GOP trolling HIllary during Debate

via H/T at Instapundit:

Man who can handle CNBC but not Putin wonders how Republicans will handle Putin if they can’t handle CNBC

From Allahpundit at Hotair:

He joined Hillary and the rest of the Democratic primary field in 2007 by boycotting a debate hosted by Fox because the left demanded it. Two years later, as president, the administration tried to muscle Fox out of a series of interviews with “pay czar” Ken Feinberg even though all members of the White House press pool were otherwise invited to participate. Only when the other networks threatened to boycott the interviews too did Team O relent. Anyone who watched that CNBC trainwreck and has watched debates hosted by Fox knows that Bret Baier and Chris Wallace would have been more respectful of Democratic candidates than John Harwood and Becky Quick were of the Republicans. Obama’s house is awfully glassy for him to be throwing this particular stone. In fact, I’m not sure what he means when he says the GOP couldn’t handle CNBC. They couldn’t? Nearly everyone on stage challenged the moderators over the course of the night. If they had meekly played along and then complained about the debate afterward, that would have been grounds for claiming that Republicans had buckled before a hostile adversary. But they didn’t.

What you’re really seeing here, I think, is Princess’s ego showing. The charge that Putin is kicking sand in his face stings because it’s obviously true, and he didn’t pause in his annoyance before hitting back to consider whether maybe he wasn’t a gigantic hypocrite in doing so. Simple as that.

At least the Republican candidates have appeared for debates at hostile venues? They show up on the weekly Sunday shows at hostile venues? Has the Dear Leader EVER been on Fox News Sunday?

Thank You, CNBC

From The Wall Street Journal:

When even Carl Bernstein is slamming CNBC’s handling of the Republican debate, you know someone’s head is going to roll.

It just wasn’t the head of a CNBC moderator.
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Truth is, CNBC’s Waterloo had little to do with its moderators’ questions and everything to do with the snark and contempt they came drenched in. For example, Mr. Harwood’s characterization of Donald Trump’s bid as a “comic book version of a presidential campaign” did not make his question any tougher. It simply made it insulting.

The Wizard has been exposed as a fraud.

The Week in Pictures - Scary Halloween Edition

From the guys at Powerline Blog:

The Media’s Potemkin Village Starts to Topple

From PJ Media via H/T at Instapundit:

Wednesday night’s CNBC Republican debate turned out to be a tussle between the three left-leaning ‘moderators’ and the candidates on the main stage, most of whom can safely be described as center-right. And finally — thanks largely to the huge ratings bonanza that is Donald Trump — the American people got a chance to see the true, ugly, partisan, smug, self-righteous face of what we used to call journalism, but now is simply political advocacy employing computers and television cameras under the shield of the First Amendment
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What the candidates did the other night to the MSM should not be underestimated. At last, it was not just a lone Newt Gingrich bashing the ideological inanity of his interlocutors, but a number of them, including Cruz and Rubio. By presenting a relatively united front against the clear animosity emanating from the three CNBC hosts, the candidates were able to keep the focus off the stupid questions (‘are you a comic book version of a campaign?’) and onto the biases of the moderators themselves.

The accusation of bias has been brushed off by the Media, since the are the ones who are biased. As Dan Rather famously once said, "A fish doesn't know it's in water." Well now everyone is looking at the goldfish bowl and seeing it for themselves.

How to Fix the GOP Debates

From Steven Hayward at Powerline Blog:

Ask yourself a series of questions: Why is it that whenever you hear about a speaker having his/her invitation rescinded from a college speaking invitation, it is always the left that complained? When was the last time you heard about conservatives protesting an event or speaker somewhere? Last night, the audience at the GOP debate booed the questioners from CNBC. When was the last time you heard a Democratic audience boo a media panel questioning Democratic candidates?

A silly question indeed. The presumptuousness of liberalism runs so deep that I’m guessing John Harwood hasn’t a clue that he was a biased jerk last night. As Marco Rubio suggested correctly—or as Glenn Reynolds puts it—most journalists are just Democrats with bylines.

From Instapundit:

One of the valuable lessons that Donald Trump has taught the GOP — or, I should say, is beginning to teach the GOP — is to punch back twice as hard. But the GOP folks should click through and read Hayward’s advice on what to do next.

Sage advise, indeed.

Understanding Ted Cruz’s Jedi Debate Skills

From The Daily Beast:

Marco Rubio may have stood out in the Republican debate, but if you ask competitive debaters, Ted Cruz was the hands-down winner.

Ted Cruz did well last night’s debate because he knows how to debate—literally.

Though the emerging pundit consensus seems to be that Marco Rubio won the night, Cruz nabbed what was arguably the biggest standout moment of the evening when he squared off with moderator Carlos Quintanilla and questioned the entire premise of the evening’s event. Whether he was conscious of this or not, the senator used a risky and controversial tactic used by high school debates champions the world over to deflate the moderator, win the crowd, and change the tenor of the evening.

