In their inability to accept the reality of the 2012 elections, the Republican Party has already come out in favor of not holding debates on news networks. Now, the news is circulating that the RNC has come out in favor of letting right-wing radio hosts moderate the 2016 GOP debates.

Of course, last week Rush Limbaugh argued that the Republican party should only debate in front of a controlled audience, namely Fox News, calling any actual news agency biased. Here’s the video:

Except, once his idea was accepted by the RNC leadership, Rush ran away from it, claiming that he would overshadow the candidates. Here’s that video:

Without journalists to moderate, one can only imagine what will happen at the debates. They will become part of the right-wing echo chamber. With a neo-conservative moderator (Limbaugh, Hannity or Levin) focusing on himself rather than the debate, it will surely turn off mainstream voters. After all, it was not the right-wing darlings who won the primaries, but moderate Mitt Romney, who had to fight extreme right-wing pressure to maintain the few moderate credentials he had left after the debates.

But, with “all neo-con all the time,” the 2016 debates would become a race to the bottom rather than an opportunity for viewers to “meet” the candidates. Sure, by controlling the moderators the GOP can control the message, but those moderators would likely give pre-approved softball questions, leaving the voters none the wiser about the candidates they might vote for.

And that is precisely what the Republican Party wants. They don’t want the voters to know the candidates. They want to pick the candidates, decide how they will be presented in the media. The party bosses do not want to risk the unpredictability of real debates, fearing a serious challenge to their establishment. Instead, they will be dog and pony shows, illusions, a series of farces rolled out before cameras to show off to the base.

The problem is, this will result in rolling out candidates who are not functional in the real election. They will not be prepared for real moderators, real questions. This reminds us how out of touch the Republican leadership is. They refuse to accept that their base is rapidly vanishing and the party itself is in a death spiral, diminishing in national influence. While they do hold a state majority, in terms of people represented, they are lagging far behind the Democrats. And even self-proclaimed conservatives are turning out to be more liberal than their predecessors. The situation as it exists will not sustain the Republican Party in its current state.

How many more elections do they have to lose before they recognize that they must liberalize or die?