NATIONAL HARBOR, Md .–
Republicans said after the 2012 election that they wanted to radically
change the model for presidential debates in 2016 and have conservatives
do more of the question-asking, rather than the "liberal media."
On Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the GOP got a first look at how that might go.
Talk
radio personality Laura Ingraham conducted a 20-minute question and
answer session with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Fox News host
Sean Hannity queried Texas senator Ted Cruz, in a departure from the
regular standard speeches that presidential hopefuls give to this annual
gathering of activists.
Ingraham’s
session with Christie heavily focused on Christie’s vulnerabilities –
his recent political struggles, his volatile temperament, and his
changes of position – while Hannity’s briefer interview with Cruz was
marked by an awkward exchange over former President Bill Clinton’s
libido. And Walker gave an ill-advised answer to a totally innocuous
foreign policy question, an unforced error.
The takeaway: getting
conservatives to ask the questions might not be as much of a pleasure
cruise as Republicans think. The Republican National Committee made the
change one of its top priorities and conservative radio talk show host
Hugh Hewitt has already been named as part of a panel of questioners at
CNN’s primary debate at the
Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library in California this September.
Hewitt
is known as a tough interviewer, and former Florida governor Jeb Bush –
considered the leader of the pack in the early days of the 2016 primary
field taking shape –
appeared on his radio show
Wednesday. Hewitt asked Bush if he would be afraid of sending U.S.
soldiers into combat over concerns it would be labeled “a third Bush
war.”
Bush fended off the question, but it was similar in spirit
to the ones that Ingraham threw at Christie on Thursday here. The irony
may be that because there is no question about where interlocutors like
Hewitt, Ingraham and Hannity stand on the ideological spectrum,
political candidates may believe they are in for easier treatment, and
will have far less ability to point a blaming finger at the media if
things go awry, which in recent years has become an easy escape hatch.
Ingraham’s
first question for Christie thrust his recent political struggles into
his face, while several thousand conservatives watched from the floor of
a darkened convention room floor.
“This has been a rough couple
of months for you in the media,” Ingraham said, noting that many
observers are saying to Christie, “You’re toast.” It gave Christie the
opportunity to bash – who else – the media, and particularly the New
York Times, but it was still a very public reminder of the many stories
about Bush’s domination of the battle for donors and operative talent.
Ingraham
then asked Christie why he had signed on to Common Core in 2010,
forcing him to admit he regretted doing so. She pressed even further.
“Not political regrets? These are regrets, real regrets?”
“Well these are implementation regrets,” Christie said.
Ingraham’s
very next question went at him even harder: “Here are words used to
describe you: explosive, short-tempered, hothead, impatient. And that’s
just what your friends are saying.”
Christie said he was
“passionate.” If a journalist from a mainstream TV network had been
asking the questions, he or she might have been getting booed by the
conservative audience by this point . Ingraham was not. She went on to
attempt to draw Christie into criticizing Bush on his immigration
positions, and then came back to his woeful standing in current polling.
“You were a frontrunner. Now you’re near the bottom,” she said. “Ben Carson is ahead of you.”
Christie
could only point out that in February of 2007 “it was going to be Rudy
Giuliani versus Hillary Clinton. That’s what the polls said then. So I
feel pretty good.”
Ingraham asked a few more questions. One of
them came back to Bush’s current strength, and her final question
attempted again to pull Christie into a back-and-forth with his likely
rival for the nomination.
It was an interview chock full of
horse-race questions and attempts to spark intra-party fighting, two of
the very things that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and other Republicans
have complained were problems mainstream media outlets had created in
the past.
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, by contrast, gave a pep
rally of a speech to the conservative faithful that brought them out of
their seats several times. It helped him continue the momentum he has
built since a successful appearance in Iowa last month. But in the few
moments that he was asked questions after his remarks, by American
Conservative Union board member Ned Ryun, he gave a stumbling answer to a
straightforward question about how he would deal with the Islamic State
if he were president.
Walker said Americans want a president who
does “everything in their power" to fight America’s enemies, and
mentioned “confidence” as a key personality trait. He then cited his
victory in a 2012 recall election spurred by pro-union activists as
experience enough to prepare him for taking on terrorists.
“If I can take on 100,000 protesters I can do the same across the world,” Walker said.
Walker’s response was lambasted even by
the conservative National Review.
He denied afterward he was comparing Wisconsin protesters to Islamic
radicals. “My point was just, if I can handle that kind of pressure,
that kind of intensity, I think I’m up for whatever might come, if I
choose to run for president,” Walker
told Bloomberg News .
And he grew combative,
accusing the media of wanting to “misconstrue” his comments. But in comments
to CNN and the New York Times,
he also backed off the substance of his assertion that facing down
peaceful political protestors engaged in the democratic process of
trying to oust him from office had prepared him for fighting an
international menace. “I'm just pointing out the closest thing I have to
handling a difficult situation, was the 100,000 protesters I had to
deal with,” Walker said.
As for Cruz, he too gave a red meat
speech to the crowd. But in a few minutes of questions from Hannity, it
was a digression into Colorado’s legalization of marijuana that took the
senator and the Fox News personality down a rabbit hole.
“I was
told Colorado provided the brownies here today,” Cruz joked when Hannity
asked him about the decision to legalize marijuana. Hannity responded
by joking that he had eaten the brownies. “The magical mystery Hannity
hour,” Cruz riffed.
Hannity then asked for one-word responses by Cruz to the names he would throw out.
“Hillary Clinton,” Hannity said.
“Washington,” said Cruz.
“Bill
Clinton,” Hannity said, and then adopted a Clintonesque southern drawl,
and began impersonating the former president ogling a member of the
audience. “Hey, by the way, I want to say hi to that really hot chick in
row seven over there,” Hannity said, pointing into the crowd as the
audience laughed. “Hey, you know sweetheart, I’ll give you a tour
backstage.”
Hannity stopped himself. “Sorry, he’s not responsible for this,” he said of Cruz, and then repeated Bill Clinton’s name.
Cruz
paused, and then made a veiled reference that followed along with
Hannity’s joke about the former president’s extramarital affairs.
“Youth outreach,” Cruz cracked.
