Grover Norquist<\/a>, president of Americans for Tax Reform, friend of Jack Abramoff, and erstwhile companion of Republican politicos everywhere. Secondly, CNN awarded another of the limited questions to General Keith Kerr, a current member of Hillary Clinton’s LGBT Americans For Hillary Steering Committee. Debate moderator Anderson Cooper had to issue a post-debate disclaimer after being advised of the connection.<\/p>\nThis is what happens when the media elites act as gatekeepers. Thousands of potential questions and CNN hands off two of the 34 selected to a well-connected lobbyist and a campaign operative. Then they fill some of the other slots with inanities like why Giuliani supported the Red Sox. And they try to pretend this circus represents the voice of the people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After initially declining to participate in a proposed CNN\/YouTube debate, the Republican candidates have finally weathered the ordeal that had so frightened them at first. I could care less about the actual substance of the debate because it was so predictably a contest to see who could be more opposed to immigrants, gays, taxes, getting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,50],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-grover-norquist","tag-youtube"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-aZ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":535,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=535","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":0},"title":"Republicans Are Afraid Of YouTube","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/27\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"News Corpse readers are aware that I was not impressed with the Democratic debate co-sponsored by CNN and YouTube (see The Two Hour YouTube Commercial On CNN and We Report. CNN\/YouTube Decides). But my objections were based on execution, not on YouTube or the introduction of citizen participation in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":531,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=531","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":1},"title":"The Two Hour YouTube Commercial On CNN","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/23\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Now that the first ever YouTube debate is completed, can we please promise not to have any more? If you separate out the candidate's answers and overlay the questions in text, the debate was no better or worse than any other debate. The participation of YouTube added nothing positive to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Media"","block_context":{"text":"Big Media","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=12"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":532,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=532","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":2},"title":"We Report. CNN\/YouTube Decides","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/25\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The one clearly positive aspect of this \"ground-breaking\" experiment in television journalism, is that watching cutesy citizens asking evasive candidates questions that hunky moderators won't follow-up on, is still better than watching washed-up reporters asking the same questions even more boringly. Many in the media have declared the experiment a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5386,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=5386","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":3},"title":"Remember This While Watching The CNN\/Tea Party GOP Debate","author":"Mark NC","date":"9\/12\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"When the Republican debate tonight airs it is important to put into context the venue in which the candidates will appear. This debate is being broadcast on CNN along with their co-hosts, the Tea Party Express (TPE). From the start, the notion of elevating any Tea Party group to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3433,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=3433","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":4},"title":"WTF? CNN And Tea Party Express Partner For GOP Debate [Updated]","author":"Mark NC","date":"12\/19\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Dec 17,2010 - CNN, the once dominant and comparatively respectable cable news network, seems determined to destroy whatever shreds are left of its credibility. They announced this morning that they will be partnering with the Tea Party Express for a Republican primary debate in September of 2011. Generally when a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5361,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=5361","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":5},"title":"Equal Time For The American Dream","author":"Mark NC","date":"9\/6\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Last December CNN announced that they would be co-hosting a Republican debate with the Tea Party Express. That ridiculous idea was something put together under the new leadership of Ken Jautz who was promoted to head CNN after distinguishing himself at sister station Headline News. At HLN Jautz was responsible\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}