That last headline goes to a "no longer available" dead end at The Washington Times, but I've got to admit that I was aggravated and I also snoozed.
I googled my way to what I assume is the article: "CNN turns GOP debate into aggravating, irrelevant snoozefest — as planned." Oh! As planned.
By keeping the stage crammed with a couple of actual front-runners and cluttered with has-been also-rans like Ohio Gov. John Kasich, debate moderators are managing to do what once seemed impossible: Boring voters even though real estate mogul Donald Trump is still on the debate stage. They will stop at nothing to water down the goliath front-runner for the GOP nomination....
Instead of a substantive debates with actual front-runners, we get these shoutfests with nine people, each one wasting their microphone time to complain about getting short-shrift or barking at one another over irrelevant details....
It doesn’t help that just about every question begins with, “Donald Trump said …”ADDED: The question of who was coughing consumed social media.
It is like some kind of therapy session for a group of people suffering from Donald Trump Derangement Syndrome. It got so bad Tuesday night that Mr. Trump himself finally called out moderators for making him a star of even the undercard GOP debate — that he wasn’t even in!
“It was Trump this, Trump that,” Mr. Trump said, rolling his eyes. “I think it was very unprofessional.”
Adding to the bizarreness was some person off camera who kept coughing and sniffling into a microphone. Was that one of the candidates? One of the moderators? Or was it some kind of special effect that was piped in from the outside? Message: GOP has sniffling, coughing fits.
Has no one at #CNN production heard of a cough button? Good Lord! It sounds like someone's dying up there. #republicandebate
— Rob Lowe (@RobLowe) December 16, 2015Suspicions converged on Ben Carson:
If it is, you'd think he'd take lozenge. Man's an MD!! https://t.co/pUrBQoDlEe
— Rob Lowe (@RobLowe) December 16, 2015
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13 comments:
Dr Carson was weeping or had a cold.
They will stop at nothing to water down the goliath front-runner for the GOP nomination....
That's exactly right. And they even added Christie and Paul at the last minute to water it down further. The audience members cheering Jeb, and booing Trump seemed like they were planted.
Wolf Blitzer is such a douchebag. He makes a declarative statement, in the form of a question, and then asks for a yes or no answer like the candidates are under cross-examination. Remember his Jeopardy performance?
I thought last night narrowed the field to clearly Trump, Cruz, and Rubio. It'll be a three person fight from here forward. Dr. Carson is a nice guy, but he is done.
You knew going in that Trump and Cruz were going to be cordial to each other. It's those two guys vs. the establishment. Seems Rubio will emerge as the establishment pick.
So there are "has-been also-rans" before a single vote is cast or counted? CNN gets to declare that?
When the debate was over, FNC hosted all of them for interviews. There was Charles Krauthammer, Bernard Goldberg, Bret Baier, Megyn Fox, Brit Hume and Dana Perino. They weren't boring. Bill O'Reilly tried, without success to explain a serious rationale for Trump. It was all civil and interesting.
It's not at all clear to me why Republicans go to media outlets which generally hate Republicans, to host political debates.
Jeb Bush spoke way too much. He has nothing to say and is far behind. What morons are funding his campaign?
I rarely watch much of the debates. I'm just glad that there's all these cable news talking heads, research staff for talk radio hosts, and political bloggers who watch the debate so I don't have to. They all can carve out the interesting digestible chunks for me to consume at my leisure.
The Dems will show us how it's done, on the Saturday evening before Christmas when lousy bowl games will get higher ratings and no one with any sense of purpose will be watching. You betcha.
Rubio, Cruz, Trump and choose one other. The rest are toast. I would pick the fat man as the fourth contender. Rand Paul is insane. Carson on thorazine. Jeb the nice guy who finishes last. The Ohio guy I can't figure. I don't like him.
It wasn't so bad and we learned a few things.
1. Trump is clueless about foreign policy. Fiorina nailed it when she pointed out that Trump's policy (spend money at home on make work projects instead of defense) is exactly like Obama's.
2. Cruz thinks Assad is our ally against ISIS. Rubio thinks Assad is an enemy because he's Iran's puppet.
3. Rubio thinks we should stop illegal immigration and then deal with the illegals that are here. Cruz believes the same thing, but won't say it.
4. Cruz cites Breitbart as though it were a credible source which is an admission he's a fringe candidate.
Does anyone still think that all this is perfectly set up for Hillary? With a large percentage of low information voters and dedicated non-republicans liberal votes locked in and the overwhelming backing of media and entertainment sectors, all is proceeding as expected.
Cruz and Rubio both believe the 11 million illegals here should be legalized if there is some undefined improvement in border security. Rubio thinks that after 10 years these illegals should be able to obtain a green card (which would mean they could be naturalized after another 5 years and would also be able to file petitions for green cards for their relatives in other countries). Cruz thinks they should be permanently legal but not get a green card (maybe a purple card?).
As to Syria, Rubio thinks we should send in US ground troops along with some nonexistent Saudi ground troops. Cruz thinks we should bomb ISIS (and whatever civilians are in the vicinity be damned). Rubio thinks Assad needs to go. Cruz thinks he should stay.
Rubio thinks NSA surveillance should be expanded and Cruz thinks it should be cut.
I'm not surprised these guys are Senators. They sound like McCain in Obama in 2008
I watched for a while, then turned it off. Trump seemed quiet.
"Seems Rubio will emerge as the establishment pick."
I read that first as " Seems Rubio will emerge as the establishment prick.", then had to scroll back.
I think Trump will win it and the media, left and establishment will go nuts. That will guarantee the general.
A warning, from Pat Buchanan, who is reliable on history.
“Buchanan, if you ever hear of a group getting together to stop X, be sure to put your money on X.”
So, Richard Nixon told me half a century ago, after he had been badly burned in just such a futile and failed enterprise.
Rubio looked the most sane. Kasich seemed sincere. Christie was spoke intelligently and used great restraint in not punching Rand Paul in the face when Paul mentioned WW3 and the bridge scandal. Cruz looked like his usual smarmy self, Carson was coughing up a lung and Fiorinna looked petulant because she didn't get her turn. Bush tried so very hard to look tough, but he's just a very nice man, maybe too nice for politics. Trump was Trump, such a bully to poor Bush.
I didn't think it was snoozefest but the trouble was people were making real points for three hours. Are there three hour lectures? Do you walk through a museum for three hours? What's more, the better the answers the less I was able to just move on to whatever Wolf Blitzer thought I should be moving on to. So OK, maybe he was aggravating.
It was a real debate; real differences; but now we move on to another mortal threat and who is Wolf assigning to attack the Donald, instead of how do we handle the mortal threat, and how will Trump handle it and Trump has this swatting motion like a mosquito is buzzing,... yeah, great, Go Trump. But how do we handle immigration? how do we define the threat? and stay in with Muslim allies? And the others start in with their ideas and Wolf can only do that annoying media thing where he moves to his next point on his list, just like Hillary and Obama. Whatever you are asked, spew the canned response, move on. The media group wasn't bad; they just seemed maybe 2001 types in 2015 - DOS, not even Windows (Thank you, Carly Fiorina)
And another thing about Wolf was, I kept thinking about how when he was covering the missing airplanes he'd stand there going over and over various points and bringing in experts and maps and pictures and talking away and burrowing in to the issues. And now here, Wolf's going like a car chase after the next point and after the Donald and after a candidate cage match. When ISIS is killing ordinary people in the West. When the government's credibility is on its own weird flight plan to nowhere, no one knows why they can't see the danger or why they don't radio a message to the rest of us.
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