Posted on 10/05/2016 3:08:34 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
If you missed last night’s debate, the RNC has a 271-second distillation of it. For most viewers, the biggest impression of the event came from Tim Kaine’s constant interruptions and interjections. The RNC counted 72 of them, but it felt like a lot more when watching the debate live.
Is this the fault of the moderator, CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano? Perhaps not, but that doesn’t mean she’s off the hook either. Let me put it this
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
… oh, sorry, the video interrupted me. At any rate, short of being able to yank Kaine’s microphone off his lapel, she had few options to stop Kaine from running his mouth the entire debate. That’s the fault of Kaine, not Quijano.
However, her moderation left plenty to be desired in other ways. Quijano moved through topics with no coherent or discernible pattern. She went from presidential leadership to economic plans, then to Social Security, law enforcement and race relations, then immigration, terrorism, Syria, Syria again, Russia, North Korea, and then back to “social issues.” What was law enforcement and race relations? Quijano asked repeated questions about Trump’s taxes, but when the subject of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail came up after Kaine brought up cybersecurity in connection to terrorism, this was what happened:
QUIJANO: All right. I’d like to turn now to the tragedy in Syria. Two hundred fifty thousand…
PENCE: Can I speak about the cybersecurity surge at all?
QUIJANO: You can — you can have 30 seconds, Governor, quickly, please.
PENCE: First, Donald Trump just spoke about this issue this week. We have got to bring together the best resources of this country to understand that cyber warfare is the new warfare of the asymmetrical enemies that we face in this country. And I look forward if I’m privileged to be in this role of working with you in the Senate to make sure that we resource that effort.
KAINE: We will work together in whatever roles we inhabit.
PENCE: We have an intelligence, sir (ph). But I will also tell you that it’s important in this moment to remember that Hillary Clinton had a private server in her home that had classified information on it…
QUIJANO: And I don’t — 30 seconds is on up.
PENCE: … about drone strikes, e-mails from the president of the United States of America were on there.
QUIJANO: Right.
PENCE: Her private server was subject to being hacked by foreign…
(CROSSTALK)
QUIJANO: I’d like to ask you about Syria, Governor.
PENCE: We could put cybersecurity first if we just make sure the next secretary of state doesn’t have a private server.
(CROSSTALK)
KAINE: And all investigation concluded that not one reasonable prosecutor would take any additional step. You don’t get to decide the rights and wrongs of this. We have a justice system that does that. And a Republican FBI director did an investigation and concluded that…
(CROSSTALK) QUIJANO: All right, we are moving on now.
Quijano encouraged a fairly lengthy discussion of Trump’s taxes — not just opening the topic herself, but then challenging Pence with a follow-up. Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server directly relates to her record in office as Secretary of State and to the cybersecurity question, unlike the issue of Trump’s tax returns as a private citizen, and yet Quijano couldn’t change the subject fast enough once it came up — and never bothered to ask about it in the first place. Why?
Then there was the question of Quijano’s follow-up challenges. By my count, Quijano asked Kaine four follow-ups that probed his previous answer, while she challenged Pence eight times. Three of those came on a question about Senator Tim Scott on race relations. That topic required three follow-ups, but Quijano could barely give Pence 30 seconds to talk about Hillary’s track record on cybersecurity and the handling of classified information while serving as Secretary of State.
Chris Cillizza, who normally spends his time defending moderators, couldn’t bring himself to come to Quijano’s defense last night:
I root for the moderators in these debates because they have a next-to-impossible job. But Quijano lost control of the debate within minutes of it starting and never really got it back. She seemed to dole out 20 seconds here and 30 seconds there for Pence or Kaine or both to respond to each other with no rhyme or reason. She never was able to get Kaine or Pence to, well, stop talking. Then there was the fact that she didn’t seem to follow the flow of the debate; Kaine and Pence would be feuding about, say, tax returns, and Quijano, after getting the two men to stop talking, would say something like, “Let’s talk about North Korea.”
Quijano had a bad night, but it’s not because Kaine walked all over her. It’s because for the second straight debate, the Republican got a lot more critical scrutiny than did the Democrat, plus the moderator didn’t have any sense of coherent topic organization — and didn’t keep up with the conversation.
