Tag Archives: elections

Conservatives Are Finally Admitting What Voter Suppression Laws Are All About

by Jay Walker Posted on August 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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North Carolina’s new voter ID law is ostensibly designed to reduce voter fraud. That’s the official story, anyway. But if that’s the case, why did North Carolina also pass a whole bunch of other voting restrictions, including limits on early voting? Phyllis Schlafly, the doyen of right-wing crankery, explains that the reason was simple: “Early voting plays a major role in Obama’s ground game….It is an essential component of the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote campaign.” Steve Benen comments:

Have you ever heard a political figure accidentally read stage direction, unaware that it’s not supposed to repeated out loud? This is what Schlafly’s published column reminds me of.

For North Carolina Republicans, the state’s new voter-suppression measures are ostensibly legitimate — GOP officials are simply worried about non-existent fraud. The response from Democrats and voting-rights advocates is multi-faceted, but emphasizes that some of these measures, including restrictions on early voting, have nothing whatsoever to do with fraud prevention and everything to do with a partisan agenda.

And then there’s Phyllis Schlafly, writing a piece for publication effectively saying Democrats are entirely right — North Carolina had to dramatically cut early voting because it’s not good for Republicans.

Remember, Schlafly’s piece wasn’t intended as criticism; this is her defense of voter suppression in North Carolina. Proponents of voting rights are arguing, “This is a blatantly partisan scheme intended to rig elections,” to which Schlafly is effectively responding, “I know, isn’t it great?”

Actually, I doubt that Schlafly was very far off the reservation here. Generally speaking, I think conservatives have gotten tired of keeping up the pretense on the purpose of their voter suppression laws. Why bother, after all? It might make sense if they needed to convince a few Democrats to join their cause, but that’s obviously hopeless. Alternatively, it might be necessary if they needed to maintain a legal fig leaf for future court cases, but the Supreme Court has ruled that purely partisan motivations for voting laws are A-OK. Finally, they might care about public opinion. And they probably do. But not much.

At this point, the jig is up. Everyone knows what these laws are about, and there’s hardly any use in pretending anymore. In fact, the only real goal of the voter suppression crowd now is to provide a plausible legal argument that what they’re doing isn’t intentionally racist. That’s really the only thing that can derail them at this point, and the best way to fight back is to shrug their shoulders and just admit that they’re being brazenly partisan. That’s what Texas attorney general Greg Abbott did in his brief supporting his state’s voter suppression laws, and he did it with gusto. But if that’s the official argument that you have to make in your legal briefs, there’s not much point in denying it in other forums. You might as well just go with it.

Schlafly wasn’t reading stage directions. She was reading from the script. It’s just a new script, that’s all.

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Conservatives Are Finally Admitting What Voter Suppression Laws Are All About

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Birther John Philip Sousa IV Wants a Tea Party Darling to Run For President

by apitjwdu Posted on August 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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Dr. Ben Carson went from acclaimed Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon to conservative hero when, in February, he rebuked President Obama during a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. With Obama seated a few feet away, Carson blasted the “PC police,” stumped for a flat tax, and ripped the president’s positions on health-care reform and deficits. Overnight, Carson became a tea party hero. The Wall Street Journal editorial board headlined its write-up of Carson’s half-hour speech: “Ben Carson for President.”

A new super-PAC chaired by John Philip Sousa IV, the great-grandson of the man who wrote “Stars and Stripes Forever,” aims to do just that—nudge Carson into the 2016 race. The National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee recently filed papers with the Federal Election Commission to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money—as all super-PACs can—in an effort to convince Carson to launch a presidential run. On the super-PAC’s website, RunBenRun.org, you can sign a petition that begins, “You said that if the American people were still ‘clamoring’ for you to run for president, you would seriously consider doing so. Well, I’m clamoring for you to run for president of the United States.” As the Center for Public Integrity notes, the super-PAC’s creator is Vernon Robinson, a resident of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who has unsuccessfully run for Congress three times.

