The debate venues and moderators: why so liberal?
I’ve seen quite a few remarks, both here and elsewhere, to the effect of “why do Republicans keep having debates in mostly liberal venues with mostly liberal moderators?” Why do they let themselves be set up that way?
One answer is that otherwise they’d be limited to Fox News. But another, which I saw on a comments thread on another blog (don’t remember where), and which I think bears repeating, is that Republicans ought to be glad that these debates are run mostly by liberals, because it gives the Republican candidates lots of experience in fielding the sort of questions they will have to answer in any debate with Obama: “gotcha” ones.
Friendly moderators of the conservative sort wouldn’t afford that opportunity. Right now these debates are not being watched by a lot of people, but the presidential ones will be. So those who are watching them now get not only an introduction to the candidates and a chance to see how they perform under fire, but how they perform under a very specific type of fire: liberal fire. It’s no use selecting a nominee in the primaries who wouldn’t do well in that sort of venue. Even a weakened Obama would eat him/her alive.
Part of the problem is that in the general election there will not be a conservative moderator to ask “gotcha” questions of Obama.
momo: yes, that’s a given.
But this just begs the question of why the presidential candidate debates have liberal moderators in liberal venues. Why don’t the Republicans insist on a Fox debate, and that an equal number of debates have a conservative moderator like Krauthammer, Chris Wallace, for example? They don’t call the Republicans the “stupid party” for nothing.
for once, and probably just once, i can answer this shorter than neo did!!! 🙂 (pop the corks!!!)
It’s da only game in town
or
“Certainly the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you; if you don’t bet, you can’t win.” Heinlien
Sigh. Good point. It is astounding the see the liberal mindset manifest in these debates. They come at it from a flawed perspective, the women in last night’s debates were particularly bad. At this point, we are reacting to their world view. They control the premise, we don’t.
David, the problem with that is that the opponents wont show up, and the conservative moderator would ask both gotcha questions, not one side… so if they dont show up, all that is left is to go on and get hard gotcha questions your opponents avoid by staying home.
while yes, one would not want to be on the field of an enemies choice… but one doesn’t always have a choice, and if one does not want to concede, then one has to bet the rigged game and hope for the best.
you can look to tsun tsu to see what each side will do (or other places)
from the perspective of the democrats debating the republicans, this applies if you bear in mind demographics and such
The left is never a real majority, ever… so they divide and conquer by having all these special groups and interests.
in a fair debate they are inferior. in a hostile territory where they do not control the questions or cant be reasonably sure of such, they are very weak. so they flee the venue.
even within the venue of their choice, they still avoid the enemy, but at least get through what they have to.
given that people HAVE to appear to motivate early adapters to then pass the word, and volunteer, and so forth… they have to play the game they can play…
as far as only one side being up, well… i guess i forgot one more phrase, or rather two come to think of it…
“Preaching to the choir”, and “kicking an open door”
the people they have to convince or convert are not the people in their church, its the people outside who can be swayed to at least join enough to vote.
I guess their biggest problem is not to give the opponents across the isle all the best stuff to slam them with in their zeal to win over each other.
either way, 2 party debates or 1 party debate, the whole thing happens the way it does as its the path of least resistance and problems (especially with a complacent journalism sector who has decided to forgo profits beyond what they can imagine for their agenda or whatever)
Obama has a LOT of things that will come up over this next year, the minute Soro’s pointed out not to like em, its been a slow decline and a change of attitude. and there is a lot of incidents coming up beyond fast and furious. like election ballots with forged names that they are just realizing now.
big question is whether someone will grab the brass ring or retire on the lecture circuit…
There might be another reason why the liberal forums. It might be that the Republicans are trying to get some exposure among the liberal crowd, which they would not get from a venue such as FoxNews. Personally, I don’t think much of the idea, but if they were playing to their own party’s followers, they’d stick to a more friendly environment.
