‘The View” wants to bring the GOP presidential debates out into the daylight — the daylight hours, at least.
The Barbara Walters-hosted morning show is lobbying Republicans to stage a debate on daytime TV and let the women of the “The View” moderate it, according to reports.
The panel on the show is — with the exception of conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck — notoriously liberal and the candidates would have to agree to what would likely be hostile questioning from Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg.
Still, it is a bold move for the show that has become the main forum for women and politics on TV. No talk show has ever hosted a presidential debate before.
Producers are telling the candidates that it wants to stage a 60-minute debate during the show’s usual 11 a.m. time slot.
So far, the candidates are not responding to the offer — but the campaigns are starting to say they already have a heavy schedule of upcoming prime-time debates.
Next week alone, CBS and CNBC are both staging debates among the seven remaining candidates.
CNN and C-SPAN have debates scheduled for the week after that, and 11 more debates are slated in December and January.