Analysis: CNBC, Jeb Bush lose unruly GOP debate

Townhall

"[Wednesday's]Republican candidate forum will primarily be remembered for two things, I suspect: (1) CNBC's truly awful moderation, and (2) the beginning of the end of Jeb Bush's presidential campaign.


"CNBC: Between the parade of gotcha questions, sloppy moderating, and factual errors, this was an evening to forget for the host network. Almost every single candidate on stage directly called out the slanted nature of the coverage in real time, punctuated by memorable slap-downs from Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Co-host John Harwood, whose inclusion on the panel irked conservatives from the moment it was announced, was especially tendentious and argumentative -- repeatedly interrupting candidates and flat-out blowing a fact-check about Rubio's tax plan. Harwood admitted his mistake on Twitter, but not on the air. The entire enterprise, from the production values, to the overall focus, to the flow of inquiries, was embarrassing. Incidentally, why was there no conservative media partner for this broadcast? Was that not a requirement this cycle?  (Update: An RNC source tells me CNBC's Rick Santelli constituted the "conservative element" of the forum)." . . .

Keep reading.

CNBC’s John Harwood Is Still Refusing To Admit He Was Wrong . . . "This is why Rubio jumped on him. Marco Rubio knew that Harwood’s facts were wrong. This is why the Tax Foundation president jumped on him. As the actual publisher of the study in question, he knew that Harwood’s facts were wrong.

"Proving once again why he had no business whatsoever moderating the GOP presidential primary debate, John Harwood is apparently the only person in America who doesn’t understand he was wrong. It’s bad enough to aggressively argue with a presidential candidate after being repeatedly corrected on live television. But doubling down and refusing to admit error 12 hours later, after you’ve been repeatedly pantsed by everyone with a basic grasp of the facts?

"That’s just sad. It’s also vintage John Harwood."

Left wing pressure from places like Media Matters hoped to make CNBC as biased as they were last night:  " Let's Hope CNBC Debate Moderators Hold GOP Candidates Accountable For Their Fantasy Tax Plans "

Republicans finally win one against the media. Icing on the cake that it was an NBC station

Does it not seem to you that someone in the mainstream media would realize there is a great story behind the media's anti-conservative bias?

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.

Kurtz: Debate ‘Absolute Trainwreck for CNBC,’ ‘Disaster For All Of Us In the News Business’  . . . "I’m totally in favor of tough and provocative questions. … But a lot of these questions were not drilling down on facts, or record, or policy."


Debate 3: Ted Cruz Changes the Game  . . . "Everything changed when Ted Cruz dressed down Carl Quintenilla and John Harwood – two of CNBC's far-left commentators – and literally mocked their absurd line of questioning.
"Cruz did not just criticize the questions; he made sport of them.  He demonstrated just how infantile most of the CNBC crew was (Tea Party originator Rick Santelli not included).  Cruz  flat-out embarrassed them, and they knew it." . . .

You knew this next story would come out of MSNBC, didn't you?

Chris Matthews calls GOP candidates 'revolting' for protesting CNBC moderator bias

. . . "This morning, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, a similar line was pursued, with even nominal Republican Joe Scarborough hewing to the party line that the GOP field was pathetic." . . .

Dan Youra

Proof: NBC Debate Moderator John Harwood Lied About Rubio’s Tax Plan

. . . "Here’s the false gotcha Harwood launched at Rubio:

The Tax Foundation, which was alluded to earlier, scored your tax plan and concluded that you give nearly twice as much of a gain in after-tax income to the top one-percent as to people in the middle of the income scale. Since you’re a champion of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, don’t you have that backward?

"Rubio immediately hit Harwood back: “No, you wrote a story on it, you had to go back and correct it.' ” . .  .

Ed Meese: Condemn RNC officials who set up disgraceful CNBC debate

. . . "After 15 minutes it was clear that this was not a debate, but a verbal shooting gallery set up by CNBC, with the targets the Republican candidates and the shooters their biased antagonists from the press,” said Meese. " . . .

In this same vein: What Was RNC Thinking in Selecting CNBC to host Debate?

. . . "The moderators were so far left and openly combative that it was like watching a Republican debate moderated by the Democratic Party. CNBC’s moderators succeeded in making CNN’s Candy Crowley look fair and balanced.
"Everyone who’s familiar with John Harwood and CNBC had some idea it was going to go this way. Everyone except Republican Party chairman, Reince Priebus." . . .

From NRO: Cruz Eviscerates CNBC Moderators: Questions Illustrate Why Americans Distrust Media   "Asked tonight about the debt ceiling, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) instead used the question as an opportunity to provide a blistering critique of CNBC’s debate moderators, earning rousing applause from the audience. Here’s the exchange:" . . .

The Clinton Magic still works

The Clintons survive multiple scandals such as sexual harassment charges, corruption and rape charges, along with the deaths of four of Hillary's people, yet thanks to Democrats they remain high and lifted up. TD

HopeN'Change  ". . . And what a victory it is! No one in the State Department demoted or disciplined, and none of the not-so-spontaneous terrorists "brought to justice" by the Obama administration.' "

Candidates take on media

Daily Mail  "Republican debate turns into all-out war as Donald Trump bashes John Kasich, Jeb Bush hits his protege Marco Rubio, and EVERYONE hammers CNBC's moderators

CNBC hosts progressively lost control of the event

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz turned openly hostile, accusing them all of being Democrats intent on damaging the GOP field.    
. . .

