By Chuck Marshall
The Republican presidential candidates are demanding a new format for future debates. I think anyone who watched the debacle on CNBC last week could understand that sentiment. I have never seen anything worse - on the national stage- than what I witnessed last Wednesday. The lack of order and the entire platform was so combative that the event quickly ran out of control. Shockingly, the ingratiating Ted Cruz is my hero for calling out the moderators for their biased questions. Every single one of their questions were designed as a "gotcha" question. It was as if the moderators were debating the candidates. Along with Ted Cruz there was Donald Trump, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie and Marco Rubio all managing a counter-attack on the dopey moderators making them look even more ridiculous than their incompetence had already accomplished. It was like watching a middle school newspaper interrogate the high school principal and his staff; "That's just as likely to happen as for you to grow wings and fly off that stage" one of them chirped in a blithering comparison to Trump's tax plan. Huh ? The entire thing was even more shocking in that it was common knowledge the public wanted to see less arguing and more explanations in these debates. So.....they did the EXACT opposite.
So, now the Republican candidates are putting their heads together and they are demanding a new format. I don't know the details of what they're demanding, but since this is another episode of "Chuck Marshall's Humble Opinion" of course I have a solution. Why don't they invite ALL the media outlets to converge at a public University in a mutually agreed upon state. Most schools have debate teams., so have these people act as moderators and let them "run the show".... so to speak. That way you have people who are use to running a debate and not a group of confused yellow journalists sputtering out useless questions. In addition, all the media- even the far left MSNBC can relax and sit on the sidelines while the professionals do their job. Today's journalists are trained to dig for facts, and create a controversy between the parties out of said facts. Since most journalists tend to be Democrats- there is a natural friction between the moderator and the Republican candidate. Let's stop this lunacy and have intelligent questions from non-partisan moderators looking to help the viewer understand each candidate and his ideas and philosophies as they compare to the other candidates. All journalists are welcome to watch and cover-- from the back of the auditorium. Now, wouldn't that be nice.... In my humble opinion.
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