As for Sousa IV, this isn’t his first crack at rallying behind a tea party hero. As my colleague Tim Murphy reported in July 2012, Sousa helped bankroll Americans for Sheriff Joe, a political action committee devoted to electing controversial Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio:

Sousa, who has largely avoided politics since unsuccessfully running for Congress as a Republican 38 years ago, says he’s already raised $1 million from more than 40,000 individuals and businesses across the country. (A quarterly filing provided by the group reveals that most of that $1 million went to pay for direct-mail costs.) “I heard from the guy who filed the report for us that our report was almost the size of Obamacare, at 2,200 pages,” he says.

Sousa is an immigration hardliner who notes on his personal web site that “I am tired of pressing one for English, I am tired of looking for the English instructions on boxes. If you don’t speak English or you are not willing to learn English, I would strongly suspect that you should not be a permanent resident in the United States of America.”

In Arpaio, Sousa found an anti-immigration champion who’s not afraid to stand up for what he believes. “We had read lots about Hispanic civil rights group La Raza going after Sheriff Joe, about George Soros going after Sheriff Joe, about Eric Holder going after Sheriff Joe, about Obama not liking Sheriff Joe and wanting him replaced,” Sousa says in an interview, explaining the genesis of his PAC. “And the immigration issues of this country are not getting fixed—not that he can fix them, but at least he enforces the laws of this country.”

Sousa is also something of a birther. In an interview with Murphy, he said, “I mean, can you unequivocally say that Obama was born in the United States? I can’t!” He went on: “I don’t trust the documentation. I don’t distrust it. I don’t know.”

What’s been Carson’s response to the “Draft Ben” effort? Muted, so far. He told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren that he loved John Philip Sousa’s music but he wasn’t going to “interfere” with Sousa IV’s effort. “I believe that god will make it clear to me if that’s something that I’m supposed to do,” he said. “It’s not something I particularly want to do. I find life outside of politics much more appealing.”

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Birther John Philip Sousa IV Wants a Tea Party Darling to Run For President

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Let’s Make Presidential Debates More Ideological!

by Bob Jackson Posted on August 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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Republicans seem to be inching in the direction of no longer allowing any primary debates to be hosted by non-conservatives or televised on non-conservative channels. The debates would all be on Fox (I guess) and the questioners would all be conservatives who truly understand what it is that conservatives are interested in. Ed Kilgore ponders what this means:

The key point here is the ability of these kind of “moderators” (to use the unavoidable but unintentionally hilarious term) to “vet” candidates by forcing them to “differentiate their positions on core conservative values.” That could mean slicing and dicing the field according to position differences less ideological questioners don’t even understand (e.g., degrees of commitment to the more radical tenets of “constitutional conservatism” that imply abolition of church-state separation or a roll-back of all federal programs not explicitly authorized in the Constitution), or simply an emphasis on “issues” of particular importance to “the base” and pretty much no one else (e.g., Fast and Furious, “voter fraud,” “death panels,” Shariah Law, home-schooling, the gold standard and even “birtherism.”).

Personally, I think this would be great. I can think of three reasons off the top of my head:

Substantive: Why shouldn’t conservatives be questioned by other conservatives who know just what it is that conservatives really care about? That actually sounds pretty reasonable to me. The Huckabee Forum in 2011, starring Pam Bondi, Ken Cuccinelli, and Scott Pruitt, was surprisingly interesting.

Entertainment value: As a blogger, I would really look forward to making the GOP clown show even more clownish. I know that hardly seems possible, but think about it. “Governor Jindal, do you think Christian churches should merely be free of all government interference, or do you think that state governments should require the adoption of Christian curricula in our schools?” “Representative Ryan, do you think global warming is a myth, or do you think it’s actually a sinister plot by the scientific community to destroy the economy?” Bring it on!

End of idiocy: I totally sympathize with the conservative desire to put an end to “Elvis or the Beatles?” kinds of questions. It would be worth it just to accomplish this.

I’m not sure how this translates on the Democratic side, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a few of the debates moderated by honest-to-goodness lefties rather than John King and Wolf Blitzer. Why not make the candidates defend themselves against criticism from the left? It’d be good for them to go up against Rick Perlstein and Katha Pollitt once or twice. Why not?

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Let’s Make Presidential Debates More Ideological!

