GOP debate at UH no longer definite
Republicans’ changes leave Houston asking if it will happen
The Republican National Committee has booted one of the sponsors of next month’s 10th presidential debate, further muddying the planning of the event that was to be broadcast from the University of Houston.
The decision to drop the influential conservative magazine National Review as a sponsor followed the committee’s announcement earlier this week that it was severing ties with NBC, which was to host and broadcast the Feb. 25 debate.
Instead, t he party will go with CNN as a result of its displeasure with a panned debate led by NBC’s sister network, CNBC.
That decision has left UH officials wondering whether the school is going to be involved at all.
The committee Thursday told the publisher of the National Review,
which for months had been listed as a debate sponsor, that the magazine and website could not participate after it devoted its latest issue to reasons why voters should reject GOP front-runner Donald Trump.
Uncertainty in Texas
The news has prompted the Republican Party of Texas to press the national party in recent days for details about the Houston debate, citing high demand from state party leaders who want tickets to the event.
Michael Joyce, the state party’s spokesman, said Friday that the RNC had not given them any new information.
“As far as we know, it’s still going to be in Houston,” Joyce said. “We don’t know where, or who’s going to be sponsoring it. We don’t have details at this time.”
UH had no update on the
situation Friday, and local Republicans and officials at other Houston-area universities did not seem to be pushing for the debate to be held at another venue in the city.
The university has been preparing for the debate since October, but there is little the university can control about the selection process, UH political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus said.
“This is a giant mass of people and a huge logistical event that needs to have a lot of preparation, and to be able to move this on a dime is a very complicated affair,” he said.
The National Review’s editorial, released late Thursday in an issue aimed at rallying conservatives against Trump’s candidacy, was published a week before voters in Iowa cast the first ballots in
the GOP race.
“Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out,” the magazine’s editors wrote. “Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in (sic) behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself.”
‘We expected this’
In response, the RNC has barred the magazine from being one of the debate sponsors, which now include CNN, Telemundo and conservative radio broadcaster Salem Communications.
“Debate partners can’t have a predisposition towards or against any candidate,” said Sean Spicer, the RNC’s communica- tions director.
National Review’s publisher, Jack Fowler, first reported his call with the RNC and said a highlevel party official pointed to the anti-Trump publication as the reason the magazine’s editors no longer could participate in the debate.
“We expected this was coming,” Fowler wrote. “Small price to pay for speaking the truth about The Donald.”
On Friday, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has had poor showings in polls for months, said the RNC was wrong to disinvite National Review.
“No, they didn’t,” Bush told Fox News when asked whether the RNC made the right call, calling the magazine “a cherished conservative mouthpiece.”
Last October, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told Andrew Lack, chairman of NBC News, that the RNC was “suspending the part- nership” with the network. The move stemmed from Republicans’ widespread condemnation of a CNBC debate that month that drew 14 million viewers but was panned by GOP supporters who complained about the tone of the questions.
“What took place Wednesday night was not an attempt to give the American people a greater understanding of our candidates’ policies and ideas,” Priebus said at the time.
The debates hosted by the Fox Business Network and CNN since then have drawn praise from party leaders and recordbreaking viewership numbers. The next one, on Jan. 28 in Iowa, will be hosted by Fox News just three days before voters in the Hawkeye State go to the polls.