CNBC moderators, press crushed by the Boulder debate!

Washington Examiner ^ | 10/28/15 | Eddie Scarry 

If the Republican presidential candidates at CNBC's Wednesday debate had to pick the event's biggest loser, it would probably be the news media.

In answer after answer, the candidates targeted the news media, often CNBC itself, for asking what they considered to be hostile questions and making unfair criticisms.

It climaxed with Ted Cruz taking a question about the debt ceiling and using the full length of his allotted response time to bash the three moderators of the debate. "The questions that you've asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don't trust the media," Cruz said to thundering applause from the audience.
He then accused moderators of focusing only on the negatives, like Sen. Marco Rubio's skipped Senate votes and Jeb Bush's falling poll numbers, and accused them of trying to quiz Ben Carson on his tax plan to see if he can "do math."

"This is not a cage match and you look at the questions: Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain?" Cruz said. "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 people care about?"

The audience roared with approval.

When Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was asked to respond to a newspaper from his home state that called on him to resign from the Senate over missed votes in Congress, he said it was proof of a "double standard" in the mainstream press.

"[I]n 2004, John Kerry ran for president, missing close to 60-70 percent of his votes. I don't recall — in fact, the Sun-Sentinel endorsed him," Rubio said.

Later, Rubio said the "mainstream media" acts as "the ultimate Super PAC" for Democrats.

The audience didn't seem warm to the moderators either, and booed the several times over various questions, including one about Ben Carson's "judgement."

"See, they know," Carson said, turning the jeers to laughter and applause.

At one point, the moderators changed the subject to fantasy sports gambling, which is unregulated by the government. Chris Christie shamed them by belting out, "We have ISIS and al Qaeda attacking us and we're talking about fantasy football?"

The attack on the news media seemed to go from start to finish. Each of the candidates were given 30 seconds to offer a closing statement at the end of the debate, and Mike Huckabee began his with a final jab.

"I know to a lot of people in the media this is just a big game and we're the players," he said.

On social media, reaction to the CNBC moderators was also strong.

"Boy, CNBC moderators are having a woeful night," Geoff Skelly, a staffer at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, said on Twitter. "Not saying it's easy, but they're going to get it for this."

"The CNBC debate isn't a debate," tweeted Politico reporter Marc Caputo. "It's a dull public interview being conducted between moderators and candidates. Let the candidtaes debate."

Piers Morgan, former CNN host, also tweeted his disapproval, calling the moderators' performance "embarrassing."