Final thought: Kaine pretty much blew this attack line by stepping all over Quijano, right? Or is this something the media will revive regardless of the hypocrisy? If you’re putting money down on this, bet on the media hypocrisy.
(TWEET-AT-LINK)
Quijano is a whore who did exactly what her owners wanted to do - pretend to be a debate moderator while attacking Pence and helping Kaine. As long as her check doesn’t bounce, she gives not a damn about anything else. Whores gonna whore - that’s what they do.
Elaine Quijano is hot...
one thing also that struck me was Kaine asking if this was an ‘open discussion’ to which the Mod applied affirmatively and let him go on talking. But then held Pence to ‘it’s Kaine’s two minutes’, preventing an ‘open discussion’ on other topics.
As are many other Filipinas.
I think that all these debates are useless for the very reason that Kaine demonstrated.... if you know you can’t win, you can just interrupt to the point that the other person is stymied and then you claim it’s a draw. Well, Pence did very well but what I laid out seems to have been part of the Kaine strategy.
I’m going to design a new debate method that basically is going to work like this:
1. First the debate moderator lays out the rules for the two debaters.
2. The questions will be devised by citizens and submitted to a debate commission that is made up of both campaigns plus an agreeable third party who monitors the whole thing. Representatives from both parties review the questions under the eye of third third party who makes sure that everything is done above board. The nonsense and undecipherable questions will be discarded and the rest of the questions will be separated and put into the three drums.... the questions that are specific to Kaine will go into one drum, the ones specific to Pence would go into another and the ones that are applicable to both will go into a third drum. The drums are then turned so that they are well mixed. All this is done just before the debate starts and steps are taken to ensure that neither campaign has access to the questions.
3. A coins is flipped to see who goes first, second and then both get to answer the questions applicable to both.
4. The key to no interruptions is to make it physically impossible to interrupt. The microphones will simply be cut out when it is the other person’s turn.
5. First question is asked and the first person up has 2 minutes to answer the question. During this time the other person’s mic is cut. After the two minutes, the second person has one minute to refute or do whatever he wants with the time.... and during this time, the mic is cut for the other party. Then the roles are reversed. I suggest that a physical barrier also be put between the two candidates so that the person speaking doesn’t even see the facial expressions going on by the other person. A speaker will be warned electronically 10 seconds before his/her time is up and then the mic is cut. A slight variation of this is needed to answer the questions that are applicable to both candidates.
The moderator basically has nothing to do... in fact, a moderator isn’t needed.
It’s unfortunate that such a method as this is needed but this is what happens when the assumption is made that both of the parties on the stage are adults.
20 minutes is all I could stand.
Pence was ambushed. The moderator, (who is she?) had no control of Kaine.
Kaine reminds me of the limp wrist trying to prove he is masculine.
And yes, he sets off my gaydar.
She was the diverse moderator du jour.
Why does the GOPe allow only libs to moderate the debates?
Because they’re liberal too?
Howzabout Pat Buchanan and Bill Whittle?
She could've turned off his microphone and certainly would have if the situation was reversed.
LOL about Kaine. Recently he said something about how he wanted to smash Donald Trump in the face. Its hard to imagine Kaine getting that angry and physical.
Real debate:
Ask the same policy question of each candidate, and allow each one a timed response: no special questions that apply to only one of the two.
The moderator would only read the question and run the timer, and never be allowed to interrupt.
Anything else is made for bias and propaganda.
Kaine couldn't defend Hillary. Pence defend Trump...no contest...
This is precisely what we need and - as Rush pointed out today - that is precisely why journalism will never give it to us. Never.The RNC blundered by not instituting a moderatorless debate forum for the runup to the primaries instead of a “debate” which turned into a Trump news conference. The RNC didn’t want Trump, but the combination of Kelly and Trump was a reality show - and Trump is a reality TV star. Thus, he came out on top.
My own preference for a debate without moderator is to have a chess timer control the microphones, thereby equalizing the time. And as to the questions? What questions? The participants in the debate should determine that on the fly.
I also suggest that there be no rules against having a laptop loaded with Power Point slides which the user could put up on the TV screen. Tho I would think that what is on them should be mutually agreed to, no gotchas.
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