{"id":30009,"date":"2015-10-29T16:24:50","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T23:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=30009"},"modified":"2015-11-03T13:03:45","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T21:03:45","slug":"what-we-learned-from-the-gops-trainwreck-debate-on-cnbc-republicans-hate-the-liberal-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=30009","title":{"rendered":"What We Learned From The GOP’s Trainwreck Debate On CNBC: Republicans Hate The ‘Liberal’ Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the best of circumstances, a political debate should be illuminating in a manner that allows voters to assess the fitness of candidates for public office. However, the best that can be said about the Republican primary debate on CNBC (transcript<\/a>) is that it illuminated the rabid opportunism of the candidates and the penchant for provocation on the part of the moderators.<\/p>\n

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See the update to this article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

While there was an attempt by the moderators to inject some substance into their questions, they inexplicably capped their queries with an inappropriate zinger that only left them wide open for criticism. For example, John Harwood constructed a perfectly legitimate question for Donald Trump that called on him to explain how his wall building, tax slashing, immigrant deporting policies could be achieved without wreaking havoc on the economy. But then Harwood finished off with “Is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign?”<\/em> Regardless of the aptness of the imagery, the only conceivable purpose for that framing would be to give Trump something to complain about. This pretentious strategy was repeated throughout the debate.<\/p>\n

And the complaints veritably gushed from debaters who were eager to hear some reasonable questions and avoid answering them (which they did all night). The backlash directed at the media and the moderators easily became the dominant feature of the debate, and it was almost the only thing that was discussed in the post-debate analyses. The most replayed moments included Marco Rubio tagging the mainstream media as a SuperPAC for the Democrats, and Ted Cruz lamenting that “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media.”<\/em> Consequently, the only takeaway from this debate was that Republicans hate the media, something everybody already knows.<\/p>\n

Cruz went on to argue that the media treated Democrats differently, “fawning”<\/em> over “Which of you is more handsome and wise?”<\/em> That characterization of the Democratic debate is wholly inconsistent with reality. From the transcript<\/a> of their CNN outing, moderator Anderson Cooper asked Democrats the following questions:<\/p>\n