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CNBC moderators lost the debate

CNBC moderators lost the debate

Last updated on: October 30, 2015 at 5:30 am by Gene Veith

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CNBC moderators lost the debate 2015-10-29T21:35:02-04:00 Gene Veith

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Pretty much everybody agrees with the conclusions on our liveblog that the CNBC moderators of the Republican debate did an embarrassingly horrible job. Even usually liberal observers–such as Time, NPR, and Politico–are saying so. For a colorful account, see the British take in the London Daily Mail.

It wasn’t just that the questions were hard, or even biased. Everyone expects that. It’s that the questions were trivial (casting aspersions on Rubio for cashing in a $67,000 IRA? Asking Jeb Bush his position on taxing fantasy football?), insulting (asking Trump if he is a “comic book” candidate?), and not fact-checked (one moderator cited information that he himself had had to retract earlier!). And yet, the Republican candidates, individually and as a whole, scored big against them, with both indignation and wit.

After the jump, a good summary from the usually liberal Daily Beast, with this deck: “From silly and inaccurate questions to just plain awkward interruptions, Team CNBC stumbled in Boulder—and was absolutely clobbered by the Republican presidential field for it.”

From Lloyd Grove, Lamestream GOP Moderators’ Total Debate Fail – The Daily Beast.

People will argue about which Republican presidential candidate came out on top in Wednesday night’s CNBC debate in Boulder, Colorado, but it was pretty clear who lost.

The mainstream media—as represented by the business cable network’s principal moderators, Carl Quintanilla, Becky Quick, and especially John Harwood—took it on the chin as candidate after candidate, to hearty applause from the partisan audience at the University of Colorado, pointed out that their questions were inaccurate, unfair, or otherwise plain silly.

“Are we truly talking about fantasy football?” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie demanded after Quintanilla asked former Florida governor Jeb Bush whether the online sports industry should be regulated as a gambling enterprise by the federal government.

“Seriously,” Christie continued, noting that the topic was hardly worthy of a presidential debate, where issues of war and peace, the runaway deficit, and the economy should be center stage. It was difficult to disagree with him.

“How about this?” Christie proposed. “Enough of fantasy football!” (Bush, by the way, missed an opportunity to make the same powerful argument, instead answering the question by boasting that his own fantasy football team was 7-0.)

For the largely Republican audience, loudly sympathetic to the White House wannabes, Harwood quickly assumed the role of biased lamestream media scoundrel by asking billionaire reality TV mogul Donald Trump, right out of the box: “Mr. Trump, you have done very well in this campaign so far by promising to build another wall and make another country pay for it, send 11 million people out of the country, cut taxes $10 trillion without increasing the deficit, and make Americans better off because your greatness will replace the stupidity and incompetence of others. Let’s be honest. Is this a comic book version of a presidential candidate?”

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“No, it’s not a comic book version,” Trump fired back. “And by the way, I don’t like the way you phrased the question.”

Neither, it seemed, did anybody else. Watching from home, I thought the phrasing of Harwood’s question—even though I like Harwood personally—was a textbook case of what cultural conservatives believe is the arrogant elitism of inside-the-Beltway political journalists who initially dismissed the Republican frontrunner as a circus clown and have been confidently predicting his swift demise for the past 100 days.

After a series of combative, arguably undermining, questions posed by the moderators to the Republican contenders, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz neatly and rather brilliantly summarized what sounded perilously close to a reasonable complaint:

“Let me say something at the outset. The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. This is not a cage match. And if you look at the questions—Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain? Ben Carson, can you do math?… Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?”

Cruz demanded, to a deafening cheer from the crowd, “How about talking about substantive issues?”

Addressing Quintanilla, Cruz went on: “Carl, I’m not finished yet. The contrast with the Democratic debate, where every thought and question from the media was ‘Which of you is more handsome and wise?’”

“John, do you want me to answer or do you want to answer?” Christie chided after Harwood interrupted him. “Gotta tell ya, even in New Jersey what you’re doing is called ‘rude.’”

At this point, given the grievous injuries inflicted on Team CNBC by Cruz’s quite reasonable characterization of the debate dynamic, the only thing left to do was to shoot the wounded.

Sensing weakness, the candidates proceeded to run roughshod over the moderators for the duration of the debate, ignoring their instructions to stop talking and adhere to previously agreed-upon time limits.

And who could blame them?

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