Making his now semi-frequent appearance on a primetime MSNBC show, lefty blogger Charles Pierce was on Thursday’s All In to trash the 2016 Republican presidential candidates as merely “a bunch of unruly, nasty children” during Wednesday’s CNBC debate and suggested that “the next one” should take place “in a sandbox.”
Pierce was egged on by host Chris Hayes, who turned to him by lamenting how he found it so “preposterous” that the GOP candidates called out the moderators as being part of the liberal media and excused the behavior of the moderators since “there are too many people on stage to manage a traditional debate, so everyone's frustrated at the end of these things.”
This set Pierce up to do what he does best (which is bloviating about why those meddling conservatives are so evil):
Well, first of all, if they are going to rejigger the process, I would suggest to Ben Carson and the people he's meeting with that they have the next one in a sandbox because God, what a bunch of unruly, nasty children we had, but basically, Chris, I think it's really easy to be a Republican presidential candidate. The answer to every question is liberal media. Are you — do you associate with snake oil salesmen? Liberal media. What about the budget deal? Liberal media. What about the fact you that don't do your day job? Liberal media. That's simple.
Pierce added that it’s such a “great” idea that “once you lay truth aside and don't consider a factor in what you say, it becomes an even simpler job.”
Later in the segment, Pierce returned for more by bashing Ben Carson’s tax proposal as “apparently written in clouds of cotton candy supported by bailing wire” before going on to attack those offered up by Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina:
Marco Rubio, right at the end, lets slip that he wants to have no taxes at all on investment income. You know, out in Malibu, Mitt Romney felt a warm breeze from the mountains and didn't know why. Carly Fiorina essentially said there's no constitutional basis either for the minimum wage or for Social Security. Yeah. I mean, those are not gotcha questions. When you come to Ben Carson and say, you know, how is your 10 percent tithing attitude toward taxation going tone able us to have a federal government, if his answer to that is you're wrong and the math will add up and liberal media, then he hasn't answered that question.
As my colleague Tom Johnson explained, Pierce took the pages of Esquire immediately after the debate to promise that he would “buy a beer” for co-moderator John Harwood “the next time I see the guy” since he “pinned Rubio on the fact that the Tax Foundation scored Rubio's tax plan and found that it would send the deficit careering off into the Van Alen [sic] Belt, as well as shoving even more of the country's wealth upward.”
The relevant portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes on October 29 can be found below.
MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes
October 29, 2015
8:07 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS HAYES: And part of the issue here, Charlie, is that the whole thing gets painted with this broad brush of bias which, frankly, I find somewhat preposterous, particularly in this context, but part of it, Charlie, it also strikes me as there are too many people on stage to manage a traditional debate, so everyone's frustrated at the end of these things. They were frustrated at the first two also. Their candidates are not getting enough time, they're not making statements, there's all these questions, but, you know, you've got ten people. What are you supposed to do?
CHARLES PIERCE: Well, first of all, if they are going to rejigger the process, I would suggest to Ben Carson and the people he's meeting with that they have the next one in a sandbox because God, what a bunch of unruly, nasty children we had, but basically, Chris, I think it's really easy to be a Republican presidential candidate. The answer to every question is liberal media. Are you — do you associate with snake oil salesmen? Liberal media. What about the budget deal? Liberal media. What about the fact you that don't do your day job? Liberal media. That's simple. That's great and plus, once you lay truth aside and don't consider a factor in what you say, it becomes an even simpler job.
(....)
8:10 p.m. Eastern
HAYES: Charlie, Ezra Klein made this point I thought was interesting, basically said people are angry but partly they're angry because the policies of the Republican Party have gotten so detached from reality — “the problem for Republicans is that substantive questions about their policy proposals end up sounding like hostile attacks” and you know, I think there's something to that particularly when you're talking about tax math, right?
PIERCE: Well, I mean, Ben Carson's tax plan is apparently written in clouds of cotton candy supported by bailing wire. Marco Rubio, right at the end, lets slip that he wants to have no taxes at all on investment income. You know, out in Malibu, Mitt Romney felt a warm breeze from the mountains and didn't know why. Carly Fiorina essentially said there's no constitutional basis either for the minimum wage or for Social Security. Yeah. I mean, those are not gotcha questions. When you come to Ben Carson and say, you know, how is your 10 percent tithing attitude toward taxation going tone able us to have a federal government, if his answer to that is you're wrong and the math will add up and liberal media, then he hasn't answered that question.
