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Audacity of Truth
Whiner-in-Chief:
"[W]hether the grumbling is about Republicans on Fox or bloggers in pajamas, there's a word for what the president and his aides are doing. That word is "whining." And nothing [...] does more damage to Obama's credibility or authority than the sense that a popular president is becoming the whiner-in-chief."
- John Nichols, Nation Magazine - 10/12/09
Some GOP candidates are balking at the idea of a CNN/YouTube debate (MORE: WANT TO SAVE THE DEBATE?)
Memeorandum has a link roundup of both news reports and blogger commentary on the possibility of some of the GOP top candidates like Rudy dropping out of the scheduled CNN/YouTube debate that is supposed to take place in September in Florida.
Hugh Hewitt is complaining here that the Democrat CNN/YouTube debate was “silly” and had a clear left-wing bias. Maybe so, but what *I* find silly is the idea that some candidates – and their supporters – are advocating not being a part of the debate.
I’m with Patrick Ruffini on this one:
This is a big mistake. The Democrats are afraid to answer questions from Big Bad Fox News Anchors, and the Republicans are afraid to answer questions from regular people. Which is worse?
It’s stuff like this that will set the GOP back an election cycle or more on the Internet. No matter the snazzy Web features and YouTube videos they may put up, if they’re fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea of interacting with real people online, what’s the point?
Having spent the better part of a decade working at the intersection of politics and the Web, I can’t help but feel of a deep, deep sense of dismay that we’re missing something so basic. This is EXACTLY why I am afraid that we will be outraised by $100 million or more in 2008.
Yes, some of the questions on Monday were trivial. Yes, they were partisan. (I expect many of the 9/17 questioners to be partisan Republicans.) Yes, they were messy. But so is democracy. And the fact that some place so much faith in the broken mainstream media over a benign format like this one says a lot about the difficult straits the Republicans are in right now.
Perhaps the rest of the field will prove me wrong.
I’m really disappointed that it looks like Rudy and maybe Romney will be pulling out of this debate. The complaints about it are trivial and, well to use the word again, silly. I’m not saying some of the criticisms of the debate aren’t valid – but there’s really not a network out there outside of Fox that Republicans can debate on and not expect your typical left-leaning questions – whether it be from the ‘official’ question person or the audience, so is the answer to skip out on those debates, too? Please.
I see all the hoopla this morning about the possibility of candidates pulling out of the Sept. 17 debate has some selective-memory liberals like Josh Marshall chuckling:
“Liberal Bias”, whatever else it once was, now appears to be the new Republican code word for any venue or events not controlled by Republican commisars like Hugh Hewitt along the lines of President Bush’s notorious Social Security townhalls in which only certified flunkies who swore to a Bush loyalty oath were let into the room.
As I said here on the night of the debate, the CNN/Youtube debate wasn’t perfect. And there were for my tastes a bit too many questions based on a rather cliched sort of viral video silliness. All told though I found it surprisingly successful in getting fresh questions into the mix and edging at least somewhat more candor out of the candidates than the usual fare.
I’m not sure whether the resistance is rooted is the profound feebleness of the current GOP field or the fact that the current Bush Republican party is so beholden to a worldview based on denial and suppression of evidence that exposure to unpredictable questions presents too great a danger. But if they can’t face Youtube how can they defeat the terrorists?
The Democratic Daily:
What a bunch of wusses!
This reluctance to face questions from the people via the tubes tells you something about the Republicans. Whereas the Democrats not only took on the challenge, they seemed to enjoy themselves, even if the audience found that the questions were more pointed than the answers. But I imagine that the GOP candidates are afraid of having to field questions such as the ones the Democrats got about Iraq and gay marriage, and I’m sure there will be at least one questioner who will want to know why anyone should trust the Republicans after eight years of the Bush administration and twelve years of them in charge of Congress. And since the Republicans have a hard time working in an environment that isn’t hermetically sealed with only their worshippers inside the biosphere, they can’t allow themselves to be exposed to the real views of the American electorate.
Um, um … so what does that say about the Democratic party, whose main candidates have pulled out of BOTH debates that Fox News was supposed to cohost, debates in which SCRIPTED questions, which are much easier to prep for, would have been asked? I guess this means that Democrats would rather not have to deal with serious questions and instead take questions from snowmen.
Update: And the beat goes on, via Melissa McEwan, formerly known as one of John Edwards bloggers – you know, John Edwards, the first ‘big’ Democrat to weasel out of the Fox News debates:
I guess we did. I particularly like Romney’s haughty sniff that “the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman,” referring to a questioner during the Dem debate having used a silly animated snowman to ask a serious question about global warming. Quite a spectacular obfuscation when what he’s actually saying is that he simply doesn’t think Important Men like him should have to subject themselves to a rumble with the hoi polloi. And after his last fumbled excursion among the great unwashed, I can understand his hesitation. Answering questions asked by reg’ler folks about what an asshole you are can be uncomfortable, I suppose.
Uh – pot, meet kettle.
BTW, one of her co-bloggers wrote back in March 2007 that it was ‘good news’ that the CBC had decided to back off from wanting Fox to co-host a debate with them, because, “It’s time to stop allowing FOX and their unctuous personalities to frame national debate and news.”
Channeling the Nutroots: WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE!?!?!?!?!!?!??
PM Update: Interested in saving this debate? Here’s how you can help. (h/t: Lorie Byrd)
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Ohhh Please!! As if Bush was the first person to think this up. Remember Hillary’s townhalls on National Healthcare??? Ya had to be a good Dem to get into those and that was what, 1993??? I had a professor who was at the townhall in Des Moines, and one of the Doctors didn’t ask the question he was given by Hillary’s people, and she walked off the stage.
