGN 2016 COVERAGE

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The campaigns of Republican presidential candidates will meet Sunday night to discuss problems with the 2016 debates and to try to devise a strategy to improve the situation, following the controversial debate last week hosted by CNBC.

Essentially all of the GOP candidates have complained about the debate Wednesday, citing a list of grievances, from the moderators seeming to lose control of the situation to questions that appeared to have liberal bias and designed to spark fighting — not policy debate.

“This debate structure is not leading to the best candidate coming out of the debates,” GOP candidate and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Graham said a representative from his campaign will attended the private meeting in northern Virginia and that he wants smaller groups on the debate stage and better questions so that all of the candidate can be “heard from equally.”

“If we continue with this process, I think it’s going to hurt our chances for winning in 2016,” he said.

Some of the immediate criticism after the CNBC debate in Boulder, Colo., was directed at the Republican National Committee and group Chairman Reince Priebus, who led negotiations on the 2016 schedule.

Priebus, in an apparent response to the candidates’ complaints, has suspended a debate to be hosted by NBC in February.

Graham praised Priebus’ efforts to improve the party but said the existing debate process is going to “hurt our chances for winning in 2016.”

Carly Fiorina, the only female candidate in the GOP field, told ABC’s “This Week” that her team cannot attend the meeting because of logistics.

Candidate Ben Carson, who has suggested moving the debates online, told ABC he would like future ones to include opening and closing statements of at least one minute.

He also voiced opposition to so-called “gotcha questions” including those that raise issues about a candidate’s long-ago past.

“Give me a break,” he said. “We need to mature in the way that we do these debates if they’re going to be useful to the American people.”

The GOP rallying point against the debate appeared to come at about the halfway point when candidate and Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz chastised the moderators for their questions — including one to fellow candidate Donald Trump about whether he was running a “comic book” campaign.

“The questions asked in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” he said. “This is not a cage match.”

There have been four GOP debates so far — co-hosted by Fox News, ABC, CNN and CNBC, and eight more are scheduled.

Candidate and New Jersey Gov. Christ Christie has also criticized the CNBC moderators and their question but argues the best candidates should be up for the challenge.

“The moderators didn’t control the debate,” he told Fox News on Saturday. “Their bias is showing. … That being said, if you’re running for president of the United States and you can’t handle yourself with the CNBC moderators without you know crying foul and calling for intervention, then you’re not going to do well against Vladimir Putin either. So I’m not going to complain about it.”

Source: FOXNews.com
GOP campaigns meet to try to fix debates, after complaints of liberal bias, ‘gotcha’ questions – VIDEO: Fiorina talks CNBC debate, Clinton, attack from ‘The View’ – Trump vows to take on ‘corrupt’ VA – COMPLETE CAMPAIGN 2016 COVERAGE

 

 

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