[guest post by Dana]

So, no, this isn’t big news in light of the world around us, but why let a moment rife with delicious hypocrisy go to waste? Especially when it’s slapping us right across our “demented” faces. And besides, self-righteous smugness from the eternally clueless is always good for a giggle.

Remember that Donald Trump interview in Rolling Stone last month, when, according to the reporter, Carly Fiorina came on the TV screen, Trump put his oafish foot in his mouth and mocked her appearance?

“Look at that face!” he cries. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?! I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?”

Trump was roundly taken to task for his disparaging comments. The list of the scolds included the hosts of ABC’s long running gaseous blabfest, The View (at the 2:53 mark):

Thus it came as a hypocritical surprise when, during their scintillatingly sharp post-debate analysis, The View’s hosts did the very thing they took Trump to task for: took potshots at Fiorina’s appearance:

“You know what Carly said which really made me laugh?” Michelle Collins asked. “She kicked off her thing saying, ‘You know, people tell me that I didn’t smile enough during the last debate.’”

Collins imitated Fiorina’s smile. “She looked demented!” she continued. “Her mouth did not downturn one time.”

“I wish it was a Halloween mask,” Joy Behar said. “I’d love that.

In response, Fiorina threw down the gauntlet:

“There is nothing more threatening to the liberal media in general and Hillary Clinton in particular than a conservative woman, so of course there’s a double standard. Conservative women from Sarah Palin to Michele Bachmann to Carly Fiorina are long used to this. It will not stop me,” said the ex-HP CEO, adding, “Maybe if I come back on again, let’s see if they have the guts to say that to my face,” she added.

Well, today Whoopi Goldberg announced that, while she herself would not be on the show this Friday, Fiorina would:

We helped raise your profile, so you would be included in the sea of men. There were no — you weren’t worried about any kind of Republican backlash. Nobody was backlashing. We were respectful and gave you your due. So, just so we’re all clear, you have to know the difference between when somebody is coming for you and when somebody is paying you a compliment and when somebody is saying, here’s my observation. If you can get that together, maybe you can be president.

Heh. There goes that funny woman being funny again.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

This past Sunday found most of the GOP campaign representatives huddled together in an effort to regain control of the GOP debates after last week’s CNBC debacle.

Ben Carson and Donald Trump, the two outsiders currently leading the pack at a combined 50% in polling, reminded the other camps that it is they who bring in the ratings (both in polling and for the networks) as it was Carson who initiated the conference, and it was Trump’s campaign that neatly shut down the establishment favorite’s camp: when Jeb Bush’s campaign manager, Danny Diaz, suggested that the candidates proceed with the already-scheduled, yet currently “suspended” NBC debate (being held in partnership with Telemundo), Trump’s campaign manager said no, “If you do that,” he said, “Trump walks.” According to the report, Diaz dropped his head in apparent defeat.

The meeting did generate some agreement:

Shortly after 8 p.m., the meeting ended with a tentative consensus. No one had figured out how to satisfy 14 campaigns that all wanted prime time spotlights. But everyone agreed that the debates needed opening and closing statements — 30 seconds would be fine. (Several campaigns felt that CNBC had reneged on a similar idea, turning opening statements into a hectoring opening question about the candidates’ greatest weaknesses.) Everyone wanted equal speaking time, untethered to moderator prerogatives or candidates’ polling positions. And everyone wanted the candidates to choose the moderators, reducing the role of the Republican National Committee to logistics and ticketing.

Not agreed on by the frontrunners, however, was Lindsay Graham’s idea to randomly draw names for two separate debates.

Yesterday, bucking his rivals, Trump’s campaign announced that he would go it alone and negotiate his terms directly with the network executives about the upcoming debates.

And how did the networks react to this brash move? Not well:

The maneuvering by Trump and the other Republican candidates was met with annoyance by network executives, who said they have little interest in altering a process they believe was settled months ago.

We agreed to this and now you’re saying you’re not agreeing?” said one executive who was granted anonymity in order to speak candidly.

“Do you want Ben Carson deciding who your moderators are? The answer is no,” said another. “Do you want Bobby Jindal’s campaign dictating how the debates will be run when Bobby Jindal may not even be in the race much longer?”

Suggestions have been made to ditch the networks altogether and broadcast future debates over the internet, as well as having conservatives moderators such as Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck involved.

You can read a copy of the new debate demands compiled by GOP attorney Ben Ginsberg after Sunday’s meeting.

However, as shrewdly observed when it came out that the executive in charge of the CNBC debate formerly worked in the Clinton White House for Al Gore and his wife “donated $2,700 to Hillary For America on June 23, just four months before the CNBC debate”:

The Republican campaigns have agreed to cut the Republican National Committee out of the debate process and instead negotiate directly with the networks. Well, fine and dandy. You’re still negotiating with Clinton hacks. I mean, even after this, it’s like I told you after the CNBC debate, all these stories about how embarrassed everybody was and how negative the coverage seemed to be, don’t kid yourself. They look at this as mission accomplished. Because the questions were what were important, the questions were the bullets, the questions were the attacks. The answers were incidental. The questions were designed to explain to the viewers who these Republicans are. The questions were what was used to be destructive.

The icing on the cake was however they were answered, and even now when the Republicans object to it, the Drive-Bys are saying, “The Republicans are whining and they’re childish and they can’t take a little heat and they can’t take a little adversity.” They got exactly what they want, and they’re applauding themselves behind the scenes, wherever they go to congregate, whatever bar, restaurant, locations they visit, I guarantee you they’re all patting each other on the back for what happened at the CNBC debate.

This is about malice and intent, not tough questions.

To put a further point on it, Joe Scarborough was very good yesterday when he slammed the obvious media bias and poor Mark Halperin got caught in the line of fire:

*Note: The Washington Post’s “concern” about this is, well, amusing…

–Dana