I honestly don’t see any point in trying to sugar-coat this: why are we letting the enemy moderate our debates? If the big networks aren’t willing to hire any non-liberal-Democrats full-time, they should at least have access to some who are willing to moderate GOP debates on a contract basis.
Most of the questions Stephanopoulos and Sawyer came up with tonight were clearly designed to do one of two things:
1) Throw out more heat than light, and set the candidates to squabbling over non-issues, while making sure there is as much bad blood on the stage as possible; and
2) Put each potential candidate in a position such that he/she had to either throw out red meat to the base (which can be used in attack ads next year in the general election, to turn independents against whoever the candidate is), or stand there holding their dicks/boobies looking stupid.
Some highlights:
• Sawyer insisting that when discussing the economy and job-creation, each candidate mention the specific number of jobs he/she expected to create in the his/her first term, as if job-facilitation were a precise feat of engineering (that should, of course, be conducted from the top).
• Asking a question about the payroll tax cut, which is being discussed right now, and which none of the candidates will be in a position to do anything about (except Bachmann/Paul, who still have legislative influence) since none of ‘em will be sworn in before 2013. And, no: this is not a good proxy for discussing the tax code in the abstract, since this issue is such a tiny piece of the larger puzzle.
• Stephanopoulos asking Romney to list the things he didn’t agree with that Gingrich had proposed.
• That stupid question posed, supposedly, by a regular citizen (read: Dem operative) who wanted to know what kinds of financial hardship the GOP hopefuls had gone through. Does anyone ever ask that of the President?
• That awful question about whether marital fidelity had any place in evaluating a candidate. Clearly, for whatever reason, the mainstream media wants our nominee to be Romney—otherwise, the question would have been about Mormonism, rather than about having a checkered marital history. I’m surprised they didn’t require, as part of the rules, that all candidates who had admitted to marital difficulties come out wearing a scarlet “A” on their suits.
• Sawyer trying to skip over border security by suggesting that “every person on this stage” wanted to secure the border—because she wanted to skip ahead to the “what now” questions that won’t even come until we’ve addressed the border concerns. Which is to say, she wanted to start a fight that would (she clearly hoped) damage Perry a little, and Gingrich a lot.
• Stephanopoulos trying to expand the issue of Gingrich’s statement about the Palestinian “nationality” being made-up (which of course it is, and everyone knows it, for crying out loud), but provoking a quarrel between Romney and Gingrich over the issue, and then asking others “who has the better of this argument?” (Rick Santorum’s answer was something to the effect that he was a complete pussy, which rather surprised me. I mean, it says that in my notes: “Santorum: ‘I’m a complete pussy.’”)
That time around, it was left to Rick Perry to play the role Newt played in earlier debates, and point out that the issue of Gingrich’s diction on The Jewish Channel was a minor issue that the media are blowing out of proportion. That answer got the biggest applause of the evening.
The evening’s winner was Newt, by a mile. Perry also did himself some good, as did Rick Santorum (except for that awful, awful answer on Israel). Bachmann stayed on that high wire between shrillness and sanity, while Romney took a leaf out of The Bachmann Guide to Demagoguery by bringing up Perry’s immunization experiment back in Texas, which everyone knows about. It’s dead, Mitt: already priced into his stock.
UPDATE: The Memeorandum thread is here.
UPDATE II: Ed Morrissey has some great thoughts here, along with footage from his interviews afterward in the spin room.
- Excited
- Angry
- Not as Angry
- Bored
- Indifferent
- Sad
Good gravy. George Stephanopolopodopolous and Diane “I Dedicated My Career to Being the First Solo Womyn Anchor Only to Be Beaten Out by ‘Cutie’ Katie Couric” Sawyer? Why not just get Charlie Rose and Karen Tumulty again?
Gonna admit. I stopped paying attention to the debates a long time ago.
And I’m a politics/news junkie.
I think the “strategy” has been these debates as a way to keep one’s face in front of the media, generate buzz, on someone else’s dime. And hope you don’t screw up so bad that anybody remembers anything you said.
The sheer volume of debates indicates to me that they’re figuring people won’t remember stuff other than, possibly, the tone of voice and whether someone “looks presidential”.
As Michael Humphries at Forbes points out, this debate audience may have been cleared by the Republican party, but it was Trojan horsed from the start, and it’s not the first time.