'Nobody watching at home believes that any of the moderators have any intention of voting in a Republican primary!' he charged.

'The questions asked so far illustrate why the American people don't trust the media. This is not a cage match,' Cruz said 

'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 that people care about?'

"Cruz earned the night's loudest single wave of applause for that outburst." 

Ben Carson: The Plot Against the Doctor Is About to Begin

• "As Ben Carson continues to rise in the polls, ahead not just in Iowa but now nationally, there is one thing you can bank on.  A round of attacks on Dr.  Carson are about to begin and they will be vicious, not to the extent of Stalin’s famous plot against the doctors perhaps, but the plot against this particular doctor will be pretty bad.  And as with Stalin’s plot, it will be filled with lies and innuendo aimed at destroying the subject.
  
  
• "Donald Trump has already given us a hint with his cheesy, supposedly innocent, question about Carson’s religion. But that’s only the beginning. The media will have a field day.  They have already shown an eagerness to quote Carson out of context, thereby skewing what he is really saying (i.e. his comments about guns and the Holocaust and the presidency and Sharia law) in an obvious  attempt to “get him.' ” . . .

America, what have you become?

AMERICA HAS LOST ITS MIND: Just Take A Look At How Far We Have Come
                                                                              "No, you haven’t lost your mind.


" Yes, America has.

"If someone just 20 years ago had said, for starters, that we’d someday elect an anti-American president who would intentionally flood our borders with millions of illegal immigrants and Islamist “refugees,” that we’d soon celebrate as “heroic” a former Olympic champion for mutilating his body and pretending to be a woman, that we’d have five extremist lawyers on the Supreme Court unconstitutionally force the radical redefinition of marriage to mollify people with same-sex fetishes – you might call that person crazy.

"Well, crazy is the new normal. America has lost its mind. We’ve snapped. Anyone with eyes to see, ears to hear and a brain to think knows it.

"But why? How did it happen? What exactly caused America’s moral GPS to send our nation headlong into oncoming traffic?

"And can anything be done to fix it?

"Maybe once in a generation are we so graced with a communicator like veteran journalist and best-selling author David Kupelian. His matchless ability to unpack the complicated issues of our day with simplistic precision is nothing short of genius, a gift from God he has shared once more in his latest book,  The Snapping of the American Mind: Healing a Nation Broken by a Lawless Government and Godless Culture." . . .

Hillary way on top, but what people have put her there?

HILLARY IN THE OVAL OFFICE: Proves That Democrats Are Totally Cool With This

. . . "What then does it say about us as a people, that a lie is treated as a moral victory? Hillary lied to the American people and it was revealed that way during her testimony. She told Americans that Benghazi occurred because of an internet video that allegedly outraged the Islamic world. And she did so even as she delivered another rationale for the attack when she communicated privately. " . . .

Shocker: Clinton up 41 in Iowa   . . . "The surge is due partly to Joe Biden declining to enter the race and the media's almost universal declaration that Hillary did well in her testimony before the Benghazi committee." . . .

McCain: ‘I Don’t See How Any Veteran Who Cares About Their Fellow Veterans’ Can Back Hillary   . . . “Now Hillary Clinton, in her blind ambition, has now injected partisanship into the VA issue and that is disgraceful,” he added, stressing “she owes an apology,” especially the
"
PJM asked McCain if Sanders would be a better leader on veterans issues than Clinton. McCain stressed that he didn’t want to “engage in favoritism” in the Democratic presidential primary.
But, he noted, “Bernie Sanders worked very hard when chairman of the Veterans Affairs
"Committee.” They had “many disagreements but were able to come together” — negotiations for which, McCain quipped, “my reward will be in heaven not here on earth for that exercise.”

"“He does have a record of advocacy for our veterans,” McCain said of Sanders, adding that he knows “of no activity, legislative or otherwise, Hillary Clinton was engaged in as U.S. senator” on behalf of veterans.

Cornell U. and the "Streisand Effect"

Cornell basking in “Streisand Effect” after Watters’ World shutdown

Student newspaper calls it an “Embarrassment to Cornell”
"On Monday night, October 26, 2015, The O’Reilly Factor ran a Watters’ World segment with student-on-the-street interviews.

"The highlight of the segment was that Cornell shut down Jesse Watters on air during student interviews.

"Here is the segment.

"I predicted that Cornell would experience the Streisand Effect, which is:

The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.
It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose 2003 attempt to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, California, inadvertently drew further public attention to it. Similar attempts have been made, for example, in cease-and-desist letters to suppress numbers, files, and websites. Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity and media extensions such as videos and spoof songs, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.

"And sure enough, that is what is happening. The incident has been reported in dozens of major outlets, not just in the conservative blogosphere.

"WaPo’s Erik Wemple, who unfortunately threw some cheap shots at Watters unrelated to the incident, did correctly diagnose the problem: " . . .

