ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp on CNN: 11/3/2015

with you and that person being Donald Trump. Here's what he said about Jeb Bush in reference to his big night ahead on Saturday Night Live. Here you go. This evening I'm meeting with Lorne Michaels and the whole staff and we'll start the preparation. We'll pick our skits. Am I nervous? Not too nervous. Not too nervous. But we're gonna we'll do a good job and we're gonna have a fantastic show. We're gonna all have a lot of fun. My Jeb impression? No I don't want to do that. I don't like showing a person sleeping at a podium. Ouch! Al's not laughing. Matt, does he have a smidge of a point there? Look I think what's happened to Jeb Bush in the last several days is he's unshackled himself and he has you know a new plan, a new strategy for his campaign. I've seen Jeb Bush campaign in Florida. This is a person with big intellect and big ideas and for whatever reason it's not translating. If you look at these polls, Brooke, if you look at people's first and second choices, the candidates who are the strongest when you look at that, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio. So Jeb's not just failing on the first ballot, he's failing on the second ballot. But I feel like he's gonna get his energy back and he's gonna have a chance here and we're gonna see the type of Jeb Bush that's been successful in Florida. We're gonna see if it works. All right we shall see. Let's, Al, let me talk about these debates with you. We mentioned it with Dan Abash, this sort of revolt, the revolt with these candidates. You used to chair, you know, RNC there in Florida or the Republican Party in Florida, I should say. You know, nationally speaking, how does the RNC, how does Reince Priebus, you know, regain control and organize all these different candidates and the splintering with regard to these debate demands? Look, it's not easy. I was on Reince's committee in 2012 to try to bring some reason of these debates and we ended up with too many. It hurt our chances against the incumbent Democrat and so he wanted to make it better this time. To a large degree he succeeded but the key here is these moderators. I don't care as much about your philosophy of your moderator as I care about the fact that the only people who should be heard on that podium are the contestants, not the moderator. And the best moderator is the one that at the end of a program people look at each other and say, hey, who moderated that? That's right, Al. You know, the moderators spoke more than any other candidate in the most recent debate and if you look at the number of moderators, we don't have a problem with too many candidates. We actually do have a problem in some of these debates with way too many moderators. It's like watching players being subbed into a basketball game. We can't throw the moderators, gentlemen, totally under the bus here. I mean, these candidates, they're creative and they know how to pivot and, you know, answer whatever they really want ultimately and they throw each other under the bus on the campaign trail and here they are blaming the moderators. But while I have you, just quickly, I want to ask you about this because I read this fascinating column in the Wall Street Journal. Matt, I want to end with you. This is a quote from Democratic pollster Peter Hardy. He wrote this, so many are waiting for something to happen but maybe that something has already happened and we have been too immersed in conventional wisdom to see it. For now, we know the angry voters are milling around like a herd of cattle. The question is, is a stampede about to occur? You know, conventional wisdom. Everyone thought, no way would a Donald Trump or a Ben Carson make it. Could they possibly be president? Is it possible conventional wisdom is wrong, Matt? Sure, sure, and there's no question that the party changes each election. If you look at these polls, what base Republican voters are looking for is strong characteristics, somebody with the type of strength to come to Washington and really take on these entrenched interests. So they're looking for characteristics and I think that is a brand new dynamic in this particular nominating contest. Yeah, look, yeah, this is not an evolution like Ronald Reagan. This is a reaction to what we thought is a president that's abused his powers and created a gridlock and so people are angry and they're looking for a candidate who'll stand up to that but at the end of the day, they're gonna look for a problem solver and a visionary and that's that's what we hope Jeb Bush is all about.