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ACLU Threatens Suit Over Kansas’ ‘Suspended’ Voter Registrations

by 4ko9dra Posted on August 14, 2013

Mother Jones

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Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is no stranger to immigration controversy. The Republican’s fingerprints can be found on all sorts of immigration laws around the country, including Arizona’s controversial SB 1070. He’s one of the key cogs in the national movement of immigration hardliners and as recently as April defended his use of the phrase “self-deportation” (a phrase even Newt Gingrich called “anti-human”).

Kobach’s support of another immigration-related voter registration law could land him in court. The ACLU said Tuesday that Kobach and the state of Kansas are violating the National Voter Registration Act by preventing people from registering to vote who haven’t proved to the state’s satisfaction that they’re US citizens. About 14,000 people — about a third of the people who’ve submittted registration forms in 2013 — are in “suspense,” meaning state elections officials can’t verify that the person is actually eligible to vote. In many cases this has to do with fact that proof-of-citizenship documents aren’t being transferred to Kansas election officials from Kansas DMVs—despite a $40 million system designed to streamline the process. The ACLU also says Kansas is failing to make its election forms widely available and is generally failing to uphold its responsibilities under federal election law.

The ACLU has threatened to sue the state of Kansas if it doesn’t address its concerns.

ACLU’s main beef is with Kansas’ requirement that first-time voters in the state provide proof of citizenship. Arizona enacted a similar requirement in 2004, but the US Supreme Court struck it down earlier this summer. The federal form requires registrants to check a box affirming their lawful right to vote under penalty of perjury. The Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision written by arch liberal Justice Antonin Scalia, said that states had to accept the federal registration form unless it could convince the Election Assistance Commission (a federal body charged with making voting easier in the wake of the 2000 Florida elections debacle) to change the requirements.

Kobach, through his media office, wouldn’t answer questions about the ACLU’s allegations. But he did issue a statement:

“We are reviewing the letter submitted by the ACLU. However, the ACLU and other organizations on the Left have made clear from the start that they oppose proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting and that they will attempt to prevent the State of Kansas from ensuring that only citizens are registered to vote. This letter therefore comes as no surprise.”

Kobach added that the ACLU is misinterpreting the Supreme Court’s decision, and that the state of Kansas “takes the citizenship qualification seriously and will enforce it.”

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ACLU Threatens Suit Over Kansas’ ‘Suspended’ Voter Registrations

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Texas AG: We Don’t Hate Blacks, Only Black Democrats

by johnsmithwindows Posted on August 12, 2013

Mother Jones

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Ever since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, Texas has been required to preclear any changes to its voting laws to ensure that they don’t discriminate against blacks or other ethnic minorities. That ended in June when the Supreme Court voided the preclearance formula of the VRA, so Eric Holder has gone to court to ask that Texas be required once again to get preclearance. The current leaders of Texas, naturally, object. So in the face of mountains of evidence of discriminatory practices lasting all the way to the present day, what are their arguments?

Aside from some technical issues, there are two. And they’re great! The first, according to Texas attorney general Greg Abbott, is that, sure, Texas has tried to discriminate as recently as 2011, but their efforts were overturned by a court. So that means there are no current violations, and thus no reason to grant any kind of “equitable relief.” Second, there was never any racial intent to begin with:

DOJ’s accusations of racial discrimination are baseless. In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats….The redistricting decisions of which DOJ complains were motivated by partisan rather than racial considerations, and the plaintiffs and DOJ have zero evidence to prove the contrary.

There’s much more where that came from, including pages and pages of detailed defenses of various districting decisions and how they hurt white Democrats too. Will this argument pass judicial muster? You never know. The Supreme Court has indeed taken a pretty casual attitude recently toward voting laws in which states argue that blacks are just a kind of collateral damage. Mainly, though, Abbott’s brief is notable for the gusto he brings to his defense of gerrymandering. As Jon Fasman notes, “Rarely does one see political gamesmanship admitted so openly, and I have to admit it’s kind of refreshing to hear a politician decline to even pay lip-service to fairness. Mr Abbott seems to think that the VRA allows him to abrogate minority voting rights as long as he does so for partisan rather than overtly, provably racial reasons.”

Abbott’s arguments are pretty strained, as Fasman notes. Whether a court will strain to accept them is anyone’s guess. They sure seem to be in a pretty straining mood these days, though.

