2015 GOP presidential debate. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
When the dust settled and the Twitter quieted after the 2015 GOP presidential debate in Boulder on Tuesday night, the big loser was CNBC.
The network started 14 minutes late, with no explanation, kept lame commentators trading softballs and tap dancing awaiting the start of the debate, then pursued oddball questions rather than substance, letting the proceedings devolve into shouting matches and cross-talk throughout.
The prominent punching bag of the evening was the mainstream media. The most vocal media critic of the night: Ted Cruz. “”The questions asked in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” he said. “This is not a cage match. ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’ How about talking about the substantive issues?… “Nobody believes that the moderators have any intention of voting in a Republican primary.”
Whatever you think of Cruz’s politics, he scored points by slamming the quality of the debate moderators’ questions.
CNBC moderators John Harwood, Becky Quick and Carl Quintanilla seemed poorly prepared (Quick had to circle back on a question to Trump, after research was supplied during the commercial break). They lost control more than once, allowing the candidates to talk over one another, and then talking over themselves as well.
But here’s hoping CNBC’s sloppy work doesn’t lend weight to the night’s recurring theme: when all else fails, bash the media in general. Treat “the media” as a powerful, nefarious monolith –whether you mean a blog, a podcast or an international conglomerate. That’s a favorite tactic of politicians, and could be a fallback position for the remainder of the election cycle.
If CNBC fumbled the opportunity, it was Marco Rubio and Chris Christie who made the most of the airtime. Leave it to the political commentators to parse and fact-check. To an observer on the couch, those two had the most camera-ready styles and quotable points. By contrast, Donald Trump observing that he likes to be “unpredictable” (in carrying a gun) may not have been a surprise; Ben Carson’s sleepy persona didn’t seem to help him, Fiorina talked more than most, and Jeb’s fade into the background can’t be a good thing for his candidacy. Oh, Kasich, Paul and Huckabee were also there, somewhere.
You didn’t have to be to find the evening disappointing. Too long, too sloppy. Let the winnowing begin.
