Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus was between a rock and a hard place with following the CNBC debate debacle and had to make a definitive move to placate furious party members, leading pollster Matt Towery tells
Newsmax TV.
"He was under such pressure. There was a huge debate within the RNC earlier this year and a large faction wanted to cut organizations like CNBC and NBC out to begin with," Towery said Friday on "Newsmax Prime" with J.D. Hayworth.
"He's had to do this so that's where we are. It means the Republicans will have a format that might be a bit more friendly to them as we go into these critical months of January, February and March."
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On Friday, the RNC announced
it would suspend its partnership with NBC News and its properties and won't allow the network to co-host a presidential primary debate scheduled for February.
In a letter to NBC News chief Andrew Lack, Priebus said: "The RNC’s sole role in the primary debate process is to ensure that our candidates are given a full and fair opportunity to lay out their vision for America’s future. We simply cannot continue with NBC without full consultation with our campaigns."
Wednesday's CNBC debate, he added, "was conducted in bad faith. We understand that NBC does not exercise full editorial control over CNBC’s journalistic approach. However, the network is an arm of your organization, and we need to ensure there is not a repeat performance."
He said debate topics were to include such issues as "job growth, taxes, technology, retirement and the health of our national economy…. That was not the case. Questions were inaccurate or downright offensive."
Towery said that despite the debate problems, Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and billionaire developer Donald Trump all did well.
"We had three winners basically — Rubio and Cruz who emerged from a group that were considered second tier who are now at the top, at least in terms of the debate results," he said.
"Then you have Trump who was able to make his way through it being more friendly and a little more laid back … He did well in the debate as well but clearly the two emerging people candidates in this case are Cruz and Rubio."
An exclusive Opinion Savvy/Newsmax Poll released Friday revealed Rubio of Florida was the winner, with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas a whisker behind but in a statistical tie and billionaire businessman Donald Trump in third place.
The telephone poll of 979 likely 2016 Republican primary voters showed:
- Marco Rubio - 28.1 percent
- Ted Cruz - 27 percent
- Donald Trump - 19.4 percent
- Dr. Ben Carson - 9.4 percent
- Chris Christie - 5.3 percent
- Jeb Bush - 3.5 percent
- Carly Fiorina - 3.1 percent
- John Kasich - 2 percent
- Sen. Rand Paul - .7 percent
- Mike Huckabee - .3 percent
A small percentage of voters — 1.2 percent — said they were undecided following the two-hour debate.