I watched part of the debates last night (what can I say, I’m a glutton for punishment). Although I think the YouTube format was dumb, it at least seemed to give “average” people a chance to participate in the process.
Now, that bastion of calm and fair reporting :rolleyes: , Michelle Malkin has found other questioners with ties to Democratic candidates.
Hey, I’ve got no problem if the questioners were lifelong Kerry fans or if the sleep with a picture of Teddy Kennedy under their pillows. But it should be known ahead of time. The questions could have been prefaced with, “Mr. Smith, a Kucinich supporter, has a question for the candidates.”
CNN, do some fucking research on who you are giving air time to.
I’m not sure why it matters who asked the question. Isn’t the purpose to find out where the candidates stand on issues? Just because an issue is posed by a supporter of someone else, or of another party, does not alter that issue itself.
I sort of agree. It seems silly to have every questioner give a run-down of their voting preferences before getting to the point. I mean, most attendees of the GOP debates probably are supporters of one GOP candidate or another. Arguably a Hillary supporter would be more impartial, since he probably doesn’t favor any of the candidates actually running in the GOP primary.
Of course the General didn’t just ask a question but also gave a little speech (actually, arguably the best speech of the evening, IMHO, or at least the most sincere), which was probably a little more morally questionable.
I agree about that, but it is a matter of perception. Be upfront and say, “Look, I’ve been a lifelong Democrat, just like my dad and just like his, but I want to know where you stand on Diet Pepsi versus Pepsi One.” Just like you don’t want shills asking questions that were handed to them by the candidate’s people, you don’t want people to misrepresent themselves. When a person who is not just a supporter of the other party but is an actual employee gets to ask a question without declaring his affiliation, you have to question the integrity of not only the forum but of the presenters.
You have to admit that the majority of the people in attendance or watching have pretty much decided they are going to vote Republican, they are just trying to figure out which candidate to back. If the questions being posed are coming from people whose only interest in the Republican candidate is finding which one is easiest to beat, then I think that is deceitful.
They should stand tall and say, “Yes, I voted for Mondale. Now I want to ask Romney what kind of underwear he wears.”
God forbid we shoud distract from the highly valuable debate on the number and size of the huge, throbbing guns that the candidates or their sons personally own.
I missed the debate. Anyone got some links to the better questions?
I thought some of the ones at the Democratic debate were great-- I especially liked the one about Global Warming where the guy did the Snowman claymation thing. I laughed my ass off.
The idea of these kind of primary debates, I thought, was so that the regular citizen can (possibly) get to ask a presidential candidate a question of some import to them. These kind of adhoc “town hall” meetings look open and honest.
I don’t mind it if a particular event has a preponderance of supporters from one side or the others present. (Say, for example, the Republican debates have an audience that is predominantly republican voters.)
But I would/do mind it if the questions are picked in advance by the candidates, because that gives them time to vet the answers through their marketing/PR staff, and end up being false promises full of platitudes, or other BS. This completely nulifies the purpose of an adhoc “town hall” format type of debate. We might as well just watch the political ads.
Edit: On review of the OP, I misunderstood the situation. I don’t think that the Republican candidates gave this guy the question to be asked in the debate. My apologies. :smack:
I still don’t see an issue in where the question comes from, whether from a supporter of an opposing party candidate, an employee of that candidate, or the candidate themselves. The issue is what each of the Republican candidates think on that question.
I’d have much more of a problem if it was a Thompson employee, for example, asking a question.
From what I’ve been reading of most conservative-leaning blogs, this was evidently some kind of attempt by CNN and/or Hillary’s campaign to pack the forum with “Democratic shills posing as undecided Republicans” and keep actual Republican voters from being able to ask questions (THEY are the ones who’re voting for these candidates at this point, after all) and to make the Republican candidates look bad. One place is even calling for a do-over with “real” and “substantive” questions.
Though there is at least one fairly prominent-seeming blogger who agrees that the nature of the questioner didn’t invalidate the questions or subsequent reactions.
I could be very wrong here, as I am far, far too lazy at the moment to look it up, but my understanding of this particular question and answer session was that the questions were supposed to be from undecideds. I won’t go so far as to say they were supposed to be from Republican undecideds (although that would be reasonable, as this was a debate for the Republican primaries), but I don’t think there’s any doubt that there were many “undecideds” there who had definitely decided…and that’s a little…fishy.
There are people who vote in the primaries of one party even though they plan on voting for the other party in the general election.
The General apparently claimed to be a log cabin Republican, which honestly doesn’t seem unlikely, and in which case he may indeed be a registered Republican who plans on voting in the GOP primaries even though he supports Hillary for President.
Ah, but it does matter. It was an attack question against every single Republican candidate, offered by a member of the opposing party whose interest lies not in a discussion, but rather in making all the Republican Candidates look bad. He didn’t ask “what is your position on gays in the military?” He asked:
This isn’t an honest question. By phrasing it the way he did, he has already stated that the candidates believe that the military is not professional. You don’t start a question about a candidate’s plan for combating domestic violence by asking him when he stopped beating his wife unless you want to defame him, and the same applies here.
Imagine if the roles were reversed and some Republican hack got this question posed in the Democratic Debate. “Mr. Obama, why do you hate freedom so much that you are willing to abandon the Iraqi people to terrorism by pulling our troops out?”
A lot of questions in these town-hall debates are phrased accusingly like that, even when not asked by people that support a candidate from the other party. A lot of people that ask questions have an axe to grind on their particular issue, even if they don’t favor one candidate over the other, its rare that it isn’t obvious which side of the issue being discussed is favored by the questioner
Honestly, I don’t have a problem with that. A candidate is going to need to be able to handle that kind of question in all sorts of venues if they’re going to be prez, so watching them try and handle it in the primary debates is actually a pretty good exercise.
I don’t read that at all. I read it as assuming that military people can quickly move beyond a person’s sexual preference and ignore it. It compliments the military on the ground, who have managed it for millenia, while asking why their managers are not so open-minded. The military on the ground has long preferred results over what some guy does in bed. Do you think Alexander’s men said, “I’m not fighting for that queer?” No, they said, “He wins battles. So does the guy in the line next to me. So what?”
For what? That CNN flew him in to FLorida from California just to ask that question? I’m not going to ask what your definition of “reputable” is. But cites?Sure. Looks like people submitted the questions, and CNN flew in quite a few.
What’s really weird in that article is that it says Kerr says he hasn’t done anything for Clinton and supports Republicans. That just doesn’t scan.
I don’t read that at all. I read it as assuming that military people can quickly move beyond a person’s sexual preference and ignore it. It compliments the military on the ground, who have managed it for millenia, while asking why their managers are not so open-minded. The military on the ground has long preferred results over what some guy does in bed. Do you think Alexander’s men said, “I’m not fighting for that queer?” No, they said, “He wins battles. So does the guy in the line next to me. So what?”