The strategy he used is called running a kritik. Depending on what style of debate you’re doing and what league you’re in, kritiks can operate in a host of ways. The basic gist, though, is this: A kritik is an a priori argument, which means it has to be addressed before either side of the debate can move on to talk about anything else. The term “kritik” didn’t come into the common debate lexicon until the ’90s—long after Cruz’s days as a parliamentary debate champion were over.
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Quintanilla set him off by asking if his opposition to a deal House Republicans recently made to raise spending and avert government shutdowns until March of 2017 shows that the senator was “not the kind of problem solver American voters want?”

At this point, Cruz could have answered the question on its merits, explaining as he’s done a million times already that Americans want someone who will fight to shrink the government, even if it means refusing to compromise with Democrats and risking shutdown. But that isn’t what Cruz did. Instead, he questioned the moral authority of Quintanilla to question him.

“You know, let me say something at the outset,” the senator replied. “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media.”

The crowd cheered.

“This is not a cage match,” the senator continued, reiterating his criticism of CNBC’s management of the event. “And, you look at the questions—‘Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’ How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?”

Quintanilla sputtered.

“Does this count?” he interjected, over the roaring crowd. “Do we get credit for this one?”

“And Carl, I’m not finished yet,” he continued. “The contrast with the Democratic debate, where every fawning question from the media was, “Which of you is more handsome and wise? Let me be clear. The men and women on this stage have more ideas, more experience, more common sense than every participant in the Democratic debate. That debate reflected a debate between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.”

Cruz's intelligence is what really scares the Drive-By Media. In the past, the Drive-By media has portrayed Republicans as dumb. It can't be done to Cruz. If anyone listens to him for just a dew minutes, his intellect stands out and it scares all liberals.

RNC to NBC -- You're Fired

From Ace of Spades HQ:

Okay, they don't quite go that far -- they say for the moment they're "suspending" discussions about NBC's scheduled debate in February -- but they are taking the sorts of actions that precede a full firing.

Michael Walsh has some general thoughts on media bias.

Wednesday night's CNBC Republican debate turned out to be a tussle between the three left-leaning "moderators" and the candidates on the main stage, most of whom can safely be described as center-right. And finally -- thanks largely to the huge ratings bonanza that is Donald Trump -- the American people got a chance to see the true, ugly, partisan, smug, self-righteous face of what we used to call journalism, but now is simply political advocacy employing computers and television cameras under the shield of the First Amendment.
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Which is why the morning-after headlines were not so much about who "won" but how CNBC -- and by extension the entire MSM -- disgraced itself. Bashing the media may not be a policy platform, but it's nourishment and sustenance to a long-suffering conservative constituency which doesn’t much care whom or what is being bashed so long as somebody or something is being bashed.

All this makes a lot of sense, but the rest of the post, Ace goes on am epic rant.

Let me disagree with the premise that bashing the media is not a "policy platform." Okay, it's not technically policy -- but it is imperative, and it's more important than any particular policy initiative.

I might be biased here myself, because this is what obsesses me, and this is what angers me. I could care less, to be honest, about the GOP or its programs.

What keeps me interested in politics at all is my loathing for the self-appointed Preistly Class of the media.

The media doesn't just argue with conservatives, nor does it just demean them.

Rather, the media serve as the shamans and witch-doctors of an enemy Tribe, and the purpose of those shamans is to relentlessly disgrace outsiders to the Tribe, which is pleasing to those within the Tribe, while also keeping the shamans in power (because they have no other skills which would earn them money or sex, except the denigration of those considered Unclean).

Their mission is not mere delegitimization of those who do not worship their strange gods. Certainly they do that, endlessly. But it's more than that -- their mission is the full denigration, humiliation, and ultimately dehumanization of the outsiders to the Tribe.

I'll say this three times because it's important:

Cultural Power is Political Power.

Cultural Power is Political Power.

Cultural Power is Political Power.

Having been promoted to a position from which they can exert their Cultural Power to thereby exert Political Power, they do so, and they are less and less concerned with pretending they don't do so.

The very rich have developed codes over the years to not be quite-so-obvious about the tremendous power they actually have, in order to keep the mobs from hanging them in the streets, and they get quite angry at those (such as Trump, actually) who do not abide by these codes, and who flaunt their wealth and power. Partly they get angry because they have internalized the code of not exhibiting their wealth (except among the other wealthy), and partly it's because they realize Trump's flamboyance is actually a threat to them -- what if people start noticing how very rich they are?

For a time, I think the media attempted to hide how much Unearned political power they had.

I always think it's absurd that the media has political power. Consider: Your doctor is one of the most important professionals you know. He is well-educated and knows, literally, the pathways of life and death.

And yet does he use his position to propagandize politics to you when you go in for a check-up? Does he tell you that the Benghazi Committee was a partisan witch-hunt as he depresses your tongue with a strap of wood?

Now, some doctors do get into the political game -- scolding parents about this or that. Guns in the house, for example.

