Newspaper editorial board meetings have always been a sort of midterm exam for candidates. Shopping for endorsements, it's where they are asked to discuss, in detail, their policy positions and to do so in a setting that isn't conducive to sound bites.

In Iowa last week, Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst announced she wouldn't answer any questions from the Des Moines Register editorial board. After "much negotiating," according to a Register columnist, the Ernst camp pulled the plug on her scheduled Q&A with the daily, and also avoided meeting with a number of other Iowa newspapers.

Ernst wouldn't talk about the economy, healthcare, "personhood," national security, guns and the government, foreign affairs, or impeaching President Obama. Ernst wouldn't talk about anything. This was a classic dodge on Ernst's part; an aggressive stiff-arm to the mainstream press. It was an obvious refusal by a Republican candidate to sit and answer questions from local journalists on the eve of an election.

And so what was the Beltway media's reaction to Ernst's cancellation? Always on the lookout for campaign “gaffes” and relentlessly focused on the “optics” of elections, how did commentators react to Ernst's brazen evasion?

The press response was subdued and not very critical.

That low-key response stood in sharp contrast to the campaign fury that erupted in early October when when Kentucky Democratic senatorial candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes declined to answer whether she had voted for Barack Obama. That question came amidst her hour-long, October 10, interview with the Louisville Journal-Courier's editorial board, during which time the Democrat discussed the environment, gay marriage, campaign finance reform, the government sequester, abortion rights, and coal mining. (Her opponent, Republican Mitch McConnell, refused to be interviewed by the paper's editors.)

Grimes' substantive discussion was virtually ignored by the Beltway press, which turned her clumsy Obama question response into a days-long controversy. For instance, Washington Post blogs have referenced the Grimes story (i.e the "fiasco") more than 25 times; including 11 times in the first four days. (Post columnist Kathleen Parker wrote an entire column about Grimes' non-answer.) By contrast, the same Post blogs have mentioned the Ernst story only five times so far, according to Nexis, with writer Chris Cillizza actually complimenting the Ernst campaign for canceling its Register interview, suggesting the move was a “smart” one politically.

Overall, I found more than two-dozen television discussions or references to the Grimes story during a four-day span, from October 10-13, via Nexis. During a similar four-day span following news of Ernst's snub on October 23, I found no television discussions or references to that story. (Note that not every news program is archived by Nexis.)

So yes, the Democratic candidate who was accused of botching a question during an editorial board interview was pilloried in the press. But the Republican candidate who refused to sit for editorial board meetings was mostly given a pass. (Here's an exception.) Do double standards come any more tightly focused than that?

Naturally the strategic question will be asked, should Democratic candidates also ignore sit-down interview requests in the future? Meaning, if the press penalizes candidates for stumbling over one answer, but doesn't penalize candidates who refuse to answer questions at all, what's the incentive for Democrats to participate and to expose themselves to media ridicule?

Obviously, in terms of transparency and educating voters, it's preferable for all candidates to willingly submit themselves to editorial board grillings. But again, the drastically different way the Beltway press dealt with the Grimes and Ernst stories, and the way Grimes was punished for participating, might lead Democratic candidates to reconsider their options.

And could you blame them?

Just recall how Grimes was mocked. After a Republican opposition group posted the clip of Grimes' answer, the Washington Post immediately linked to it and echoed GOP spin by mocking the candidate's performance as  “painful.” On MSNBC, morning host Joe Scarborough bellowed, “What a rookie mistake!” CNN commentators criticized Grimes for being “too scripted” and “evasive.” NBC's Meet The Press host Chuck Todd also piled on. “Is she ever going to answer a tough question on anything? You want to be a U.S. senator?” he demanded. “I think she disqualified herself. I really do. I think she disqualified herself.”

Todd's “disqualified” quip was quickly picked up and used by the McConnell campaign in a Grimes attack ad, which set the NBC host up for all kinds of criticism. In an interview with Media Matters, Todd explained that becoming part of the campaign had made him “physically ill” and indicated his criticism was sloppy, because designations about a candidate having disqualified themselves should be left to voters, not reporters.
 
Todd's apparent course correction on forcefully denouncing candidate behavior was on display in his comparatively muted response to Ernst snubbing the Register.

She's willing to do seven, eight, nine-minute interviews with members of the media, but they decided they didn't want to sit down for 45 minutes or an hour with the Des Moines Register editorial board. And that's something that -- while newspaper editorial boards maybe in a lot of states don't have the impact they used to, the Des Moines Register is the Des Moines Register. It's still a cut above, has sort of a kind of influence that's different.

Now the Ernst campaign will make the case that hey, they were already quote unquote against us, the editorial board, so they weren't going to win the endorsement. But it is one those sense where you do get some time with her but they decided they didn't want to sit down for 45 minutes or an hour and have those longer lengthier conversations on issues.

His wasn't the only toned-down reaction. At Bloomberg News, political commentators Mark Halperin and John Heilemann  unloaded on Grimes in the wake of her editorial meeting stumble. Halperin complimented her opponent's campaign for hyping the story, while Heilemann said the kerfuffle was “going to be a pretty big deal.” He announced the Democratic candidate looked “like a weasel” for not answering the question. “It's absolutely crazy.”

The duo's reaction to Ernst refusing to sit with the Des Moines Register? Halperin sided in part with Ernst's campaign, which claimed the story wasn't one that voters cared about. Heilemann, while saying Ernst should have done the Register interview,  suggested the controversy actually made Ernst's Democratic challenger, Bruce Braley, look desperate [emphasis]:

The Braley campaign really seized on it, they're saying it's a big deal. And that actually, to me, indicates a certain kind of panic. Because it's not a big enough deal for them to be making this big a deal out of it.

Te recap: Heilemann thought Grimes looked “like a weasel” after the Democrat flubbed an editorial board question. Then he announced Ernst's opponent looked panicked after the Republican refused to sit down for an editorial board interview.

Talk about a can't-lose scenario for Republicans.