I really miss the days when the debates were all handled by the League of Women Voters, and neither party had control of the formats. Allowing the parties to control the debates has always been a bad idea. Neither party is interested in a full and searching examination of its candidate's policies. They want to win, and deflection and obfuscation are always more helpful than clarity and depth when it comes to television politicking.
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RNC suspending GOP Feb '16 debate with NBC (Because lol CNBC)
- Thread starter Black Republican
- Start date
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How can any one of these clowns (aside from Kasich, he was fine tbh) be presidential material if they're whining about admittedly mild questions? The CNBC moderators were pushovers and incompetent in the end, sure, but it goes to show how weak these people are if they couldn't even handle that.
lol GOP.
lol GOP.
Yeah, I don't blame them. The pre-debate was laughably bad, too.
Slackerish
Member
Now NBC can show the Hillary movie.
From 2 years ago: http://www.politico.com/blogs/media...-films-threatens-to-pull-debate-rights-169934
From 2 years ago: http://www.politico.com/blogs/media...-films-threatens-to-pull-debate-rights-169934
Black Republican
Member
oh man, so much cringe
teruterubozu
Member
They are comic book like. There is zero substance behind them. It's an insult to anyone that has an ounce of intelligence and if Trump wants people to take his platform serious, then put forth a serious platform.
Cruz looked almost presidential there. Kinda scary.
The moderators sucked and it devolve into more of a 3 ring circus than it already was.
I'm gonna say it has less to do with them not being able to "handle" the questions but rather feeling like their time was utterly wasted because of how much of a shitshow the whole debate was.
When Ted Cruz says something cogent and correct you know there's a problem.
Gordon Shumway
Banned
lol..
Omegasquash
Member
Slayed, son.
yellowjacket25
Member
These moderators were pretty awful but I'm not sure how much better the RNC is expecting when they have 10 candidates who completely ignore every question, go way over their time consistently, and talk over each other on nearly every question trying to get a word in. The whole thing is a bit of a joke at this point.
NYCmetsfan
Banned
I'm frightened so many are giving people like Cruz a nod for a good point. They asked questions that weren't nice. Ok? Who cares, this isn't a campaign commercial and a platform just to rail against Clinton.
But they're running for president why don't we go through all the hostle questions Obama faces EVER DAY and EVERY INTERVIEW.
Media bashing by elected officials like this should never be supported because all it does is further isolate them from answering to the people.
Why shouldn't Carson's snake oils sales be called out?
What were uncalled for questions beside the supervillian one?
But they're running for president why don't we go through all the hostle questions Obama faces EVER DAY and EVERY INTERVIEW.
Media bashing by elected officials like this should never be supported because all it does is further isolate them from answering to the people.
Why shouldn't Carson's snake oils sales be called out?
What were uncalled for questions beside the supervillian one?
Sure, Trump is a clown, but it's a dumb question to ask.
First, basically anything along the lines of "tell us why you'd be a good president and not a bad president" is just going to get you a stump speech. Candidates are already answering this question in their opening/closing statements.
Second, using this sort of language makes it especially easy for the candidate to not answer any part of a question they find inconvenient, in favor of just objecting to your language. This doesn't feel like an evasion because who wouldn't object to being called a comic book character?
If you want to press a candidate on an unserious position you need to identify exactly how it's unserious and what sort of answer you're aiming for. The moderators did a better job asking some of the tax policy questions, for example - you want to sum up their policy so that they can't answer by just summing up their policy, and then you want to identify some weird thing about it such as its enormous cost (you want to reference this, possibly with multiple sources) while heading off possible dishonest answers (be clear that you're already doing dynamic scoring or whatever). And you need to follow up. Conservative media has been saying that the moderator was horribly unfair to Rubio and knew that the question about his tax policy was based on a lie, when what actually happened was that Rubio was responding to an article from a few days before rather than the actual question, but the moderator wasn't prepared to spot the difference and point it out.
Gordon Shumway
Banned
Thank you..
The Albatross
Member
The questioning style in the CNBC debate is like the style of questioning the Orange County Housewives on "Watch What Happens Live" on the Bravo/E Network. It's complete crap, but people are watching it not because they want to be informed, but because they want to be entertained.
