Posted on 10/29/2015 9:59:40 PM PDT by Vision Thing
The third GOP presidential debate, held Wednesday evening in Colorado, revealed two key truths: The political media has declared war on several Republican candidates, and the candidates have declared war on the political media.
The GOP's gripes against the media are legion. Over the past several election cycles, they have reached a fever pitch, with the presidential debates largely to blame. The problem, from a Republican standpoint, was epitomized by Candy Crowley's intervention on behalf of President Obama during his crucial second debate with Mitt Romney in 2012. Reeling from a limp and lackluster performance the first time around, Obama needed to beat Romney on foreign policy; Crowley upended Romney's plans by jumping into their exchange on the administration's shifting talking points around the Benghazi attack, and essentially siding with Obama.
Long critical of the "lamestream media," as Sarah Palin once called it, conservatives reserve a particular ire for debate moderators, who do, after all, command an outsized ability to influence how presidential candidates perform and are perceived.
So when Ted Cruz crushed the CNBC moderators Wednesday night, the resulting applause -- in the studio and across the conservative internet -- was not particularly surprising. The other candidates all quickly caught on. Chris Christie jumped at the chance to wryly cry rude. Donald Trump hooked his closing argument around the way he muscled the network into improving the debate's format. Even Bush campaign manager Danny Diaz got into the act, railing against a CNBC producer about the distribution of speaking time. (Bush came in last.)
But the debate-bashing crescendo came courtesy of Ben Carson, whose own campaign manager, Barry Bennett, said he detests the traditional format and wants to rally the field to demand an anti-lamestream reboot. "There's not enough time to talk about your plans," Bennett griped. "There's no presentation. It's just a slugfest. All we do is change moderators. And the trendline is horrific. So I think there needs to be wholesale change here."
Those critiques are legit. Whether you're a beltway insider or just a Twitter junkie, you know well that debate season is a time for gallows humor, morbid drinking games, and existential boredom among the political media itself.
Embittered conservatives might say that suggests how endemic the cynicism and hypocrisy of that crowd has become. But from the standpoint of a sympathetic political writer, it's not that simple.
The fact is that quite often, candidates who blow it in a debate have only themselves to blame. In part, that's because the media just likes to reward winners. Whether it's Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, or Mitt Romney in his first showdown with Obama, good performances get good press. In larger part, it's because the media loves to punish losers. Candidates who do okay but turn off the media -- like Trump -- don't pay much of a price in the horserace. Candidates who have a rotten debate night -- like Bush -- do. And when they do, it's almost never because of a Crowley-esque act of butting in. It's because the debate is a crucible, however clumsy, where a candidate's behind-the-scenes struggles are revealed.
Consider Jeb Bush's one big mistake last night, the one that defined the evening, cemented the narrative, and possibly sank his campaign. Looking for an opportunity to deliver a canned attack on Rubio's spotty Senate attendance record -- a talking point his campaign has been stressing in recent days -- Bush let loose: "When you signed up for this, this was a six-year term and you should be showing up to work. I mean literally, the Senate, what is it, a French work week? You get like three days where you have to show up. You can campaign or just resign and let somebody else take the job." With Rubio flush from his own knock on the debate moderators, Bush's dig was both weak and poorly timed -- and it resulted in this killer rejoinder: "I don't remember you ever complaining about John McCain's vote record; the only reason you're doing it now is because we're running for the same position and someone has convinced you that it's going to help you," Rubio said.
Game, set, match. That one exchange led everyone from The Weekly Standard's Jonathan Last to Slate's Jamelle Bouie to pronounce Bush politically dead. A judgment that harsh, across that broad a political spectrum, doesn't indicate a new low for D.C.'s smug and jaded smart set. It doesn't discredit today's (admittedly dumb) debate format. And it doesn't indict the media elite literally running the show. It reveals that Jeb Bush couldn't prevent a horrendously unforced error -- at this stage, proof of far bigger problems than bad timing or flimsy opposition research.
For all their problems, the debates -- and those who run them -- can only do so much damage to Republican candidates onstage. On debate night, the real lamestream doesn't run through the political media, but through campaigns that could use some wholesale change of their own.
