An Upside-Down Debate

At the third Republican Presidential Debate, the host, CNBC, pr,omised a debate about “Your Money, Your Vote”. Yet, at the night’s end, it seemed the ten candidates spoke less about “Your Money, Your Vote” and instead used the opportunity to attack the media. This strategy involved ignoring questions, fighting back at combative moderators and using the crowd to their advantage. In the end, candidates like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Chris Christie, who confronted the media directly, left the University of Colorado-Boulder as the unquestionable winners. And, perhaps more importantly, the GOP field appeared unified for the first time in the primary season.
The best debate moderators are those that seldom make waves. Instead, the three main moderators for the CNBC debate, as well as a supporting cast of more “guest” moderators managed to steal the show at certain points, which led to direct confrontations with the candidates. Perhaps the most memorable scuffle was between Ted Cruz and moderator Carl Quintanilla. After a question about Cruz’s stance on the current congressional budget plan, Cruz ignored the topic and turned to the media and was met with loud applause from the crowd. “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. This is not a cage match…How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?” Quintanilla and Cruz talked over one another and eventually the conversation turned to Rand Paul, without any discussion of Cruz’s position on the budget deal. That being said, the wide array of attacks that followed Cruz’s statement, were met with the strongest applause from the crowd.
Senator Marco Rubio, fresh off a successful war-of-words with Jeb Bush, chose to focus on the “liberal media” and its support of Hillary Clinton. Pouncing on the positive coverage of Clinton’s Benghazhi hearings Rubio asserted, “I know the Democrats have the ultimate SuperPac. It’s called the mainstream media…” Cruz, too, attempted to showcase a liberal bias in the media when he pointed out a, “contrast with the Democratic debate, where every fawning question from the media was, ‘Which of you is more handsome and why?’”
Christie took a different approach. In his typical bombastic fashion, the New Jersey governor made an exasperated statement regarding a question about government regulation of fantasy football. “Carl, are we really talking about getting government involved in fantasy football? We have—wait a second, we have $19 trillion in debt. We have people out of work. We have ISIS and al Qaeda attacking us. And we’re talking about fantasy football? Can we stop?”
More powerful than the statement itself, was the contrast it brought about between Bush and Christie. Prior to Christie’s statement, Bush had attempted to actually answer the question. Christie offered no opinion on the matter or Bush’s choice to answer, instead choosing to dismiss the topic. He would later come into direct conflict with moderator John Hammond. “John, do you want me to answer or do you want to answer? How are we going to do this? Because, I’ve got to tell you the truth, even in New Jersey what you’re doing is called rude,” he quipped to audible laughter and applause from the crowd.
Frontrunners, Trump and Carson delivered a few good lines and captured audience attention, but failed to capitalize as well as other candidates did. “You people write the stuff,” Trump said offhandedly when asked about statements he made in an interview to laughter from the crowd. Carson too was helped when the audience booed Quintanilla. “See, they know,” said a smiling Carson. Neither frontrunner were as direct, or harsh as other candidates and as such, didn’t do anything to advance their standings in the polls.
At the night’s end, the very media outlets the candidates criticized hailed Rubio, Cruz and Christie as the evening’s winners. Those candidates that chose to stick to policy discussions or accepted the media’s questions, like Bush, were widely panned as losers.
Remarkably, this debate was the first example in a long while of a cohesive Republican Party: unified in mutual distaste for the liberal media, but unified nonetheless. RNC Chair Reince Prebuis normally quiet, joined in the attack after the debate. “I was proud of our candidates for standing up to a pretty hostile environment. I was very disappointed in the moderators. I’m disappointed in CNBC. I thought maybe they would bring forward a pretty fair forum here tonight but I think it was one gotcha question, one personal low blow after the other.” After months of GOP infighting, it appears the party has found at least one issue it can agree on.