Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) blasted the number of GOP presidential debates during an interview Thursday morning, saying the forums had distracted from the necessary grassroots campaigning the eventual Republican nominee will need to complete.
“In all due respect to Fox, enough with debates,” McCain said during an interview on that network. “They have now deteriorated into who is going to make a mistake.”
The 2008 presidential nominee went on to say that the events were too time consuming, and ate into important time needed to connect with voters.
“There is a lot more to campaigning than just debates. You’ve got to do town-hall meetings, you’ve got to be on the ground, you have got to make speeches, you’ve got to do a lot of things,” McCain said on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom.”
“A debate takes three days of a candidate’s time: the day before, the day of and the day after — and in my view, enough debates.”
The GOP debate Thursday night in Iowa will be the last before the state’s first-in-the-nation caucus, but the 18th of the cycle, according to 2012 Election Central. Another 10 debates are tentatively scheduled for 2012.
