“Bouldered” in Colorado- CNBC Fails to Moderate GOP Debate
CNBC, the financial and economic news division of NBC, promised to host a substantive debate on economic, fiscal and financial issues last night, at the University of Colorado in Boulder, but they failed miserably due to their own innate and over-the-top bias against all things Republican.
So egregious in the condescension, arrogance and hostility towards the candidates last night, that even the audience- a Colorado audience, mind you- booed the moderators five times, based upon the out-of-line questioning put forth by Carl Quintanilla, Becky Quick and John Harwood. The fact that these licentiously liberal lap dogs of the Hillary 2016 Campaign Committee actually made the Republican Candidates look good, by comparison, was the ironic turn of events that not even NBC could have imagined in their wildest nightmares.
We have come to expect and, for that matter, rely upon the fact that the mainstream media, by all accounts, has an inherent bias in favor of the Democrats, as this has clearly been the case going back to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Yet, even with that expectation in mind, and the extremely liberal slant that is the hallmark of NBC News, television journalism hit an all-time low last night when the so-called moderators, who were anything but moderate, went after each and every candidate on stage with hostility, contempt and absolute aggression. That partisan attack-dog mentality has never been displayed to a greater degree than it was in the two hours that comprised what was supposed to be a debate on fiscal policy. In short, the National Broadcasting Company should truly be ashamed for even claiming to be a news organization, much less moderating a GOP Debate, where their absolute contempt for Republicans was so blatantly obvious.
Hand it to the Republican candidates themselves who, in the midst of such wanton hostility, managed to avoid the degree of mudslinging that was the milieu of the debate hosted by CNN some weeks ago. For the first time, with some minor exceptions, the candidates rose above the puerile performance of their questioners, and managed to provide some semblance of substance in the wake of such boorish behavior on the part of these partisan panelists who, in turn, demeaned their own profession, not to mention the network with whom they are employed.
Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Chris Christie, in particular, turned in the best performances of the night, especially when the three of them took note of the bias and disdain with which questions were posed- questions that would never have been posed to Democrats by this, nor any, network. These three candidates were the big winners of the night, with Mike Huckabee and Carly Fiorina running a close second. The remaining candidates, Donald Trump, Ben Carson, John Kasich and Rand Paul did manage to hold their ground, and managed to escape the night without costing their candidacies much in terms of polling numbers. Jeb Bush, however, did manage to stumble when, out of the blue, he decided to turn on fellow-Floridian Marco Rubio, who handled the assault with much aplomb and made Bush look weak and desperate, by comparison. Aside from this instance, and a brief counter-punch by Trump against Kasich, the Republican candidates by and large, laid off one another, much to the chagrin of their inept interrogators, who tried their level best to make the Republicans attack each other, instead. These ten, along with the four J.V. candidates, Lindsay Graham, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, and Rick Santorum, did manage to prove themselves to be of more substance, with much more competence to lead, than any of the remaining three Democrat candidates vying for their own party’s nomination.
These candidates will meet again in two weeks, when the Fox Business News network will host the next GOP debate on November 10th, with Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo, who are set to host the varsity edition that night. Perhaps, in the end, they will resuscitate the concept of what is supposed to be the fourth estate of a free press, in the wreckage of what took place in Boulder. Truth be told, all they have to do is sit down at the table to improve upon what was seen last night on CNBC.
-Drew Nickell, 29 October 2015
©2015 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.