The remaining republican candidates gathered in Simi Valley, at the Ronald Reagan Library, for the last GOP debate, before "Super Tuesday." With so much at stake for the country, not to mention the four remaining candidates (McCain, Romney, Huckabee, and Ron Paul), the last debate should have been a full hour and a half of evenly distributed time between candidates, dominated with hard hitting questions, and an even flow of information for America. Anderson Cooper, CNN's moderator of the evening, ultimately should have been slipping in questions and weaving in candidates subtle differences, exacerbating where each candidate stood, on the heavy issues of the day (immigration, health care, education, and the Iraq War for starters). However, that was far from the case on Wednesday night.
Anderson Cooper and CNN blew an opportunity to show America and the world that they were there for the business at hand. Cooper came off a simp and a shill of the democratic party (during the debate). "Mr. AC 360" asked few questions regarding any policy, how they would actual institute the "change" (which has so freely been the "catch word" of both parties during the political campaigns), and most important he let Mitt Romney dominate the majority of time. During the debate, Romney was more of a moderator than Cooper, or any of the heralded "City of Angels Beat Writers" attending the debate. Romney, when not directly engaged with McCain (as per Cooper's questioning, "Do you actually support a time table to get out of Iraq?"), refused to divulge anything new, sticking to the main Romney talking points. Romney actually was given, or took, around 27% more speaking time than McCain (the presumed front runner), with Paul and Huckabee struggling to get any words in at all. When congressman Paul and Governor Huckabee did have the chance to opine, it was usually from a backhanded comment from Romney (to try and clear the record), a question about McCain and/or Romney, or else it was just Paul reciting more of his "Constitutional synopsis'", that never gets over the top (or else he never gets the chance to speak his whole point).
After the debate was over, CNN still found more ways to kill the debate, rather than try and achieve some success. Bringing on Bill Bennett, Amy Holmes, David Gergen, and Roland Martin (just to name four contributors) to speak on what was supposed to be a GOP evening and debate (after showing a brief McCain/Romney spat), the attention immediately switched to democratic politics, the debate tomorrow night, and then a switch in the contributors. Claire McCaskill and Stephanie Tubbs Jones began stumping for Clinton and Obama, respectively. CNN's team of broadcaster's roaming all over, like an old 90's cell phone, then went to an electoral map. As if the performance to this point was not bad enough, the "CNN TEAM" acted like a "live focus group" (what they called "dial testing") was the equivalent of the invention of the wheel. However, where the same thing is used on Fox and MSNBC after debates, CNN failed again, because there were no people to poll and ask live (why the "line was up, or down during a candidates answer"), just a feeble line moving across the screen and another pundit to explain "for the dial testers." After a brief discussion of the "dial testing," the majority of points, data, and commentary was minuscule and useless. CNN made Frank Luntz (Fox News) look like he has the charisma of J.F.K., himself, by comparison to the "dial testing results." The guests, aside from Bill Bennett, had little input into the Republican outcome, where things may go between candidates and even less of a prognosis of things to come. CNN, Cooper, and all of the pundits of the evening failed most, when they had to fill one hour and twenty minutes (before Larry King's "Tribute to Reagan").
In that eighty minutes, CNN spent a total of Eighteen minutes of actual talk, footage, and polling about the republican party, candidates, possible outcomes, and the debate, overall. After the lethargic and unenthusiastic reports on the hour and a half (joke) GOP debate, there was enough time left for CNN to shove their agenda, or just poor ethics, down the America's throat for forty-one minutes (after taking out the 19 minutes of commercials). Therefore, what kind of information did they decide to fill forty-one minutes of time with? They spent over three quarters of theair time, after the debate, on tomorrow night's democratic debate and who would obtain John Edward's delegates.
On a night at the Ronald Reagan Library, the last GOP debate before 23 states vote for perspective nominees, "The Best Political Team on Television," decided; they would have a more than sub-par debate (with "No Rules", as Cooper stated at the beginning of the night), analysis and recap of the debate for roughly nineteen minutes (out of a possible eighty full minutes, minus commercials), and then have the gumption to hammer out all possible prospects and prognosis' for the democratic debate, for a full forty-one minutes. With a captive audience, CNN was the only broadcasting station to have the GOP and democratic debates, they actually showed in just a three hour span why Fox News consistently hammers the competition and always leads in the ratings. Tonight was a brutal and completely biased affair, from one end to the next.