Big Wuss!!
As far as Republicans not going to this debate, I think any excuse they come up with is going to look silly, and it will be just that, an excuse. If they fear questions that are to left leaning, then call the debate host on that fact. As far as their “fear” that they might have to defend Iraq or gay marriage, what is their to be afraid of. Most people who want us to “Cut and Run” in Iraq or back Gay Marriage are going to vote Dem anyway, and there is no way to change that. Even if these Reps were stupid enough to pander to the people who want these things. So the innuendo used by bark bark woof woof is just asnine. Also as far as their assertion that 8 years of Bush has been bad, our economy is at all time highs, our unemployment is at all time lows, both are so good infact that the MSM has to trump up any little thing to make it look bad. /SHOCK The Dow dropped 300 points in a single day!!!! Well at 14,000 points that should have been expected ya idiots. Did we have people jumping out of windows??? I hope Rudy reconsiders, and I hope Romney doesn’t drop out. It would be interesting for the grass roots to watch these guys “let loose” abit. Hell if I was one of these guys I would show up in a Mercy Me T-shirt and jeans and tell ‘em all let’s kick back and have some fun!!! – Lorica
I could not disagree more with Patrick Ruffini on this. By participating in debates sponsored by CNN and the rest of the MSM, the GOP continues to shoot itself in the foot. Except that the foot is long gone, and they are working their way up the leg now.
You can bet your bottom dollar that the questions will only be variations of the following: “When do you plan to stop beating your wife, raping your daughters, wearing a white hood and burning crosses in the lawns of local African-Americans, and eating for breakfast the babies of undocumented immigrants doing the jobs Americans won’t do?” This is stock MSM “journalism” these days. The CNN/YouTube will be no different. Count on it. Why support suck a rigged and crooked process?
Democrats avoiding FOX….the GOP avoiding the MSM….it seems to me that Republicans win in that situation. The MSM is dying – why not help hasten its demise by denying it any shred of credibility that it does not deserve?
The GOP is being outraised by $100 million or more because it forgot the principles that gave it the majority in the first place and decided to act like Democrats. Answering a foolish question from someone in a snowman suit will not raise a dime for Republicans, no matter what Ruffini may imagine to the contrary.
There is one exception to this that I would make. If you plan to voluntarily enter the lions’ den, you should be prepared to fight the lying MSM lions. I agree with Lorica – if the questions are biased to the left, then the GOP candidates should challenge the questioners and CNN. Make one of the debate issues be about CNN’s rampant dishonesty. That would be a plus for the GOP. Anything short of that – the Republicans will only hurt themselves by allowing the MSM to frame the debate.
Anyone can make a youtube video, and CNN decides which ones to use in a time constrained format? How is this a debate?
Don Surber has a good article about this issue.
Key quotes:
Exactly.
The other day I got a phone call from a Republican asking for money. I told the caller that his boss is to much of a Democrat for any self-respecting Rep to give him money. I told the caller that his boss is one of the reasons we lost our majority.
That is a really good point MD. They should raise the MSM’s liberal bias to the National Debate level. These guys should go back and list the questions the Dems had to answer and compare them to what they will have to answer after the debate. I bet you will catch CNN big. – Lorica
These ultra-early “debates” remind me of pre-season NFL games. The first stringers are barely there, and their game plan involves one thing: not saying anything that will result in “injury.” Frankly I think these formats only dumb-down the process. Too many folks in the audience just looking for their fifteen minutes of fame. Left to their own devices, these procedings will eventually degrade into something resembling an afternoon with Jerry Springer.
I’m with MD on this.
It’s more than 15 months until the election. A canadidate who decides he’s not going to lower himself to the CNN/YouTube level of discourse will lose nothing over the long run. In fact, he’d be more likely to be considered a serious candidate than someone who makes himself into a Jay Leno joke by talking to a snowman.
On top of this, there’s the fact that the questions will be loaded, as MD says. Why give yourself more opportunities to slip up on biased questions hand-picked by MSM operatives? I’d love to see a candidate who would challenge the premises when the MSM asks them….after all, that seemed to work very well for Ronald Reagan.
No one is paying any attention to debates now anyway. I can actually remember a time when we were not always in a campaign. And it was better that way.
As for getting back to roots, what does that mean exactly? I think the Republicans were doing better and winning more elections when they tried to be more inclusive. Look at 2002 and 2004 and the money they were raising. In fact it was after the hardliners decided to make an issue out of illegal immigration and went out of their way to alienate hispanics and moderates that Republicans began to lose. There are ways to do things, and that was not the way.
Recently the Democratic base has been saying the same kind of thing about getting back to their values. They did not go to the DLC and they claimed that they need to be more liberal to attract voters…. not less. However, in my district here in Indiana the Democrat who won was a blue dog Democrat named Ellsworth who is pro life, pro gun rights and pro military.
The Democrats won by going to center.
So while I think it is important that Republicans remain center right, I hope they do not go so far to the right that the moderates continue to go to the Democrats.
Right now the best hope the Republicans have is the sheer stupidity of the Democratic base. If that base is able to alienate those moderate voters the moderate Democrats attracted in 2006 then the Republicans have a chance, unless of course their own base alienates even more people.
Aw, it would have been fun to have Rudy in a Youtube debate. Maybe somebody would have reminded him of the time he wigged out when somebody asked him why he was enforcing a New York City law that prevents people from keeping ferrets as pets.
Ferrets are listed as among the “dangerous” animals one may not keep in an NYC apartment.
I guess I’ll stop there. I could tell you about the time I saw a woman walking a wolf on a leash near Lincoln Center, but that, children, is another story.