And people quickly fire them.

The media is a weird thing because the media is not made up of experts in politics. Your family doctor is an expert in health, and if he propagandizes you about health, well, at least that's in his balliwick.

The media are not historians nor political scientists. They are literally, and I say this with all intended denigration of myself, merely fucking people who write sentences, and, increasingly, who don't even write sentences -- they just talk words on the Television.

How on earth did people whose skill-set used to consist chiefly of shorthand notation and fucking typing elevate themselves into "experts" on politics, history, economics, and foreign policy?

They are fucking morons. They have no skills nor special knowledge.

Most of them are among the dumbest "professionals" of any "professional" class, except for teachers.

Lawyers are generally acknowledged as a smart class, as a profession. Not as smart as doctors, but smart.

Reporters?

Idiots.

But Cultural Power is Political Power, and the fact that these imbeciles populate our Idiot Boxes and speak words to us at night puts them in a position where they can serve as the witch-doctors of a heathen, ugly, wicked tribe, if they choose to.

Not that they're qualified to do so -- not that they're entitled to do so -- but that they can do so, simply because they're on the Television, the Morality-Play Theater of the masses.

Delegitimizing the media -- questioning how, exactly, shorthand elevates your opinions any higher than the next asshole sitting on the next barstool -- is absolutely critical.

Read the rest, it's a total take down of Media types.

Rubio -- Hillary Clinton Has The Ultimate Super PAC Called ‘The Mainstream Media’

From The Daily Caller:

Marco Rubio blasted Hillary Clinton’s ultimate super PAC: “the mainstream media.”

At Wednesday’s CNBC GOP debate, Rubio argued that the Benghazi hearing exposed Hillary Clinton as a “liar” but the “mainstream media” spun it as the “greatest week in Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

Marco Rubio: You know the Democrats have the ultimate super pac, it’s called the mainstream media, who every single day… And I’ll tell you why. Last week, Hillary Clinton went before a committee, she admitted she had sent emails to her family saying, “Hey, this attack in Benghazi was caused by al Qaeda-like elements.” She spent over a week telling the families of those victims and the American people that it was because of a video. And yet, the mainstream media is saying, “It was the greatest week in Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” It was the week she got exposed as a liar. It was the week that she got exposed as a liar. But she has her super pac helping her out. The American mainstream media.

Possibly the best shot by Rubio ever.

Christie To CNBC -- ‘Even in New Jersey What You’re Doing Is Called Rude’

From The Daily Caller:

New Jersey governor and Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie excoriated CNBC for its debate questions on fantasy football gambling and climate change.



“We are talking about getting government involved in fantasy football? wait a second, we have $19 trillion in debt, people out of work, ISIS and al Qaeda attacking us and we’re talking about fantasy football? Can we stop?” Christie interrupted when CNBC moderator John Harwood asked Florida Gov. Jeb Bush his views on regulations on fantasy football. He added, “Let’s get the government to protect our people and support the American family. Enough on fantasy football. Let people play. Who cares? I want to go back to the issues.”

Watch the video. This is the Chris Christie that Ann Coulter loved 4 years ago.

CNBC’s S***show of Epic Proportions -- The Full Moderator Breakdown

From Breitbart's Big Journalism:

Wednesday night’s epic s*itshow of a debate highlighted one fact beyond all others: if Republicans are to win the presidency in 2016, their main opponent will not be Hillary Clinton, but the established media.

CNBC’s panel of questioners, apparently drawn directly from a focus group for the Democratic National Committee, revealed their Hillary Clinton butterfly tramp-stamps long enough to unleash a stream of hit jobs on the candidates.

The good news: Republicans must know that they will not be running against Hillary. They will be running against the media. Last night was an acid test. Only three candidates passed it: Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).

I love it. The Republican field fought back and proved bias, once and for all. Continue this strategy all the way to the White House.

Washington Post Declares CNBC a ‘Loser’ of the Presidential Debate

From Breitbart's Big Journalism:

In its usual-usual write-up looking at the winners and losers of Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate, the Washington Post declared the host network, CNBC, one of the debate losers.

[A] lot of the questions the moderators asked seemed to be framed like this: “You said or did X controversial thing. Explain.” I’m all for some of that — after all, politicians need to be accountable for their public statements — but it veered occasionally into “gotcha” territory.

+ The debate was a major debacle for CNBC, another black eye for NBC News, and permanently tarnished whatever legacy moderator John Harwood thought he might have.

When your ideological allies say you've lost all credibility, it must have been really bad.

Schadenfreude.

BOOM -- Ted Cruz Eviscerates Left Media in Debate

From Breitbart's Big Government:

Just watch the video. No comment required.

Ouch

From Instapundit:

By the end of these debates all 17 R candidates will have answered more questions in a day than Hillary has answered in 6 months #GOPDebate

— ConservativeBlackMan (@Thomasismyuncle) August 6, 2015

That's gonna hurt.