Reince Priebus .V CNN and NBC

As Hillary Clinton mulls over the prospect of running for president in 2016, a couple of television networks have apparently decided that there's ratings gold in the former First Lady/Senator/Secretary of State. So, NBC is planning a miniseries on Clinton's life, and CNN is going to produce a documentary about her. One way to interpret their decisions is that Clinton is one of the key political figures of our time and a subject of enormous and ongoing fascination. Particularly if she does run, the networks will garner attention for almost any Clinton-related project. Another way to interpret it is that the liberal media is engaged in a conspiracy to get Clinton elected to the White House.  

You can guess which one the Republican National Committee favors, and they aren't going to take it lying down. Party chair Reince Priebus has written a sternly worded letter to each network, saying, "many are astounded at your actions, which appear to be a major network's thinly-veiled attempt at putting a thumb on the scales of the 2016 presidential election." Since neither program has actually been written or produced yet, for all Priebus knows, both will be vicious takedowns of Clinton. But he's not kidding around: in his letter, Priebus warns that unless the programs are cancelled, the party will refuse to let the network participate in any 2016 Republican primary debates.

Horrors! Yet this could be just a handy excuse for the chairman to justify cutting the number of presidential debates in 2016. Heaven knows his party wasn't well served by the more than two dozen they held during the 2012 primaries; they were such a ridiculous clown show that they did untold harm to the party's image. Of course, that was less because of the inherent trivializing nature of televised primary debates than because the GOP candidates were, in fact, a bunch of clowns. If your candidate pool is dominated by the likes of Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich, then there's almost no way to keep the party from looking foolish.

Perhaps next time around, the charismatic and well-qualified Republican candidates will thrill the public with their inspiring message and thoughtful policy proposals, and voters will rise up to demand more and more debates, leading to a white-knuckle showdown between the RNC and the networks. Or maybe it's all just bluster. We do know that Rick Santorum is considering another run, and Rick Perry may be doing the same. No word yet from Herman Cain, but we can hope.