The biggest loser of last night's debate was ...
Ed Morrissey 10:01 AM on September 28, 2023
… not any of the seven candidates on the stage. It wasn’t even one of the candidates who weren’t on the stage — Donald Trump, Asa Hutchinson, and an assortment of also rans. The biggest loser of the debate was Fox Business Channel, with the RNC that arranged it a close runner-up.
We can put aside the bickering and bad behavior of the candidates on stage for this assessment. Yes, the ‘moderators’ let it get out of hand, but this is a debate, after all — and the candidates are the show. If they want to argue amongst themselves, the responsibility falls on the candidates more than the forum, and we can judge their worth as potential nominees accordingly. But right from the start, it became clear that the questions and topics could have been ghostwritten by MSNBC, making this more of a firing line than a debate to discuss conservative principles and policies, and deliberately manipulated to provide the ‘bad behavior’ that some candidates willingly provided.
It started off weird and only got worse. First off, the show started with a tag-team moderator monologue rather than a question (transcript courtesy of Fox Business Channel):
PERINO: Let’s get going. We are in this spacious, sunny place tonight designed to reflect the very nature and character of Ronald Reagan. It’s a place that makes you proud to be an American. Yet, today, our nation is drowning in division and incivility.
CALDERON: Voters say they dread the 2024 election and find politics exhausting. Two in three Americans think the country is on the wrong track, and three in four say that the economy is not in good shape.
VARNEY: Prices are up 18 percent since 2020. More than half of the U.S. population has little access to childcare; 85 percent of Americans say their personal finances are a source of stress.
PERINO: Americans want to believe a leader who says: you can follow me, I’ve got you, don’t worry. President Biden is trying to do that with Bidenomics.
VARNEY: And yesterday he joined the picket lines where auto workers are demanding more wages and job security.
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https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2023/09/28/the-biggest-loser-of-last-nights-debate-was-n581045
