The candidates complain, among other things, that the rules of the debates are unfair and that they’re being picked on by the liberal media. Some of you will be old enough to remember when the RNC was taking command of the debates to save the party and its candidates from, well, exactly these complaints. “Our debates will be good for our candidates and for voters—not a field day for the media,” RNC Chair Reince Priebus said in August 2014. He told The Washington Post that the 2012 primary debates were “a dog-and-pony show” and “an embarrassment and ridiculous.”

Among the changes Priebus oversaw ahead of this campaign: The RNC would limit the number of debates to six, rather than the 20 of the previous cycle, and it would demand control over who the moderators were. The RNC approved the new plan by a wide margin. At the time, the RNC said that prospective candidates had reacted generally positively, though few opted to say anything publicly.

Clearly the plan hasn’t worked as intended. In addition to the candidates’ gripes, which have been growing with each debate, the party’s last two nominees have spoken out against the system. Priebus, for his part, placed blame for Wednesday night’s issues on CNBC. (Democrats have had their own acrimonious battles over the debates this cycle, but they’ve been much less consequential—largely because there’s a smaller field and two obviously dominant candidates.)

But can the candidates really do better, or will it just be the inmates running the asylum? There’s precedent for candidates organizing debates; the earliest primary debates in the modern era, between Republicans Harold Stassen and Thomas Dewey in 1948 and between Democrats Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver in 1956, were brokered by the candidates.

One reason it might not work so well this year is that while all the candidates seem to agree that the moderators are one problem, their diagnoses sharply diverge from there. Trump wants to limit every debate to two hours. Some of his rivals really want there to be opening and closing statements. The candidates who have struggled to get speaking time at the main debate—Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, in particular—want equal exposure. The candidates who have been banished to the undercard debate want to be allowed into the main event—but of course adding more lecterns would be at odds with Bush’s desire for more time to talk.

Oh, and about those moderators they hate so much? Even if the candidates can agree amongst themselves, they would have to get the media outlets to agree to the changes. The Trump-and-Carson led charge forced CNBC’s hand, but they had some leverage because the front-runners demanded the changes so close to the event that CNBC largely had to give in. But the networks naturally want to maintain as much control as they can over the debates, and they have qualms about ceding editorial control to the campaigns. It’s not hard to imagine them balking at demands to change debates for which they’ve already agreed to terms with the RNC.