Common Sense University

The most recent Presidential candidate debate on the Republican side was held in Florida and hosted by CNN with Anderson Cooper as moderator before a live audience of several hundred people. As before, all eight Republican candidates were present and had supposedly agreed to the format of the debate: Questions were to be asked by individuals on ‘Youtube’ tapes from around the country who had supposedly not yet decided who to vote for. After the introduction of the eight candidates; Guiliani, Huckabee, Hunter, McCain, Paul, Romney Tancredo and Thompson, the format was explained and the show got under way.
 

It began with a guitar playing fellow serenading the eight candidates with a self-composed ballad in which he mentions all eight in a cute way. This set the tone pretty well in that it became clear this was a show and not a serious presidential debate. By this time, it had already lost the seriousness that one would expect from such an event. Then followed nearly two hours of questions via YouTube videos from all kinds of people. They had been selected by CNN staff together with moderator (Anderson Cooper) from a total of well over three thousand submittals. The individuals were either directing their questions to specific candidates or all of them and then it was up to the moderator to allow follow-up comments or responses by other candidates.

The range of questions came from a huge list of debate topics and even included one person who wanted to know what former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee thought “What would Jesus do” in the case of the death penalty. The response by Huckabee was probably one of the best of the evening in that he declared “that Jesus was far too smart to run for political office”. There also were some heated exchanges between candidates resulting in either applause or boos from audience members. All in all, the debate flowed in that no particular topic was extensively overdone. The innocent observer of this debate could follow the issues and the responses by the candidates.

Then came, what was not known at the time, the so called YouTube bloopers. One questioner was a retired Army Brigadier General from California who wanted to know why the candidates thought it was not good for admitted gays or lesbians not to serve openly in the military. At first, he was seen on a tape and within minutes, it became clear that he was also in the audience and had a wireless microphone in his hand. Anderson Cooper turned to him and asked him if he had gotten satisfactory answers from the candidates who had responded to him. He stated that he did not like the answers and was allowed then to ask the candidates directly.

Not until after the debate had ended did it become known that this retired General was a plant by the Hillary Clinton campaign. This man is supposedly in an advisory capacity on a committee for gay and lesbian issues for that campaign. In fact, CNN had flown this man from California to Florida to be in the audience. It did not take long to learn that there had been several other questioners selected by CNN who were supporters of the Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards campaigns. There were not, as had been falsely presented by CNN undecided voters who were considering voting for a Republican candidate but instead were committed voters for candidates on the Democrat side. Mind you, they had supposedly several thousand of these you tube tape submittals and CNN picked only about thirty of these applicants.

Why did CNN not do a little bit of research into these selected questioners? For us here at Consider Common Sense, the answer is very clear: CNN is an active member of the ‘Hillary Clinton gallery’, i.e., they are on the Hillary for President bandwagon! And they call themselves “the network you can trust”. There are a lot of people in America that refer to CNN as the “Clinton News Network”.

All in all, one has to wonder why the Republican candidates play along with these staged events. The guessing games and discussions after the debates with respect to Who Won, Who Lost, Who Looked Good or Who Looked Bad are just that, games! These debates allowed in prior years time for the candidates to make brief statements as to their agendas, goals for America should they win the Presidency and so on. It has been eliminated in this race and in our opinion it is not for the better. What is being attempted here, we have to ask? Should we measure candidates solely on the basis of their responses to questions? Is the quick witted response by a candidate a good measuring stick to give a voter comfort when he or she decides who to vote into the White House as the next President of the United States and thereby also the leader of the free world?  This is even worsened by having the questions asked by the opposing party’s supporters. WE THINK NOT!

It is really a shame that the media industry cannot come up with better formats and ways to present the candidates to the voting populace. In conclusion, this debate event was a farce and one can only hope that there will be no reruns in terms of format, style and content.

This article and others on Back to Common Sense are designed to provoke further thought and investigation.   It is not the intent for the articles to be politically biased. Sources are referenced in each article to encourage readers to delve into the supporting material.  We welcome all readers to participate with their point of view either in support or contrary with additional information sources.

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