It's infotainment. News from Fox, NBC, CNN, and all other mainstream television news has been infotainment for a decade. This election year is definitely the worst yet, but it's also because of the bombastic personality-driven circus that is the Republican primary. News stations are trying to capitalize off of the circus and by making infotainment television out of a debate, they're hoping to secure viewers to their network.
The CNBC debate was a joke and nobody learned anything by watching it. While it's easy to dismiss the Republican field as a bunch of crazies who don't deserve legitimate questions, one of these candidates will be in a 2-person race come 2016, and if potential voters are going to surrender 2 or 3 hours of their lives learning something about the candidates, they should be able to learn something rather than getting silly, gotcha entertainment questions. Besides Carson, Trump and Fiorina, all of these candidates are otherwise serious politicians... They're people who have been in politics for much of their adult lives, have written or signed legislation, or have signed bills into law. Sure, the primary is a circus, with the likes of Trump and Carson leading the pack of circus acts, but the candidates themselves do have serious takes on serious issues that could have strong ramifications for our lives in 2016... Even if a Republican isn't elected president.
But, again, nobody on NeoGaf and around the country is watching the debates to be informed. They're watching the debates to be entertained like The Real Housewives of New Jersey or Keeping Up With The Kardashians, and CNBC is catering to that.
It's infotainment. News from Fox, NBC, CNN, and all other mainstream television news has been infotainment for a decade. This election year is definitely the worst yet, but it's also because of the bombastic personality-driven circus that is the Republican primary. News stations are trying to capitalize off of the circus and by making infotainment television out of a debate, they're hoping to secure viewers to their network.
The CNBC debate was a joke and nobody learned anything by watching it. While it's easy to dismiss the Republican field as a bunch of crazies who don't deserve legitimate questions, one of these candidates will be in a 2-person race come 2016, and if potential voters are going to surrender 2 or 3 hours of their lives learning something about the candidates, they should be able to learn something rather than getting silly, gotcha entertainment questions. Besides Carson, Trump and Fiorina, all of these candidates are otherwise serious politicians... They're people who have been in politics for much of their adult lives, have written or signed legislation, or have signed bills into law. Sure, the primary is a circus, with the likes of Trump and Carson leading the pack of circus acts, but the candidates themselves do have serious takes on serious issues that could have strong ramifications for our lives in 2016... Even if a Republican isn't elected president.
But, again, nobody on NeoGaf and around the country is watching the debates to be informed. They're watching the debates to be entertained like The Real Housewives of New Jersey or Keeping Up With The Kardashians, and CNBC is catering to that.
The right question to ask is:
"So how will you make Mexico pay for the wall? Specifically."
DonasaurusRex
Online Ho Champ
well this isn't surprising after they got told off on national tv and caught with dreaded facts when the usually just get accusations.
Very true. "Who is gonna get the first zinger and go viral?" was an actual talking point on CNBC before the debate started.
Chie Satonaka
Member
Let's be clear.
Some of the questions CNBC asked were shit, and the moderators generally weren't great.
However, we now have a national party who's complaining and whining about debate format and is playing up the "victim" card because everybody's against them, despite their two clown show frontrunners seemingly swallowing up the vast majority of political coverage.
I don't think it's unfair to ask the candidates how they feel about each other. It's a fucking competition. It doesn't need to be tabloid level, but Donald Trump has been literally running a circus since he came into this thing, and he was one of the first ones whining about questions in the FIRST debate.
They can't handle CNBC without throwing a fit, but they're supposed to be able to handle running this country? To be able to go head to head with world leaders? vote for people who are on national TV basically saying, "Waaaaah, it's not fair?"
Some of the questions CNBC asked were shit, and the moderators generally weren't great.
However, we now have a national party who's complaining and whining about debate format and is playing up the "victim" card because everybody's against them, despite their two clown show frontrunners seemingly swallowing up the vast majority of political coverage.
I don't think it's unfair to ask the candidates how they feel about each other. It's a fucking competition. It doesn't need to be tabloid level, but Donald Trump has been literally running a circus since he came into this thing, and he was one of the first ones whining about questions in the FIRST debate.
They can't handle CNBC without throwing a fit, but they're supposed to be able to handle running this country? To be able to go head to head with world leaders? vote for people who are on national TV basically saying, "Waaaaah, it's not fair?"
