post-debate analysis

There is universal agreement among conservative pundits and observers that the CNBC hosted debates reflected poorly on CNBC and especially poorly on the moderators, that the questions and the whole setup is hopelessly biased. Observers didn't like anything about it. Campaigns complained to Reince Priebus as the debate was happening and Priebus was ready with his and their litany when the production ended. Observers are commenting even CNBC was so embarrassed by their mess that they cut short post debate production for a rerun of The Profit. Others noticed the three chief moderators have gone radio silent on Twitter except for the worst who lied twice regarding one of his questions. They hated it. All of them do. Ben Shapiro writing for Breitbart demonstrates the liberal bias in both question and manner of questioning. He provides a lengthy summary of questions they asked and his mostly negative analysis of all of them. It is a thorough summary. Ben Shapiro is nothing if not serious.

Everything I've seen on television today aligns with this view. Except Democrats and liberal media are dismissive to Republican complaints about media bias. Honestly, paying attention to them today review the debate is like listening to fish discussing how the dry weather is hard on their dry cleaning expressed through dry fish-wit over dry martinis.

Everything that I've read and heard today is at variance with my own perception.

These are all serious people. They want a serious discussion. They yearn to hear policy. They want to hear each candidate' s position on tax reform and on immigration. They want to hear specific plans of action regarding entitlement spending and the budget, national debt, Federal Reserve policy, foreign policy. They are very eager for the most boring debate on Earth: Republicans talking about policy.

Nobody else wants to hear that.

Except serious people. Conservative pundits. Nobody else cares to hear it. They cannot listen. Those were the most boring parts of last night's debate. Face it, this is the idiocracy they aspire to lead. This is the idiocy they must deal with. From my point of view the questioning was perfect. This is what liberals talk about. This is what they write about on their sites. This is real life to them. This is the crap that must be dealt with. It's all they care about. The moment Republicans get serious then unserious people tune out and that is everybody. Everybody tunes out when Republicans start talking about taxes and fiscal responsibility.

I am well satisfied the candidates can handle any silly nonsense thrown at them. The things that people actually talk about, and they talk about liberal concerns interfacing with their cartoon version of Republicans. Now the candidates are battle proven and capable of delicately addressing and steering off the nonsense that circulates and into the space that they want to discuss. We saw a lot of that already last night.

It is not just liberal nonsense either. I see the exact same things circulating among the most strident Right wing commenters and especially Libertarians. They pick these up too and test them on Twitter and in comments throughout, all over the place. It may be unclear who their choice candidate is but they retweet these exact same attacks, and they are attacks. Challenges. Chances to persuade.

Republicans will use what they're calling disaster to contrive a format more suitable for them. Carson is attempting to subvert the stifling and rigid process from Priebus. I am glad this debate happened as it did. I was well pleased to see all these liberal-warped issues addressed directly and powerfully. It is still the best debate I've seen for the reasons given. Republicans didn't like it, and they'll get what they want for the rest and they want much more boring debates. Only serious minded people can tolerate that so expect viewership to decrease, nobody likes boring old numbers, those debates will satisfy Republicans only. These are the people after all who accept government adjusted figures and run with them, these people will recite debunked government and party supplied numbers and statistics until your ears turn to stone. No, best to have them present their liberal challenges as they did. Now go on and show us how grown ups will do it. We'll see how many viewers tune in for that. When the numbers diminish considerably we can say, "Well, people are familiar with candidates by now," when in fact only serious minded people can care about policy-driven statistics. It's a shame, but it's true.