Looking ahead to tonight's Republican debate

How GOP Candidates are Preparing for Tonight’s Debate

Beating Up on Ben Carson  "The first salvo was an attack on his wife Candy Carson's appearance – her clothes, her hairstyle, and her lack of make-up.  I thought it was the right waging the "war on women."  Turns out the left is waging one, particularly against women the left disagrees with politically."

Seven Storylines to Watch at Tonight’s GOP Debate

One of which is "curtain call for Carly"

GOP Debate: Rivals Hope Substance Will Stop Trump, Carson Rise

"Seasoned U.S. politicians trailing Donald Trump and Ben Carson for the Republican presidential nomination are eager to shift the campaign focus to the economy and policy in Wednesday's debate and expose what they see as weaknesses in the two front-runners.
"Jeb Bush and other candidates are trying to turn the tide in a campaign that is dominated so far by provocative rhetoric that has played to the strengths of Trump, a bombastic reality television star and developer, and Carson, a soft-spoken surgeon who has been gaining support in opinion polls.
The two-hour debate, moderated in Boulder, Colorado, by business network CNBC, will begin at 8 p.m. EDT/0000 GMT Wednesday.

"With Trump and Carson holding a firm grip on the race in polls of likely Republican voters for the November 2016 election, the forum comes at an increasingly perilous time for lower-ranking candidates." . . .

Follow the debate on Powerline

Power Line  . . . "It will be televised on CNBC. What better way to watch it than with a few hundred (or thousand) fellow conservatives? The audience for the debate will be big, and it could be a make or break event for several candidates.

"So: plan to sign in to Power Line Live as you watch the debate. To get into Power Line Live, click on the “Live” link above or simply click here.

"You will be asked to log in. Logging in is easy. When you arrive at Power Line Live, you’ll be invited to enter a nickname. Enter anything you like, but keep it civil, of course. You’ll instantly be in the chat!

"You can also click the button that says “Log in or sign up now!” This lets you use your Facebook account to log in. In this case, you won’t have to pick a nickname; we’ll get it from your Facebook profile. Click the Facebook logo, and then authorize Facebook to connect with chat. Once you do this, you’ll be in the chat. You can comment on the action and see what your fellow conservatives are saying.

Weasel of the Week Nominees

Nice Deb   "It’s time once again for the Watcher’s Council’s ‘Weasel Of The Week’ nominations, where we pick our choices to compete for the award of the famed Golden Weasel to a public figure who particularly deserves to be slimed and mocked for his or her dastardly deeds during the week. Every Tuesday morning, tune in for the Weasel of the Week nominations!

"Here are this weeks’ nominees….

Democrat Front Runner Hillary Clinton!

"The Independent Sentinel : How do you beat Hillary -lied her butt off Thursday and did it so well!"

The Democrats On The Benghazi Committee!

" . . .because they were so eager to circle the wagons around the obviously corrupt and dishonest Hillary Clinton.. What makes them especially repulsive weasels is their gross (yet routine) left-wing projection – accusing the GOP of politicizing the Benghazi investigation as they themselves very blatantly politicize the proceedings."

Violent  Film Maker And Cop Hater Quentin Tarantino!

"Officer Holder is the third law enforcement officer to die this month in the line of duty or from injuries that occurred in the line of duty and the fourth NYPD officer killed in the line of duty in the past eleven months giving those calling for the death of law enforcement reason to celebrate and celebrate they did."

"Hard worker" is a racist term? Who knew?

This could be posted under "American Silliness"

Althouse  "Now, what could possibly be wrong with the description 'hard worker'?" A"sks Greta Van Susteren before playing video of Melissa Harris-Perry calling out a guest for saying that Paul Ryan is a "hard worker."

"This is Harris-Perry's stern warning:  "I want us to be super-careful when we use the language 'hard worker,' because I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall, because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like."

"Oh, so the slave is the idealized "hard worker"? Then why, just a couple weeks ago did a textbook publisher, McGraw-Hill, have to apologize and agree to change a geography textbook that referred to slaves as "workers"?

On reading a caption in his geography textbook that described slaves as “workers”, Coby Burren sent a photo and an annoyed message to his mother. "We was real hard workers wasn’t we," he wrote.

Good grief.

Again:  Her comments sparked online backlash with many calling them ridiculous    

Chaffetz, House move to impeach Obama's IRS chief

polforumblogroll

Wayne Dupree  . . . "Chaffetz argued that Koskinen lied to Congress when he said they were turning over all of Lois Lerner’s emails. In reality, the IRS was in the process of destroying the backup files that contained these emails.

"Chaffetz and his colleagues claim that the IRS knew that some of Lerner’s emails were missing in February of 2014 and that they then destroyed backup tapes a month later. Koskinen, however, didn’t admit any of this to Congress until June.

“The chain of command all the way down has changed,” Koskinen told the Senate earlier Tuesday, claiming that he had cleaned up his agency. “There are new people that have gone through, and we’ve pursued appropriate disciplinary review as needed.”

"Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch told Koskinen today that many of his efforts appear to have been misdirected." . . .