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Texas AG: We Don’t Hate Blacks, Only Black Democrats

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Forget Congress. These 27 States Could Begin Dragging Dark Money Into the Daylight—Today

by Michalak876 Posted on August 12, 2013

Mother Jones

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In the past decade, election spending by so-called 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups—so named for their particular section of the tax code—has spiked by a whopping 9,980 percent, from a few million dollars in 2002 to $256 million in 2012. Here at Mother Jones, we call this type of spending “dark money.” That’s because, the way the tax code works, donors to 501(c)(4) nonprofits are anonymous even as these nonprofits pour millions into elections.

As dark money has flowed into elections in greater amounts, Congress has tried to drag this spending into the sunlight with versions of the DISCLOSE Act. Each time, Republican filibusters blocked those bills. As things stand, the most promising strategy—and it’s not even that promising—for shining light on secret political spending is through the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is considering a rule requiring that publicly-traded companies disclose their election-related spending.

But transparency advocates are wrong to pin their hopes on the SEC or Congress. According to a new report by New York City Public Advocate Bill deBlasio and the Coalition for Accountability in Political Spending, 27 states already have laws on the books that should allow them to require far more disclosure from politically active nonprofits about their spending and their donors. That includes nine battleground states where, in 2012, the bulk of political spending took place—Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Ohio.

Here’s a useful map from deBlasio’s report:

Coalition for Accountability in Political Spending, Office of New York City Public Advocate Bill deBlasio

DeBlasio’s report cites New York State as an example of a state that took advantage of existing laws to beef up dark-money disclosure. In June, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman rolled out new regulations requiring nonprofits registered in New York State to disclose how much of their spending went toward to influencing elections at the local, state, and federal level. Schneiderman’s regulations will also force nonprofits that spend more than $10,000 on elections in New York State to file itemized spending and contribution reports, disclosing donors who give more than $100. Schneiderman didn’t need a new law to authorize all this—as New York’s attorney general, he’s also in charge of regulating the state’s charities.

This year, Connecticut, Maryland, and Utah have also passed various laws ratcheting up transparency of nonprofit groups. The states identified in deBlasio’s report don’t need to do that much—like New York, they can start implementing new transparency regulations right away. The only thing standing between these states and greater dark-money disclosure, the report concludes, “is the courage to act.”

Here is the full report:

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Forget Congress. These 27 States Could Begin Dragging Dark Money Into the Daylight—Today

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Mitch McConnell’s 2014 Battle Could Be the Most Expensive Senate Race Ever

by Dermian Fizalian Posted on August 12, 2013

Mother Jones

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In 2014, ground zero for our cash-drenched, post-Citizens United politics will undoubtedly be Kentucky. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell faces a tea party challenger, Matt Bevin, in the GOP primary and, barring a stunning upset, the Clinton-backed Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes in the general election. As I reported in July, Grimes says she’ll need between $26 million and $30 million to defeat McConnell. Only four Senate candidates raised more in 2012.

Now, the Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza has run the numbers and made a odds-on prediction: The Kentucky race will be the first $100 million Senate election—and so the most expensive—in American history.

Cillizza builds a strong case. McConnell, who raised $21 million for his 2008 reelection campaign, already has nearly $10 million in the bank. To get past Bevin, his pesky primary challenger and a wealthy businessman with millions at his disposal, McConnell could end up spending $5 million to win the primary. Cillizza says McConnell could go on to raise and spend upwards of $35 million overall. And if Grimes, the Democrat, meets her $30 million target, then we’re talking about a $65 million to $70 million race.

And that’s before the outside money starts pouring in. Here’s Cillizza:

Consider the two national parties. The National Republican Senatorial Committee will spend almost everything it has to bring McConnell back, given his prominence within the party and the amount he has done for the committee over the years. And, while the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has plenty of its own incumbents to defend, beating McConnell might make up for lots of other losses in other places, and the committee knows it. It’s easy to see both the NRSC and the DSCC spending in the neighborhood of $10 million each—and that might well be conservative—on Kentucky. Add that $20 million, and the cost of the race is already at $90 million.

