BUT IF THE REPUBLICANS WIN, WILL THEY CONTINUE THEIR BOYCOTT ANYWAY?

It looks as if the Republican National Committee boycott of NBC and CNN for 2016 preidential debates has scared off Fox:

The tantalizing spectacle of Fox Television Studios producing a Hillary Clinton miniseries for NBC has been canceled, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

It was reported last week that Fox, also the home of the cable news channel with conservative-leaning programs, might produce the planned four-hour miniseries....

But a source at Fox says the negotiation fell apart....

The report says that the deal fell apart "over deal points more than any potential fallout." Yeah, maybe, maybe not.

Also:

NBC Says Hillary Clinton Miniseries Might Never Go To Production

NBC began to circle the wagons on its Hillary Clinton miniseries this afternoon, hours after the Republican National Committee blocked the network from GOP primary debates, calling the miniseries a Clinton promo. "The Hillary Clinton movie has not been ordered to production, only a script is being written at this time," NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt said this afternoon in a statement. "It is 'in development', the first stage of any television series or movie, many of which never go to production. Speculation, demands, and declarations pertaining to something that isn't created or produced yet seem premature," he added....

We can laugh all we want at the extremism of the GOP in making threats like this, but this one seems to be working. My guess is that NBC will soon announce that the movie has been shelved, and CNN will follow suit sooner or later.

But I wonder if that will be enough to undo this week's RNC vote.

Establishment Republicans want to reduce the number of debates as a way of limiting the opportunity for candidates to say things that alienate general-election swing voters. Hotheads in the party just hate all non-wingnut media outlets. And this boycott seemed like an easy way for the GOP establishment to mollify the zealots, who clearly terrify them.

But the zealots will still hate CNN and NBC if these movies are never made. And the establishment Republicans will still want to limit the number of debates.

So I wonder if they're going to come up with another excuse to keep the debates off CNN and NBC (and ABC and CBS and PBS) -- anger about the choice of debate moderators, perhaps.

We can laugh at the GOP because it's extreme, but we shouldn't forget that the mainstream press is craven. I can easily imagine NBC or CNN or one of the other mainstream outlets agreeing to hand over the moderator's chair to Sean Hannity or Hugh Hewitt or Michelle Malkin. (I say go all the way and pick an all-star panel of Victoria Jackson, Ted Nugent, Charlie Daniels, and Dennis Miller.) Though that still won't achieve the GOP establishment to limit the debating.

Maybe the compromise will be that a mainstream outlet can have a debate, but it will have to be focused on abstruse points in the works of Rand, Hayek, and other right-wing economic deities. That way no one except the wingnuts will watch (the GOP establishment's wish) and the debate will be pure (the zealots' wish). I'm not sure who'd wind up moderating that one -- Amity Shlaes? Glenn Beck? But it might be the best way to satisfy everyone.