The popular belief today is that the GOP has tried every means of voter suppression and disenfranchisement possible. They have gerrymandered, attempted to bring back Jim Crow style laws and even put out false ads and robo-calls in order to dissuade the “others” from voting.

But now, The Republicans through their National Committee (The RNC) are trying a new tact, Extortion.

CBS News reports that the RNC has threatened both networks with a blackout of GOP Presidential Primary Debates in 2016 if they did not each agree to not run scheduled programs about Former Secretary of State, Senator and 1st Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

NBC had announced it plans to air a 4 hour mini-series based on Hillary, and subsequently CNN announced plans to do a documentary on her. RNC chairman Reince Priebus, in a fit of crocodile tears, complained that the airings would “put a thumb on the 2016 election scale.” He went on to show his utter disingenuousness by suggesting this would hurt the democratic field as others might be dissuaded to run against her on the democratic party side.

So naturally, the punishment would be banishment from GOP debates, right?

Well that is exactly what Reince Priebus and the RNC are demanding in a statement. Once again, instead of trying to actually be right on the issues with the voters, especially voters who aren’t older, whiter and male, The GOP forces are simply trying to intimidate and extort.

One might suggest that both CNN and NBC call the RNC’s bluff. After all, if no GOP debates are on CNN or NBC (or cable news affiliate MSNBC), that will mean more debates on Fox, where they will surely continue their downward spiral into irrelevancy. Their other options will be PBS, which conservatives fear and have attempted to defund in the past. CBS, ran by Jane Fonda’s husband. And ABC, who’s top Sunday News anchor is former Clinton staffer George Stephanopoulos. Of course, they could always go to Mike “ban large sodas” Bloomberg’s obscure network named after and owned by the independent New York mayor.

Hopefully Priebus and the RNC will smarten up in time and realize they need to reach out to survive, not attempt to shut down network and cable news programming that they fear.