RNC Fires National Review From GOP Debate Sponsorship Over Its Anti-Donald Trump Issue

The Washington Post reports:

The Republican National Committee has ended a debate partnership with National Review after the venerable conservative magazine devoted its new issue to a “symposium” of reasons why voters should reject Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

“We expected this was coming,” the magazine’s publisher Jack Fowler wrote in a blog post late Thursday night, just 90 minutes after the symposium went live. “Small price to pay for speaking the truth about The Donald.”

RNC spokesman Sean Spicer Fowler’s account of events, and added in a comment to Buzzfeed’s Rosie Gray that “a debate moderator can’t have a predisposition.” That leaves CNN, Salem Radio, and Telemundo as the co-sponsors of the planned February 25 forum in Houston.

The idea of bringing conservative media into the debates had actually come from RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, who has repeatedly blamed a loose, easily-exploited approach to the media for a “circus” that hurt eventual 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

National Review is a failing publication that has lost it’s way. It’s circulation is way down w its influence being at an all time low. Sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2016

The late, great, William F. Buckley would be ashamed of what had happened to his prize, the dying National Review! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2016