Lord Fagan
Junior Member
No way the clown car could handle his realness.
Im not saying they were good moderators but I have no problem with them calling bullshit, bullshit. It was a poor attempt at some humor at the expense of Trump and its not the best approach to take but as I listened to Tom Ashbrook and his guests(including one of the moderators) go over that question in particular and others with a fine toothed comb I came away agreeing with their arguments. That whole comic book questioning actually fits exactly what you are talking about a good moderator doing. Trump answered by spouting talking points and Harwood kept questioning, kept pushing back when he laid out more bullshit. Quoting actual economic reports. What ultimately hurt that whole exchange was the ridiculous adherence to time because of the ridiculous number of candidates and 2.5 hour window. Which never allowed them to come back and finish what was becoming an interesting deconstruction of Trump's typical bullshit answers.
The Albatross
Member
There were a ton of bad questions during the CNBC debate, it was poorly run, and you could tell they weren't up to the task. Talking Points Memo ran down a good number of them: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/cnbc-bad-gop-debate-moments
Hari Seldon
Member
I was watching the young turks summarize the debate, and they were mocking (sarcastically) Kasich for actually bringing up policy lol.
OuterLimits
Member
I'm just curious. Do Democrats do debates on Fox News? I don't think they do. Why should Republicans go on networks where they ask shit questions like the last debate. Whether it was bias or just the mods being complete morons can be up for debate.
Btw, Fox News actually asked some pretty tough questions in the Republican debate.
People trying to defend this are funny. The majority of mainstream newspapers, online sites, and pundits on both sides were critical of the moderators
Plus the mods kept talking over each other and didn't often even bother to ask follow up questions. They did a shit job.
SugarDaddy
Member
Ehhhh, while I agree that the CNBC moderators came across as biased, many of the candidates didn't do an adequate job of even answering the question asked. Combine that with having 10 candidates, who consistently try to talk over one another, and it's virtually impossible to maintain any semblance of order or 'fairness'.
Fox News isnt actually news though. There is no reason the Democrats should go on a propaganda network for the conservative party.
Orbis Tabula
Member
I think most people here agree that the moderators were shit. They just think the candidates were also a bunch of babies.
Chie Satonaka
Member
CNBC is not a liberal station or network.
Stop trying to perpetuate this. If they were "liberal" they would have never been there in the first place.
Donald Trump whined about Megyn Kelly in the first debate, too. This isn't unusual. It's just that it was taken to an extreme by Cruz and Rubio.
An effect of all this complaining is that the next Democratic debate will likely have even more pointed questions.
Fine. They can handle it, unlike these clowns.
Since this little line here seems to be the lynchpin of your diatribe here against some of us, I wanted to address that people aren't defending CNBC here for everything they did. They are shitting on the GOP candidates for constantly evading questions and outright not talking any sort of policy or just outright lying (see: Carson).
OuterLimits
Member
So MSNBC isn't news then. They are a propaganda network for the left and Democrat party. Democrats do debates on their own propaganda network as well.
Fenderputty
Banned
Some of the questions were good hard questions. Some of them were joke questions that deserve to be ridiculed. That doesn't mean the GOP aren't little crybabies doing this though.
EDIT: If anything, the joke questions just gave the GOP candidates an out to avoid answering the real tough ones. Just complain liberal media.
He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law, was the editor of the Harvard Law Review, and described by Dershowitz as, 'off the charts brilliant.' He was clerk to the Chief Justice of SCOTUS two years after graduating. He's written 70 Supreme Court briefs and has presented oral argument in front of SCOTUS 9 times (more than any other member of Congress or any practicing lawyer in the state of Texas). He's a damned brainiac, even if you don't like his politics.
markofhavoc
Member
The problem with these debates is that whenever I disagree with the coverage, they are actually working for the other side that I don't affiliate with.
Bam Bam Baklava
Member
These are the people that are supposed to be tough on ISIS and Putin but they constantly complain about a bunch of no name journalists being mean.
CNBC was trash but not because they are big commie liberals.
CNBC was trash but not because they are big commie liberals.
Orbis Tabula
Member
Sure, why not? What's the point, though? What argument are you trying to make? That the CNBS debate moderators sucked? Because almost everyone here agrees with you. As has been pointed out.
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