"It’s silly to pretend that we thought the questioners would all be Republicans." No, it's silly not to tell the candidates and audience that the questions would come from Democrats. 

i am really pissed that there is not more outrage at this. I tuned in hoping that I would hear like-minded asking my candidates the questions I wanted awnsers to. The fact that the Democrats got in there (again) to try to control the adgenda really stinks. i also wish the candidates would have grown a pair and told Cooper and CNN what crap the whole thing was.

Nortonalec

I don't think anyone is making too big of a deal out of this at all...

It has taken years to be able to instantly expose the purposeful agenda the leftists have always had and used without being criticized and exposed.

This all has been a long time coming....and then some.

Fox gets accused of bias all the time by the leftist msm...when you catch and call the other networks on it...they ignore it....who me biased?

Give me a break.

This needs to be brought out...let the sunshine in...as the leftists love to say ad nauseum.

The issue is that CNN failed to conduct even the slightest most cursory investigiation into the questioners even after it had been chastised for similar problems with the democratic debate a few months ago. It was obviously not difficult to do, as the many liberal activists/campaign workers/supporters were discovered before even 24 hours had gone by. Of the thousands of questions that they weeded through, they had to pick ones from people with known ties to liberal democratic campaigns? This shows almost total incompetence or wanton collusion to inject liberal issues into a conservative debate.

It would be understandable if there had been one or two obscure ones that happened to slip in, but that wasn't the case. There was a Clinton campaign focus group member, the liberal union activist, the Barack Obama supporter, the Dick Durbin fellow, the Bill Richardson supporter, etc. Far too many to have been coincidental and innocuous.

The day that "politician" became a career choice is the day we started losing the Republic. Let's get it back! Fred08.com

A question to the Republican candidates is not a “legitimate question” if it’s asked by a potential competitor and intended to inflict harm rather than obtain information. Further, there were multiple questions of that type, and each one squeezed out truly legitimate questions from conservatives.

There will be a time and place for the presidential nominees to address issues of ALL voters for the presidential election. However, the Republican debate is intended to address issues of REPUBLICAN voters for the Republican primaries–not Democrats.

That guy asking the Republicans about gays in the military is like me asking Hillary Clinton what she’s going to do to reduce the size and reach of government--which is of no interest to liberals.  Questions by Democratic activists took away from information that conservatives were entitled to seek and thought that they would hear.

CNN failed in that mission, so now they try to mislead people about it.

“We’re focused on the questions, not the questioners,” said Sam Feist, CNN’s political director.

Yeah right. Like the diamonds and pearls question. Now there's a question worth focussing on.

Ken, there are two very good responses to Malor's piece.  They are written by the readers who frequent Ace of Spades, where Malor's post originates.  I don't think they have comment permissions here to respond on their own.

DoublePlusUndead

JackM

The documents were faked, but the story is true.

The "undecided Republicans" were faked, but the questions were true.

Dan Rather moment anyone?

I think the vast majority of republican voters aren't going to give a rat's behind about "gays in the military" when it comes to the general election.  Same thing with the display of the Confederate flag...

Whatever the opinion on those two subjects may be, REAL Republicans know they have #1 no relevence compared to what will be the major issues of the general election and #2 not even remotely important in terms of keeping the country on track economicaly and socially.  These questions were designed to make Republicans look intolerant and racist, rather than any interest in the answer.  They are the political equivalent of "So tell me, do you still beat your wife?" type questions, and we need to not humor the faulty premise.

or is he downplaying CNN's responsibility to find genuinely conservative, Republican questioners for the GOP debate, even if many of the questions were worded neutrally?

No, it wasn't enough that a lot of the questions were appropriate.

While CNN had no obligation to find all conservative questioners, they had a responsibility to keep out operatives from the other party.  They failed.

They had an absolute obligation to find real Republicans who were truly undecided, as that was what they represented, not know-nothing Democrats wasting space and time.  They failed miserably.

And the concluding question with Brigadier General Kerr.  Live, when it's supposed to be YouTube.  Non-conservative question.  Opposing party/opposing campaign operative.  Permitted to hound the candidates live because he didn't like their answers.  That was not a failure, it was a deliberate trap by CNN and an attempt to make the candidates they don't like look bad.

Again, we ask.  CNN, will you/would you conduct a Democrat debate this way?

Malor is falling for CNN's bull-oney.  This is a PRIMARY.  That means it's tailored toward REPUBLICAN voters and REPUBLICAN audience.  CNN was clearly trying to trap the Republicans by asking gay and black/black crime questions. 

This is an attempt to get us to compromise our values and convictions by saying, "Aw, come on, it's not that bad, is it?"

LET US NOT FORGET that it is CNN that has EGG ON ITS FACE right now, and they are the ones trying to spin their way out of it.  People like Malor are the GW Bushes of the right blogosphere trying to "reach across the aisle."  Just remember when you do that, you gain NOTHING and you lose EVERYTHING, including the respect of your base.

Forget 911, I dial 10MM.

I found an interview with anderson cooper on glenn beck's website from before the debate:

http://www.glennbeck...

COOPER: But actually I think most of our questions come from
Republicans. I mean, it's not -- this is not a bunch of
Democrats like lobbying, you know, as the Republicans. I
think if the debate became that, it would eventually kind of
be unfair. What we want is a serious debate for, you know, a
Republican audience with legitimate questions.

Why would he say this? Busted

I think the key issue is the way the questions were worded. I don't think that too many people would disagree that many of the questions were designed to make Republicans look bad, or were designed to play to the stereotypical image of Republicans. Take the Union mom for example... that question seemed to me to be intended to portray Republicans as the stereotypical mean white guy that wants to poison your children with lead paint chips off of toys form China.

Another example is the Confederate flag question. Although it doesn't appear to have been asked by a plant, it was obviously designed to portray Republicans as hayseed chomping racists. Whether this was the idea of the questioner, or whether it was picked by CNN for that reason is irrelevant.

Rush Limabugh made a good point on his show today as well. Even if these questions were "fair", they were still so narrow in scope because of the stereotypical nature of the subject matter that many substantive issues didn't even get touched on. Issues like Pakistan... what should we do about Musharraf's inability or refusal to do anything about the Taliban resurgence in the tribal areas (that's just one example).

One area where I do agree with Ace of Spades is that our candidates need to be able to answer these questions because at some point this won't be a primary fight anymore. They'll have to convince all of America that they're the right choice. But, I refuse to give CNN a pass on this one.

Jim C

How about some real Republican-style questions about 1) expiration of Bush tax cuts, 2) Iran, 3) using taxpayer money to fund global warming research, 4) Pakistan (someone mentioned this above… very important, 5) would you have vetoed the most recent SChip bill, 6) do you pledge to complete a fence during your term…. full length of the southern border?

Instead we get, “What would Jesus Do?” (no comment), “Do you believe EVERY word in the Bible?” (none of my business).  And we have the dude in the basement with a Confederate flag (Republicans have differing views about the flag, but doubt this would come out as a top issue in a current conservative survey).  And “Gays in the Military” (our military and our nation haven’t had time to worry about that for quite a few years, in case the Brigadier General and CNN hadn’t noticed).  Finally, the too cute request to the candidates, “Tell me about your guns” (is that the best CNN could do for a Second Amendment question?).  

The candidates must be prepared to answer lame questions, but we deserve better.  CNN picked the questions.

I think back to a few weeks ago when Sarkozy walked out of a Lesley Stahl 60 Minutes interview when she started questioning him about his divorce.  If one of the candidates last night had gathered up his dignity and left the stage, it would have made me proud.