Circle the wagons.
If the media is not bias as some journalist like to think. Why is it they we all know who you would vote for? Its not even a 50-50 guess. We know with 100% certainty who you will vote for, so how did we get it right unless you bias was so obvious to all to see.
But keep jeb and john kasich out of the circle. :)
Poulos (who wrote this editorial) seems to be a moderate Republican. He would probably vote for whomever is the GOP nominee. Not sure who he’d vote for during the primaries though, but it certainly won’t be for Jeb, who he has criticized in this piece.
well if Democrat presidential wannabes got asked questions from Limbaugh, Levin and Beck during their primary debates then there wouldn’t be an issue...
My heart leaped at such a thought, but alas, I don’t think hillarhoid’s doctors would approve of such a scenario. She would die from a complicated mix of stage fright and pure venomous rage under those conditions. Yeah, she survived a long day of grilling at the Benghazi hearing, but that would be nothing if we could let Rush, Levin, and Beck unleash holy hell on her.
yeah, those moderators know that we all care about Fantasy Football, it really matters to our every day lives.
And that is what is considered a “presidential debate”.
Cruz is right. He has not been involved in a debate for president yet.
What a carnival or reality side show our leaders have become.
You cannot blame it all on the media either
They need to either suck it up or stop doing debates. They have to look presidential and not sure that is the way to go especially since the media is the one to take the story. I mean everyone on Earth knows that Fox News is as conservative as you are going to get in the media even though we know that it is not particularly as conservative as we like and that wasn’t good enough for the candidates. Maybe stop doing debates and just do the debates in the general with the winner. I wonder if that would make them happy.
Woman at the final 2008 Obama-McCain debate stood to personally profit with a book about the “historic” 2008 Obama campaign slated to come out in January 2009. Wouldn’t have had much audience for it if Obama had lost.
Their bias is legion.
The GOP debates SHOULD be hosted by moderators who view things from a conservative perspective. Candidate Obama rebuffed the notion of a Fox debate in 2008 even those NewsCorp execs endorsed John Kerry in 2004.
One of the earlier debate moderators thought it fair to ask Donald Trump if he’d sign a pledge to support the GOP nominee and not go third party if he didn’t get the nominee.
Bernie Sanders was a third party politician until he ran for the DemocRat nomination. Why hasn’t he been asked the same thing?
Why haven’t the debate moderators of the GOP primaries been asked if they will sign a pledge to support the GOP nominee in the general election?
Why should all of the debate questions in the general election debates come from the liberal perspective (THEIR top issues?).
Bizarre comment from Jeb who wants all Mexicans here and his midget Mexican wife. Sounded like a Mexican insult bet he got beat at home.
How about the moderator Stephanopoulos in the debate with Romney started the war on Women crap by pulling a question out of the blue about condems or birth control?
Like a kid with chocolate all over his face swearing he didn’t eat the candy.
Debates are the problem. They are designed to bring out differences.
What’s not addressed here is the 100% bias in ALL reporting and that the debate charade — where dems get fawning questions and repubs get gotchas — is only the tip of the iceberg.
Let the dems have their moderators and let us have ours— Rush, Levin, etc.
And put the debates on the internet, with no commercials and no media schmucks.
When 95% of his fellow Leftist “Journalists” say the exact opposite this puts him firmly in the LOSER column
I don’t like the debate format at all.
First, why have ‘news’ heads be the moderators? What’s with that. Newspapers and newsies have been siding with political parties far longer than this nation. Why bring obviously — and historically — biased people into the mix?
The question is: “Who isn’t biased toward the other party or toward another candidate?”
Answer: the CANDIDATES themselves.
The debate should have a timekeeper. Each candidate should get to pose a question. The others should have to respond. The questioner should then have to sum up at the end.
They then go down the line, until all have spoken. Each round has a time limit.
I guarantee that the questions will be important, because each inquiry comes from someone with an absolutely clear self-interest. I doubt it will be “Governor Huckabee, which of the two candidates would you most like to kick in their manhood and why?” That’s the level of garbage we get from the media.
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