Ted Cruz Supporters Applaud Tirade, But Is His Criticism Of CNBC Justified?
Despite poll numbers to the contrary, Republican voters may be taking a second look at Ted Cruz after his breakout performance on last night’s CNBC debate. Ted Cruz took a shot at the press and at the moderators of the debate. According to Republican pollster Frank Luntz, he scored major points with the GOP base.
Ted Cruz's focus group dials hits 98 with his attack on media bias. ?
That's the highest score we've ever measured. EVER. #GOPDebate
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 29, 2015
“The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” Ted Cruz stated. “This is not a cage match!”
“Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain? 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?” Cruz shouted at CNBC moderators.
The attack was met with thunderous applause, the loudest that any one candidate received during the debate.
But was Cruz correct in his characterization of the questions that CNBC moderators were asking of the Republican candidates?
Vox writer Ezra Klein calls the attack smart politics but cautions Cruz supporters against putting too much stock in the poll numbers he might gain from the performance. The substantive questions Ted Cruz says the American people want to hear — questions about policy details, hard facts regarding how each candidate would potentially run the country if they were elected — these are the questions that were, in fact, asked during the debate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYj5iTCr1Pg
Cruz was asked one such question — his thoughts on a potential debt limit compromise — when he elected to attack CNBC instead of providing anything approaching an answer.
Ted Cruz’s much-tweeted reaction has garnered him some support in the short term, but analysis of his performance is still rolling in today. The transcript of the debate, for instance, seems to contradict Cruz’s characterization of the CNBC moderators.
Trump wasn’t asked if he was a comic book villain — the only reference found in the transcript to comic books is found at the tail end of a question by CNBC moderator John Harwood, which references the outlandish flair for which Trump has become well known.
Still, Ted Cruz was perhaps right to criticize this question by CNBC moderators. It could certainly have been worded differently and sounds more like a personal attack than a serious question.
Later on in the debate, Slate reports, Trump was confronted with a quote by moderator Becky Quick, and he denied having ever calling Marco Rubio “Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator,” in reference to Rubio’s support for immigrant tech worker visas. Quick read the quote to him off of his own website, which Trump simply shrugged off.
Ben Carson on the other hand, might have left the debate looking a little better off if he’d been handed a question like that.
Instead, he was asked by CNBC moderator Becky Quick to provide specific details regarding his tax plan. She ran the numbers and found them wanting. The question asked of Carson was nothing but substantive.
“This is something that is appealing to a lot of voters, but I’ve had a really tough time trying to make the math work on this. If you were to take a 10 percent tax, with the numbers right now in personal income, you’re going to bring in 1.5 trillion – that’s less than half of what we bring in now and, by the way, it’s going to leave us 2 trillion in the hole. So what analysis got you to the point where you think this will work?”
“When we put all the facts down, you’ll be able to see that it works out very well,” Ben Carson replied.
Was Ted Cruz’s outburst justified? Is the Wall Street Journal correct in characterizing the debate as “the GOP debate against CNBC”?
[Photos by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]