Art —
What would be the optics of Obama refusing to show up for a Fox News debate hosted by Charles Krauthammer, after Romney (or whomever the GOP nominates) is seen to conduct himself well in a PBS debate hosted by Gwen Ifill? That would be a softball that even the stupid party could hit out of the park with campaign ads.
And if Obama did show up, and Krauthammer asked gotcha questions of both candidates, only one of them would have experience answering them. It would be a bloodbath.
— david
Shite. Would you let your enemy train your soldiers (children)? Would you let your enemy recruit your forces? Would you let your enemy plan your defenses? You might if you didn’t know who your enemy was, right? Then the first requisite to defense is an awakening, a revelation, an (to use an older word) apocalypse.
One time, I feel asleep while reading. It was a common occurence. I had taken off the lamp shade to allow better light. Sometime, during the night, the lamp had fallen on my pillow and sat there heating the pillow which began to smoke. I will never forget the summons from the deep sleep. It was hard, extraordinarly hard, but a voice, an insistent loud voice, commanded me to wake up. The voice fought the deep sleep and won. In a struggle for consciousness that was as real and hard as any struggle I have encountered, I awoke. The pillow was completely encrusted with black ash. It smoked. The room was filling with black smoke. I immediately righted the lamp and opened the window. In a moment, the danger was abated and then, like a dream, gone. But I remember and will always remember their was someone looking over me with a voice.
spamminator again
david, “It would be a bloodbath”.
your right but NOT for the rea sons you say, because the things they can got cha with is not equal..
all things being equal you might have a point, but they arent equal.
Krauthammer couldnt find enough on one side to match the other!!
here, i will give you a few gotcha that he might ask oba ma… you try to match each one with a gotcha for any other opponent…
Jobs bill?
So man Czars?
Bowing to other potentates…
Eradication of all christian churches in Afghanistan and what would he do about it?
heck.. he can ask the other guy, how many vacations do you plan to take..
why was sh ab azz at the white house so much?
where are all the jobs in green?
why did sol yndra get money?
what is your conn ection to ge orge so ros and petro bra s whose polices you turned from a dog into a wealthy company, whose investors got into it when it was a dog.
what will you do about illegal cam paign money from foreign coun tries?
why does acorn still exist and get money?
Why are we still in Iraq?
Who else is on the assa ssination list?
why is gi tmo still open?
is it really your intent to offer another amnesty to the illegals here?
what do you intend to do about mex ico and iran commi serating?
what are your plans to counter p utins statements as to refor ming the old soviet states into a new more modern so viet?
how do you intend to handle china if they decide to stop imports for 3 months?
the cost of hea lth care is going up faster now and we hav ent even gotten to eve rything in the bill, can you tell us how it will go do wn?
do you know the difference between intercontinental and transcontinental?
why did unemployment exceed 8% after you promised otherwise?
how does the stark treaty make am erica safer when the other states are mod ernizing and have been caught stealing IP and other inform ation?
now its telling me i am commenting too quicky.
no, i am not commenting too quickly, i am TRYING to comment, but its not published.
a comment is not a comment unti its published…
time to rewrite the software… sigh
go ahead…
if you match them all i have another 20 we can put up.
and THATS why he wont do it…
The b igger qu es ti on is th e oth er stat es…
if y ou h ad a we althy id iot wit ho ut co mmon sen se and was ea sily play ed and he cam e to your po ker table, wo uld you wa nt him to le ave wi th m ore th an ta xi mon y in his poc ket?
something in the phrase above is a horror to the spaminator…
From a propaganda perspective, it’s better to set traps for enemies and to fortify one’s base with allied reinforcements. The allies would be Fox News or any other such journalist organization. The enemies would be the Left, of course.
So far no experience with the Left has trained Republicans to be good at dealing with them. The ones that have demonstrated this aspect, the Republicans don’t even like them: Palin or Cain on a organization basis.
It’s also better to be on the offensive than on the defensive, assuming logistics are equal. If the Left controls weapons, territory, and important figures, then it is even more important to have a right timing attack.
The tactics and strategies that are true in chess or war are just as true here, except one’s methods are just different.