OK, the first two GOP presidential debates were pretty entertaining and even informative viewing, but this one was a real slog. The blame for that has to be shared by both the CNBC moderators and the candidates.
Now, the CNBC folks are being roundly criticized for their questions, but I think that's unfair. Their "gotcha" questions weren't all that remarkably different from those asked by previous debate moderators for Fox News and CNN. But a couple of differences this time: A. The moderators, who mostly cover business news, weren't as experienced with this type of event and didn't do a good job of controlling it. And B. the candidates decided it was good for them to attack the moderators during the debate. Because the NBC cable channels have a liberal reputation, and because Ted Cruz got a great deal of applause for doing it, everybody chimed in in pursuit of easy applause. The result was a pretty dull and uninformative debate.
This line may be popular with Republicans, but it greatly irritates me. The idea that the news media are a liberal monolith is just a myth. There are media of all political persuasions out there today, and no one point of view is dominant. If that concept ever were true, it certainly isn't anymore.
Notice Fox News moderators weren't criticized as biased for their questioning, except by Donald Trump. He was right, but the other candidates wouldn't dare say so.
If I had to pick a winner last night, I'd have two choices for the top line: 1. From my own personal perspective, Rand Paul had the most coherent arguments and has clearly emerged as the only GOP hopeful who might get a serious look from me at the ballot box. 2. Objectively looking at the debate, I'd begrudgingly say Marco Rubio. This was mainly on style points, as Rubio for the most part avoided answering questions but still managed to sound and look good just the same. In fact, the moderators in this debate did a very poor job of keeping the candidates on point, so they mostly just rambled onto whatever topic they wanted to discuss. And when they said something that was flat-out nonsense, such as Carly Fiorina's claim that 92 percent of the job losses during the Obama administration were by women, nobody called them on it. Ted Cruz also probably scored with the extreme right. If the Trump and Carson campaigns fade, he could easily jump to the front of the pack, though that's a VERY scary thought. I think Hillary would trounce him, but I'd hate to chance it!!!
Losers: 1. Ben Carson. He proved that his status as GOP front-runner will be short-lived. 2. Jeb Bush, who just isn't going anywhere. 3. Donald Trump, not because he did poorly, but only because he didn't dominate this debate like he did the first two.
In fact I grew so weary of this debate that I changed off it and went to watch the third episode of FX's American Horror Story: Hotel. Now, that's another topic, but this episode of Hotel was so stupid that it may have jumped the shark for me. I'm not a big fan of gratuitous gore to begin with, and add in a dumb plot, and you've lost me. I barely made it through Freak Show last year. I'm beginning to doubt that I will this time around.
That said, clearly all Republicans arent equal on gay rights. But even the best ones are at most just going to ignore gay issues. The worst, like Cruz and Huckabee, could do great damage.
With a Democratic president we have greater access, a chance to actually make progress and far more friendly judicial appointments.
That said, I think some GOP candidates would be more gay friendly than others, but clearly gay people have access and opportunities with a Democratic administration that we do not have when a Republican is in the White House.
And at least for the time being, *any* Democratic administration is going to be better on gay issues than *any* Republican administration. And we have seen just on the marriage issue how important it is to have Democratic appointees to the Supreme Court.
As for a guess on GOP candidates: My hunch is Trump would be most gay friendly, along with probably Fiorina, Rand Paul, John Kasich and *maybe* Jeb Bush. After that, it goes from bad to worse, with Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee at the bottom of the garbage heap.
Doankyl, you'd have to have a constitutional amendment to change the rules on running for president. Maybe people's attitude would change if we had some former first spouses as president, but in today's political climate, I doubt you could get an amendment through Congress and then the states on *anything*!!!
As for the current bunch of Republicans on that stage, there isn't a single one who acted or spoke in a presidential manner. And now that Reintz Preibus has said they are going to take their ball and go home, I assume they will change the format and content of future debates so that the people (through our Fourth Estate press representatives) will no longer get a real picture of who they are and how they act under pressure. Even Fux Noise did not ask the softball questions to make this herd of candidates look intelligent, informed and able to deal with pressure in an adult manner. For a role model in how to handle pressure they should look no further than Hillary Clinton and how she has handled their trumped up "investigations" into the Benghazi tragedy and her email mistake. The grace and control she exhibited put the "investigators" to shame; a sign of a good potential president.
To make this more relative to us who frequent this site and this blog, I think all of these Republican candidates oppose gay marriage whereas all Democratic cancidates see gay rights across the board as our Constitutional heritage in this great nation.
The Republican Party is either picking on CNBC because of the liberal reputation of MSNBC/NBC news. Or they're sending a message to all the news media for future debates: Lay off the "gotcha" questions.
At any rate, blaming the media is the refuge of a scoundrel. And the GOP debates have plenty of those.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/30/media/gop-debates … index.html
I agree with bearinfw all news media is biased to every form of agenda there is not just liberals. But CNN and CNBC has always leaned on the liberal side. So when watching any news outlet you have to remember you are looking at it through someone else's filter. To bad they didn't allow them to elaborate on their supposed plans to fix our economic woes. That would have shown just how well thought out they are