There are a few reasons why I absolutely hated the Republican Presidential Debate on Sunday night. For me the biggest problem was the fact that the FOX News question askers are in such an inherently awkward position that they can’t help but to ask stupid questions that voters don’t care about. I shall explain.
Most of the techno-public and younger generations think that FOX is a conservative news station. Forget about the fact that every single study that reviews FOX’s reporting from a nonpartisan perspective (I stress NONPARTISAN, though it doesn’t really matter for this argument) finds that it is actually less partisan than the other news channels – no one seems to care about that. People believe that because the commentators on the channel are conservative (Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity), then the entire channel is skewed to the right. That’s not only ignorant, it’s downright dumb.
Okay, so that’s the base that these question askers are sitting on. They want to change that portion of the public’s view, so what do they do? They completely attack the Republican candidates for the first 30 – 40 minutes of the debate. How can guys like Chris Wallace and Carl Cameron have any respect for the voting public when they spent the first half of the debate trying to pit one candidate against another? That’s ridiculous! Why not spend this time to ask the candidates straight out, “Hey – let’s say you are President tomorrow. What do you do about [insert issue here]?” Why did their line of questioning have to be, “Candidate A says this about you. Candidate B said you’re a bonehead. How do you respond?”
Ugh. Give it up already! If the folks at FOX think that they’re going to break their stereotype as a conservative news station by trying to make the Republican candidates fight against each other during a debate, then they’re sadly mistaken. At this rate, who can blame the Democrats for not wanting to face such a pathetic line of questioning on FOX?
Thank God for Wendel Goler and Brit Hume asking decent questions!
Aside from the fact that the first half of the debate was consumed by a manufactured type of politicking that the vast majority of Americans hate, I don’t think that the candidates had good nights. Ron Paul made a few good points as he usually does (even though those points are sometimes few and far in-between). John McCain did more of his straight talking, but should NEVER have referenced the fact that he was “straight-talking.” Giuliani had a bad night – no question about it. The post-debate interviews spun the debate in Rudy’s favor, but the way he bungled the very first question of the night left a lot to be desired. Romney had a moderately okay night as did Thompson (who looks very tired and not-up-to-the-challenge on the stage).
Huckabee did a good job to get his viewpoints across and I think that he probably had a better showing that the rest of the crew. Tancredo and Hunter are footnotes at this point.
All in all we had a debate with blase candidates and poor, poor questioning by Carl Cameron and Chris Wallace. Let’s hope for a better debate next time around.
Ok, now you are pulling my leg right.
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Most of the techno-public and younger generations think that FOX is a conservative news station. Forget about the fact that every single study that reviews FOX’s reporting from a nonpartisan perspective (I stress NONPARTISAN, though it doesn’t really matter for this argument) finds that it is actually less partisan than the other news channels – no one seems to care about that. People believe that because the commentators on the channel are conservative (Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity), then the entire channel is skewed to the right. That’s not only ignorant, it’s downright dumb.
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It has been proven that Fox news watchers are less well informed and actually misinformed than any of the watchers of other news outlets.
Remember the Mark Foley incident? they put a (D) next to his name when they broadcast his scandal. They do it all the time.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200605250003
You are clearly better off watching the fake news on the Daily Show or the Colbert Report.
Ha ha ha ha ha!!! Don’t let your disgust for Republicans and FOX News blind you!
You quote Media Matters and think it’s legit? This is why I stressed nonpartisan – Media Matters is an anti-conservative think tank, which is fine, so long as their “research” is prefaced by that fact. From their own “About Us” page:
Launched in May 2004, Media Matters for America put in place, for the first time, the means to systematically monitor a cross section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation
That was a fun comment, though – gave me a good laugh this morning. Thanks!
The link cited a study done by the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center the quote from the site is found below. I emphasize, nonpartisan. BTW, I don’t have disgust for Republicans, just NeoCons. I have many friends and family members who would call them selves Republican. I thought you would have discerned that I hate corruption and lies in any public office holder or media outlet and party affiliation is almost a nonissue for me. For the most part they are all republocrats anyway.
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In 2004, the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center released its
National Annenberg Election Survey, which found Daily Show viewers to be better informed on campaign issues than consumers of other late-night television programs, newspapers, network news, or cable news. In a press release, Annenberg senior analyst Dannagal Goldthwaite Young said: “Daily Show viewers have higher campaign knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers — even when education, party identification, following politics, watching cable news, receiving campaign information online, age, and gender are taken into consideration.”
🙂
It’s clear that you have a great disgust for all things Republican at the national level. And that’s not just my obvious observations from your comments on this blog, but from some of my other readers who often ask me, “Who is that liberal guy who always bashes Republicans and argues with every non-liberal thing you say?”
Sometimes I agree with their assessments and sometimes I don’t – but all of the time I find it amusing!
Then again, I laugh at a lot of the “important” and “serious” things I see everyday. 😀
You are very wrong about my political leanings. I work for republicans and for the most part respect them and believe in their actions. As for the national level Christine Todd Whitman wrote about how “her” party was hijacked. I would argue that she was a republican at the national level albeit not palatable to the neocons and their agenda.
As for liberal, I am what used to pass as a moderate.
Maybe you can’t see how some of your comments come off as extremely anti-anything right of center.
In any event, I still get a kick out of all of this stuff! 🙂