November 29, 2007
Another great CNN-moderated debate
Well, wasn't that special. And conservatives were afraid CNN might not stage an unbiased, fair debate.
Michelle Malkin digs into just how many of those "uncommitted" voters supposedly interested in the GOP slate were actually committed Clinton, Edwards and Obama backers.
What a disgrace.
PowerLine's Scott Johnson has some thoughts on who was the evening's big loser.
Last night I designated CNN's planting of General Kerr in the audience to hector the candidates on "don't ask don't tell" as the "worst ambush" of CNN's Republican candidates' forum. I didn't know at the time that General Kerr is affiliated with the Clinton campaign. Among those who have taken note are Hot Air ("plantmania!"), Patrick Ruffini ("a CNN F"), Glenn Reynolds ("CNN demonstrates an inexplicable failure to background-check pro-Hillary questioners"), and Kevin Aylward ("CNN apparently couldn't find (or didn't want to know) any of this" about Kerr).
It seemed obvious that several of the questioners other than General Kerr were neither Republican nor potential Republican voters ... Serving as the host of an intraparty debate, CNN has shown itself unable or unwilling to act as an honest broker.
Stephen Green makes the more general point about CNN. I take it for granted that every network but FOX will seek to caricature Republican themes and humiliate Republican candidates. When CNN did it last night through the selection of those absurd questions and goofy questioners, I took it as par for the course. Stephen Green did not: "What we really saw tonight was CNN playing out its own agenda in front of a couple million viewers and seven or eight candidates, without anyone calling them on it."
The Weekly Standard's Richelieu summed up the evening:
What a depressing debate. CNN's long slide into mediocrity accelerates. Is this what running for president of the greatest democracy in the world has become? Standing in front of CNN's corporate logo in a hall full of yowling Ron Paul loons and enduring clumsy webcam questions from Unabomber look-a-likes in murky basements?
I feel lucky to be from an earlier century where your own founding fathers knew that the secret to government is to protect it from the daily mob. Clearly the boundless paranoia of middle-aged media executives about the kids and their mysterious "Internet" has led them to stoop to this kind of pandering foolishness. They should feel shame tonight.
So, a good night for for the lowest denominator, a bad night for the GOP. America got to see a vaguely threatening parade of gun fetishists, flat worlders, Mars Explorers, Confederate flag lovers and zombie-eyed-Bible-wavers as well as various one issue activists hammering their pet causes.
My cheers went to a listless Fred Thompson who easily qualified himself to be president in my book by looking all night like he would cheerfully trade his left arm for an early exit off the stage to a waiting Scotch and good Cuban cigar.
The media will probably award a win to Mike Huckabee, the easy listening music candidate at home in any crowd, fluent in simpleton speak and the one man on the stage tonight who led the audience to roaring cheers by boasting that he had a special qualification to be president that none of the second-raters on the stage could match: A degree in Bible Studies from Ouachita Baptist University of Arkadelphia, Arkansas.
I could say it different, but not better.
Bloody awful.
Posted by Mike Lief at November 29, 2007 07:10 AM
| TrackBack