GOP Chair Tries to Cow TV Networks

Every week, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with contributor Eric Benson about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: Reince Priebus throws an ill-considered fit, Jeff Bezos buys the Washington Post, and Obama yucks it up with Jay Leno.  (I'm only including the question about the Republican National Committee Chairman.  To see the other questions and answers click on the link to the magazine in line one of this paragraph.) 

First, Benson's question:
 
NC chairman Reince Priebus delivered an ultimatum to CNN and NBC earlier this week: Pull the plug on your planned Hillary Clinton film projects, or we won't allow you to air the 2016 GOP primaries.  Do you think the RNC chair has a point? And, tactically, is this a smart fight for him to pick? 

(Actually, he threatened to freeze the two networks out of any Republican primary debates.)

And here's Rich's answer: 

It seems that almost no one debating this has seen the Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job directed by Charles Ferguson, who CNN has hired to do its Hillary documentary. It is a scathing (and superb) takedown of the Wall Street financial establishment that looted the country during the bubble and precipitated the crash. My guess is that David Brock has seen Inside Job, and that might explain in part why Media Matters is against Ferguson taking on the assignment for CNN: It's impossible to imagine that Ferguson would do a hagiography of Hillary, whose husband's administration empowered many of the villains in Inside Job. (And it tells you what kind of idiot Priebus is that he is looking a gift horse from CNN in the mouth.) As for the NBC miniseries starring Diane Lane, does anyone really believe that such a project long before the election, broadcast on a network often seen by fewer viewers than Univision, is going to seriously alter public perception of someone as well known at this point as Hillary Clinton? Perhaps most idiotic of all is Priebus's threat to bar GOP presidential primary debates from airing on CNN and NBC in retaliation for those networks' "in-kind donations" to Hillary. Does he really want to go there? Fox News, after all, is a 365-days-a-year in-kind donation by Rupert Murdoch to his political party. But let's say for the sake of argument that Priebus pulls off his boycott and even achieves what is surely his dream scenario - that all Republican debates be held under the auspices of Roger Ailes at Fox. What the GOP will end up with is a presidential field that panders entirely to the party's base - the perfect way to facilitate, say, a Paul-Cruz ticket, provided that Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann doesn't make a comeback. Good luck with that in November 2016.

Rich gives a great answer.  Just as the most interesting question about the Democratic nomination contest for 2016 is "Will Hillary run?" the most interesting question on the Republican side is "Will they finally pull out all the stops and nominate a full-blown extremist?"  As they come more and more under the spell of the Tea Party monster they've created, the answer has a stronger and stronger chance of being  "yes."  If so the likely result will be a defeat on the scale of the Goldwater debacle in 1964.  Party Chairman Priebus's threat keeps that scenario open for the reasons Rich cites.  This could all be a lot of fun.  Things are, as Alice exclaimed in Wonderland, getting "Curiouser and curiouser!"