Posted on 01/11/2012 4:10:20 AM PST by tobyhill
Sitting through the Republican debate on Saturday night with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos was just painful, from beginning to end. Some of it was just political Ambien. But when it was finally over, there was just one question. Who in the GOP in his/her right mind invites a historically shameless Democratic spin controller like Stephanopoulos to “moderate” a primary debate like this – ever?
The only thing that can be said in defense of that horrible decision was turning to NBC the next morning and seeing “moderator” David Gregory be even more slanted in his questioning. ABC slanted the ideological questions in their debate by a ratio of six questions from the left to each one from the right. The NBC ratio was eight to one.
Why must the Republicans keep handing over their debate stage in the primary season to the people who desperately want them all to bumble, stumble, and fall on their face on national TV?
In the ABC debate – an event held for Republican voters presumably to decide who is reliably conservative enough to win the nomination – ABC asked three questions from the conservative perspective, and twenty from the left (25 were ideologically neutral). Twelve of the 48 questions, or 25 percent of the night’s total, were devoted to promoting contraception and gay marriage, so trite and repetitive that finally the audience booed them down.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
BTW, the Romney lovefest on this morning’s Fox and Friends is over the top—all Romney, all the time.
It is sickening.
I still want a real debate, moderated by Rush Limbaugh and panel participants like Mark Steyn, Mark Levin, Victor Davis Hanson, James Pethokoukis, etc.
WHY NOT? Why not just ONCE, let real questions get asked of the candidates? JUST ONCE!!
Good point. Or Club for Growth?
On the other hand, There will be 2 POTUS debates against obama and one VP debate and some of these liberal moderators will be asking the questions so these candidates might as well show they are ready for them now. It sometimes shows that some candidates that we like are not good at defending their positions that we like in front of a general audience. You can tell that when the questions cause pain on their faces and they delay answering. They need to get ready to.
Well, what choice do they have?
If they want the "debates" to be broadcast, they have to air on the networks.
The networks decide who will be the moderators.
Fox is only marginally better than ABCNBCCBSMSNBCNPR.
“Why didn’t Brent Bozell invite the candidates to a debate? Why didn’t Rush? Why didn’t Mark Levin, or Sean Hannity, or Hugh Hewitt or Dennis Prager, or Glenn Reynolds? Or even Michael Medved?
The candidates had no choice because our side never stepped up.”
Excellent point!
.Poor Stephy was looking like a moron after pushing his dumb questions.
That sounds good until you realize Romney is probably closer philosophically to Stephy than he is to Reagan.
I remember a tough talking McCain,too. You know Mr Amnesty.
Indeed. Someone should have. Or rubbed Stephanapolous' nose it in... hard.
I’ve been a Republican my whole adult life and have come to realize that they are the same as the Democrat Party. Logical thinking tells me that the leaders of the GOP allow all this ridiculous stuff to happen. The open primaries in the oddball states, the debate hosts, the media bias-—all condoned by the leadership.
They are all seeking the power, money, position, etc, that Washington provides and will go along to get along. The people have no say in things. Those elected don’t represent us! They represent the Party! They do as they are told.
Look at Speaker Boenher or even one as conservative as Sen. DeMint. I’ve seen nothing from him regarding the GOP presidential race. Is he standing back and allowing Romney to be the nominee? And Boenher has been quiet about the recess appointments that are blatantly un-Constitutional.
I am at the point of giving up. All the TEA Party efforts, all personal efforts, calls, letters, emails, town hall meetings, and nothing changes!!!
Nothing can change, I would imagine, because the people are too uninformed.
Many of the people who run things in the GOP have a “kick-me” sign taped to their posteriors.
I like your idea of non-media moderators.
The one advantage of having the alphabet moderators is that it prepares our candidates for the general election. At least they know what idiocy will be thrown at them.
One problem with having a debate moderated by the likes of Hewitt, Rush, Stossel, etc. is that we would eat each other up alive. Look how Rush is getting onto Newt for his ‘anti-capitalism.’ It isn’t like all conservative orthodoxy is hunky-dory. We have schisms too, and they would really be exposed with conservative moderators.
Rush always tells his listeners that in war you take no prisoners. Seems like Rush is telling Newt it’s ok to attack the castle; you just can’t use the long bow.
It is sickening. And it continues on the Romney network. I just watched Brit Hume crying about Newt picking on Romney with the vulture capitalism charge.
Romney the Raider bought companies, over-borrowed them, siphoned off huge fees from the borrowed money, and then allowed them to go bankrupt sticking creditors/contractors/investors with pennies on the dollar.
That is a distortion and a manipulation of the free market; it is not free market capitalism.
It is nothing more than powerful interests DISRUPTING a free market. It is the same thing that a monopoly or cartel does....muscle free market capitalism to the side.
Every time, the same thing happens in the general election—most of the “moderators” are leftists.
Actually, the Tea Party (or Tea Party Express) co-sponsored and organized one of the first debates, last summer. People complained then, too, because the Tea Party people went to MSM to get a moderator, and they sent us a libtard polemical dork.
More press bias here -- ABC News and Charlie Rose/PBS (linking one of my own posts from earlier today):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2829090/posts?page=760#760
Ditto Rush and Hannity today.
There is a big difference between "turnaround" capitalism, which is a variety of venture capitalism (think Gerry Tsai turning the old American Can into Primerica) and vulture capitalism, which strips assets with fees and self-dealing, to the disadvantage of the original shareholders.
Vulture capitalism or turnaround capitalism?
That needs to be clarified, and then somebody needs to climb down. I suspect that it's Romney's side which needs to go on the defensive. They will have to defend this against the MSMrat Lie Machine -- and the Lie Machine won't give them a chance or a fair trial, ever.
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