The final piece of the spending puzzle is the super-PAC world. A pro-McConnell super PAC—Kentuckians for Strong Leadership—brought in more than $1 million in its first four months of existence. There will be much, much more where that came from. And it’s a certainty that Democrats will set up a super-PAC of their own to support Grimes/beat up McConnell. Aside from those quasi-official super PACs for the two candidates, there will be lots of other interested parties who want to make their voices heard—read: spend money in the most high-profile Senate race in the country. Will all of these groups combine to spend $10 million? Um, yes.

Cillizza’s prognosticating is a little fuzzy on super-PACs, so here’s more to consider. Senate Majority PAC, the super-PAC devoted to electing Senate Democrats, has already hammered McConnell on the airwaves, and it will no doubt continue to attack as long as the race remains competitive. There’s also the American Crossroads super-PAC and its secretly-funded sister nonprofit, Crossroads GPS. The president of the two Crossroads groups is Steven Law, McConnell’s former chief of staff. You can bet that the Crossroads juggernaut will make itself heard in the Bluegrass State. With all those major outside players eyeing Kentucky, super-PAC and dark-money spending could easily blow past Cillizza’s $10-million estimate.

In 2012, the nation’s marquee Senate race was in Massachusetts, pitting incumbent Scott Brown against Elizabeth Warren. That race cost more than $80 million, falling short of the $100 million threshold only because Brown and Warren agreed to a “people’s pledge” keeping most super-PAC and nonprofit spending out of their race. In 2014, the spotlight is on Kentucky, and with no truce in sight, crossing that $100 million milestone is looking like a foregone conclusion.

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Mitch McConnell’s 2014 Battle Could Be the Most Expensive Senate Race Ever

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Iowa State Senator Allegedly Wanted Cash for Ron Paul Presidential Endorsement

by da3xs1z Posted on August 8, 2013

Mother Jones

A few days before the 2012 Iowa presidential caucuses, Kent Sorenson, an influential Republican state senator in Iowa, caused a stir by cutting ties with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and endorsing libertarian Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). “The decision I am making today is one of the most difficult I have made in my life,” Sorenson said. “But given what’s at stake for our country, I have decided I must take this action.”

Making Sorenson’s decision a lot easier was, allegedly, the offer of a whole lot of cash.

According to an October 2011 email obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), an ally of Sorenson’s allegedly told Ron Paul’s campaign that they could have Sorenson’s full support in exchange for an $8,000-a-month salary for Sorenson, $5,000-a-month salary for an acolyte of Sorenson’s, and $100,000 in contributions to a political action committee run by Sorenson. (It remains unclear how much, if any, money actually changed hands. Iowa campaign finance filings contain no record of a $100,000 donation to Sorenson’s Iowa Conservatives Fund PAC.)

In exchange, the email says, Sorenson would ditch Bachmann’s campaign, endorse Paul, join Paul on the campaign trail in Iowa, and provide Paul’s campaign with a member list of the “main Iowa home-school group” for “targeted home-school mail.” The bombshell email was allegedly written by Aaron Dorr, who runs Iowa Gun Owners, and is addressed to John Tate, Paul’s 2012 campaign manager. An aide to Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign, Dennis Fusaro, gave the email to CRP, which you can read below:

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Here’s more from CRP:

The lengthy memo sent on Oct. 29, 2011, was addressed to John Tate, who was then the Ron Paul 2012 campaign manager, Dorr not only lays out Sorenson’s alleged requests for money and what he will do in return, but says that because of a major Iowa Senate leadership meeting coming up on Nov. 10, Sorenson couldn’t quit the Bachmann campaign until Nov. 11. In a second email chain Fusaro provided, Benton emails Dorr on Nov. 14, writing that, “with those meetings in the rear-view mirror, I though (sic) now might be a good time to revisit Kent and your brother joining our team.”

On Nov. 21, Dorr replied to Benton and Tate that he was going to step out of the negotiations because Dimitri Kesari, a Ron Paul staffer, had gone to Sorenson’s house for dinner.

“As I’m no longer needed to facilitate a conversation at this point, I’ll bow out and let you, John, Dimitri, and Kent work this out,” Dorr wrote.

Kasari, Tate, Dorr and Benton did not return calls and emails for comment. Today, The Iowa Republican, a conservative blog in Iowa, published an audio recording of what is alleged to be a conversation between Fusaro and Sorenson in which the senator tells Fusaro that Kasari gave his wife a $30,000 check from an account belonging to a jewelry store Kasari’s wife owns. In the recording Sorenson said he did not cash the check.

