Republican debate in Boulder reverts to a media-bashing spree

During the third debate between the top 10 Republican presidential candidates Wednesday night in Boulder, Colo., the participants reverted to the cheapest trick to elicit applause from a conservative audience: bash the media.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio did it to rebut criticism of his frequent truancy from the Senate, arguing that when Sen. John F. Kerry was campaigning for the Democratic nomination in 2003 and 2004, the liberal media never fixated on Kerry’s absences from his day job. Rubio very successfully doubled down on this point by slapping back the same attack from his fellow Floridian, Jeb Bush. Bush never whined about Sen. John McCain missing Senate votes in the 2008 GOP primary campaign, Rubio said. After that retort, Bush practically disappeared from the stage.

Donald Trump shot a couple of zingers at the CNBC moderators for asking questions that he considered rude -- this from the man who has built his campaign on rude and demeaning insults aimed at just about anyone who has dared to oppose him or question his high opinion of himself.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, though, delivered the most comprehensive condemnation. He accused the moderators of trying to turn the debate into a “cage match.”

“Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain?” Cruz said, ticking off his interpretation of some of the moderators’ questions. “Ben Carson, can you do math? John Kasich, will you insult two people over here? Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen? How about talking about the substantive issues?”

As Ezra Klein pointed out in a Vox blog post after the debate, though, the questions Cruz criticized were actually queries about very pertinent issues: Trump’s policy-free, bluster-packed campaign; Carson’s tax plan that economists of all political persuasions agree would leave a massive hole in the budget; Kasich’s very public attack on the infuriating shallowness of Trump’s and Carson’s ideas; Rubio’s cavalier attitude toward his Senate duties and Bush’s deep slide to single digits in the polls.

The problem the candidates had with the questions was not that they were insubstantial, it was that they hit on weak points the presidential aspirants would rather not talk about. In the first GOP debate over the summer hosted by pro-Republican Fox News, only Trump complained about the tough questions. This time, because a mainstream news operation was running the show, it was easier to revert to crowd-pleasing slams of the media.

Rubio did it best, just as he did everything else rather well. The immediate post-debate analysis in media of all political stripes gave Rubio a solid win. Cruz also got kudos, as did New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is particularly good on a debate stage, although it has yet to give him much of a bump in the polls. After dominating performances in previous debates, Trump had little to say in this one and almost got lost in the crowd. His fellow front-runner, Carson, showed more quickness than in prior events and certainly pleased his fans by coolly defending his indefensible tax plan.

Commentators on Fox and MSNBC were in uncharacteristic agreement in declaring Bush the night’s big loser. For weeks, his campaign has been lagging and he has been rather peevish in public. Conventional wisdom said he needed to make an especially positive impression Wednesday night, which he failed to do.

After the debate, one of those annoying members of the media corps asked Bush to assess his own performance. Apparently, that also was a rude and unfair inquiry. The candidate shot back, “It’s not a performance. I’m running for president of the United States.”

This bunch of tough guys claim they can beat Hillary Rodham Clinton and stand up to Vladimir Putin, but it sure is easy to hurt their feelings with the wrong question.