Republicans Have Themselves to Blame for Such a Shoddy Debate Format
The Republican debate was a wasted opportunity.
It could have been used to discuss some of the most important issues of the day, such as the new budget deal, economic growth and youth unemployment. Instead, moderators asked candidates not to examine their proposals or the proposals of Democrats, but to turn on one another.
The moderators did not have to be that way. In the first debate of the evening, which included former Sen. Rick Santorum and Gov. Bobby Jindal, CNBC moderators were friendly and polite to the candidates. In the second debate, it was all about attack. Candidates didn’t get any questions about what they thought about Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. It was all about what they thought of one another.
This lack of seriousness in our political discourse is one reason that outsiders such as Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina are doing well in the polls. This is not just true of the U.S. In Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, a comedian who had never held elective office, just won the presidency.
Most people agreed that the big winners in Wednesday’s debate were the youngest on the podium, senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. The big loser was former Gov. Jeb Bush.
Bush came into the debate with massive expectations because of the fears that his donors are losing faith in him. Donors, who were wined and dined in Houston this week with presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush, are beginning to doubt his staying power, believing he doesn’t have what it takes to run. The news this week was that Jeb Bush was retreating to New Hampshire. A front runner competes on all fronts; he doesn’t retreat to one state.
The onus was on Bush to prove himself as leader of the group of Republican candidates who had won elected office. But he failed spectacularly. He went after Rubio, accusing him of being AWOL in the Senate. Rubio was fully prepared and made Bush look weak, and Bush never recovered.
Sen. Rand Paul was another candidate who needed a turnaround but didn’t get it. He will try to filibuster the new budget deal to achieve the same goal.
Paul is in a tough situation because he is running for reelection for Senate in Kentucky, and some want him to quit the presidential run and focus on the Senate.
Under Kentucky law, a person cannot appear on the ballot twice, both for Senate and for president. But Paul, with the help of fellow Sen. Mitch McConnell, also Senate majority leader, managed to change Kentucky’s primary to a caucus, so Paul is running for both. From Wednesday night’s results, it doesn’t seem as though he can break through the presidential pack.
Donald Trump contradicted himself on multiple issues, including immigration policy. Now he says that he does not want to deport everyone; he wants to allow foreign graduates of Harvard, Yale and Princeton to stay. How about the University of Maryland, Mr. Trump? Trump knows that the average American does not care about nuances of immigration policy. The debate didn’t hurt Trump; he has already peaked and is going down.
The moderators made egregious errors. John Harwood accused Rubio of having a tax plan that disproportionately favored the top 1%, misstating numbers from the non-partisan Tax Foundation. In reality, the graph in the Tax Foundation’s analysis shows that the biggest winners of the Rubio tax plan are the lowest-income earners.
Becky Quick said that women made 77 cents on a man’s dollar in a question to Ted Cruz. This canard has been repeatedly disproved. It fits the Democratic narrative of Republicans’ War on Women, just as George Stephanopoulos asked Mitt Romney whether states have the right to ban contraception in a 2012 presidential debate. By now everyone knows that when experience, choice of profession and time in the workforce are accounted for, women make on average 95% of men’s earnings, not 77%.
No one from CNBC thought it worth mentioning that Rubio and Cruz brought out new tax plans this week. Rubio has answered criticism of his tax plan by adding a 25% bracket to his 15% and 35% brackets, and proposed a tax credit for businesses that offer paid parental leave. The moderators could have asked him why he made the changes. Cruz has proposed a 10% flat tax that he said could be filed on a postcard. Moderators could have asked him how big would be the postcard, and how much revenue the plan would lose.
It is puzzling why Republicans agree to such a debate format. If they want to debate, why not choose a sponsor such as or the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (my current employer), the American Enterprise Institute, the Tax Foundation or the Heritage Foundation? These organizations are known for detailed analysis of proposals. Such an event would receive equal or greater media coverage and would serve to provide real information to voters.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow and director of Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute. Follow her on Twitter here.
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