In response, Sorenson told TheIowaRepublican.com, which also reported on the alleged Sorenson-Paul arrangement, that Fusaro had fabricated the email and that he’d never received any money. The other players implicated in this alleged pay-to-play deal did not comment to CRP. If true, this scheme is yet another headache for Sorenson. He is currently under investigation by a state ethics committee for allegedly pledging his support to Bachmann’s campaign in return for renumeration, and he has denied any wrongdoing in that matter, too.

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Iowa State Senator Allegedly Wanted Cash for Ron Paul Presidential Endorsement

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Retiring GOP Congressman: Fundraising Is “The Main Business” of Congress

by Natalia681 Posted on August 8, 2013

Mother Jones

On Tuesday, Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), who was elected to Congress as a Democrat in 2002 and then switched to the GOP in 2004, announced he wouldn’t run again. In an interview with the Norman News Star, Alexander said he’d done all he could do in Congress, and he looked forward to life beyond the gilded halls of Capitol Hill.

The most interesting part of Alexander’s interview, though, was his description of how fundraising dominates the life of a member of Congress. Here’s what he said:

But the time has come for someone else to advance that cause now. I made that decision when one stops aggressively raising money, well then people start to ask questions. And that’s an unfortunate part of the business that we’re in. But it’s the main business, and it’s 24 hours a day raising money. It’s not fair. It’s not fair for the member, not fair for constituency to have to be approached every day or two or week ore two about campaign contributions. So it’s just a grueling business and I’m ready for another part of my life.

“Twenty-four hours a day” is hyperbole, of course, but it’s nonetheless a eye-opening statement. In making these comments he joins a list of outgoing lawmakers who, freed from the burdens of fundraising, have embraced their inner Bulworth and vented about the exhausting fundraising hamster wheel. In January, after announcing his forthcoming retirement, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said that Congress barely functions because members spend too much time buckraking. “The time is so consumed with raising money now, these campaigns, that you don’t have the time for the kind of personal relationships that so many of us built up over time,” he said. “So in that way, fun, I don’t know, there needs to be more time for senators to establish personal relationships than what we are able to do at this point in time.”

Why is Congress fundraising so much? Because the cost of elections keeps rising. In 1986, according to the Campaign Finance Institute, it cost $753,274 to win a House race and $6.4 million to win a Senate race (in 2012 dollars). Last year, those figures were, respectively, $1.6 million and $10.3 million. And the cost to win is only climbing.

It takes a whole lot of phone calls, breakfasts at the Capitol Hill Club, skeet shootings, beer bashes, ski trips, and Star Wars-themed fundraisers to raise that much money. For Rep. Alexander, it was all too much.

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Retiring GOP Congressman: Fundraising Is “The Main Business” of Congress

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How Will the Other Networks React If GOP Bans NBC From Debate Coverage?

by Andrew Brentford Posted on August 7, 2013

Mother Jones

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As we all know, RNC chairman Reince Priebus has threatened to exclude NBC from hosting Republican primary debates if they continue with their plans for a Hillary Clinton miniseries. The whole thing is basically a no-lose proposition for Priebus, since it rallies the base today and does him no harm tomorrow. If NBC caves, all well and good. If it doesn’t, who cares? Priebus wants fewer debates in 2016 anyway.

But here’s a thought. I figure there’s one way in which this could come back to bite him: if all the other networks refuse to host Republican debates as long as NBC remains blackballed. I don’t mean Fox News, of course. They’ll host debates regardless. But what if CBS and ABC and CNN all decline to participate on the grounds that the RNC is abusing its power to influence press and entertainment coverage on the networks? That has the potential to hurt. Priebus may want fewer debates, but he does want them televised and I’ll bet he doesn’t want 100 percent of them on Fox.

Anyway, just a thought. Remember back in 2009, when all the other networks came to Fox’s defense when the White House tried to exclude them from a pool interview with executive-pay czar Kenneth Feinberg? I wonder if the same thing could happen this time?

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How Will the Other Networks React If GOP Bans NBC From Debate Coverage?

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