“Why, oh why, do Republicans allow these liberal moderators?”
Quite simply while the mainstream press is clearly a left wing propaganda organ, Democrats and the press continue to insist to the public the journalism profession is unbiased and objective. The conclusion they draw is to have an unbiased debate you must use unbiased news anchors such as Lester Hold, not biased commentators such as Sean Hannity who have a specific point of view.
The choice is simply biased debates or no debates. There is no way the Democrats will agree to debates with a balanced moderator (Judge Napolitano, or Greta Van Sesteren for example) or conservative moderator (Hannity, O’Reilly). Democrats, who refuse to publicly acknowledge the mainstream press is biased, will be happy to accuse the Republicans of trying to rig the debate by forcing them to use “biased” moderators. Democrats will refuse to attend a biased debate. Republicans obviously feel it isn’t worth the fight and that leftwing biased debates are preferable to no debates at all.
Beginning with Candy Crowly in 2012, we are moving from an era where the debate moderators have a personal bias which subtly influence the questions and tone of the debate to an era where moderators actively intervene on behalf of the leftist candidate. The fiction of impartiality is gone. Kaine and Hillary have taken it to another level with the scripted debate, no doubt in collusion with the moderator. The Democrats seem to have the questions in advance and prepare focus group tested scripted soundbite responses. Neither the Democrats or the moderators make any attempt to have a real discussion of issues. Instead the moderator’s role becomes running the script, allowing the Democrat to make statements while shutting the Republican down and overtly disagreeing with the Republican.
The good news is many educated and informed voters can see through the theatrics. It doesn’t matter for the majority of voters since low information voters don’t spend time watching debates, they wait to be told what to think and do.
The construct of the debates and the bias of the moderators have ruined their value. They need to either be revamped, or discontinued.
I vote for discontinued.