Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

November 29, 2007

CNN's YouTube Republican Debate: The Shenanigans Continue

Good lord, will CNN never learn? There were 5,000 questions submitted for last night's debate and a *surprising* number of them were from committed Democrat candidate supporters.

Michelle Malkin and Hot Air have lots and lots of details.

I only caught the second hour of the debate and watched the first half hour of the discussion afterward. The alarm bells first started ringing when Bill Bennett (the only conservative commentator out of six in the after-debate mish mash) said he was getting e-mails saying one of the questioners (I think the guy who said, "What would Jesus do?" about capital punishment) was connected with the Hillary Clinton campaign. Anderson Cooper started hemming and hawing, saying that he didn't know anything about that, but CNN would look into it.

Seems to me they might have wanted to look into it BEFORE the debate. Or did they?

I also enjoyed watching the 12 "undecided Republicans" whose reactions were being monitored. One of them said after the debate that she was supporting John Edwards! Quite the interesting turn of events. Can you imagine a Democrat debate on CNN where an "undecided Democrat" announced he was supporting Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney? I can't either.

Despite the penchant for bias against them, Republicans go on these networks for debate...yet Democrats refuse to go on Fox. What is it they're afraid of? They'd likely be treated more fairly than the Republicans were last night...and for all that, the candidates did fairly well. (Some better than others, of course.)

And frankly, I'm still undecided.

UPDATE: Paul tried to post a comment in the comments section, but MuNu rejected it for "questionable content." No idea why, so I'm including it below:

Actually it was a retired general who asked about gaes in the military
being part of a Gay/Les/etc. group that has ties to HRC (thanks for the clarification Paul -- ed.). As I pointed out
in LLP post, I thought it was odd he was the only one allowed a follow up, live at that!

The HRC connection was noted afterwards, and A Cooper seemed angry about
it. I think it was a mistake, but the fact is, he works for HRC because
of his views; he didn't ask the question because HRC paid him off. I
think it's important to remember that he was expressing his own views,
although I agree CNN made a mistake in not having the connection beforehand
(which they've acknowledged).

UPDATE 2 (Nov. 30): Another rejected comment...what's up with that? (channeling Seinfeld)...this one from husband-dude:

The political preference wouldn't matter at all if it had been disclosed beforehand that the questioners were for the most part Democratic activists. They were not represented as such.

Republicans went ahead and had the debate with CNN where the network was apparently VERY biased against their party - and did very well.