Eric Zuesse
TIME has posted the transcript of the August 6th Fox News Channel Republican Presidential candidates’ debate, and there are a number of interesting features in it that have not generally been covered in the press:
1: After
introducing all the contestants in this the first of the Republican
Presidential candidates’ debates, FNC’s Chris Wallace turned to FNC’s
Brett Baier and said, with no explanation “I think you would call that a
home field advantage.” This constitutes subtle acknowledgment that Fox
News Channel is, and prides itself on being, the Republican Party’s television network
(thus “home field”). Mr. Baier’s reply to that was equally opaque: “It
might be. We’ll see,” as if that statement meant something.
CORRECTION: A reader wrote in reply: “The
reason for the Fox News comments in your number 1 is because they had
just introduced Ohio Gov. John Kasich and the debate was in Ohio and he
got massive applause. You should correct this.” I don’t subscribe to
cable-TV, and so I had no way of knowing that Kasich received a bigger
applause than the others did. I interpreted “home field advantage” on
the basis only of the printed transcript, which is the only version of
the complete debate that I’ve seen. I’ll never do that sort of thing
again. However, I now interpret the phrase “home field advantage” as
having been a very artful double-entendre on Chris Wallace’s part.
Whether it was only a single-entendre statement is something that one
can only guess about, and it might have been, but I don’t think that it
was. Clearly, however, since the applause-level was louder for Kasich
than for the others, that would have been the primary meaning for the
phrase.
2: The first question in the debate was from Baier, and (as Ezra Klein aptly noted) it was specifically selected in order to shame one specific candidate, Donald Trump, who is the only candidate who has not promised to endorse whomever wins the Republican nomination:
Gentlemen, we know how much you love
hand-raising questions. So we promise, this is the only one tonight: the
only one. Is there anyone on stage, and can I see hands, who is
unwilling tonight to pledge your support to the eventual nominee of the
Republican party and pledge to not run an independent campaign against
that person.
Again, we’re looking for you to raise your hand now — raise your hand now if you won’t make that pledge tonight.
Mr. Trump.
(BOOING)
Obviously, a Republican audience would
boo such a candidate; so, this question got things off to the intended
start — one in which Mr. Trump was uniquely disadvantaged in front of
this particular crowd. What was immediately clear is that the debate’s
hosting was being stage-managed so as to weaken Trump’s chances of
winning the Party’s nomination.
Another candidate then chimed in to attack Trump:
[Rand] PAUL: I mean, this is what’s
wrong. He buys and sells politicians of all stripes, he’s already… he’s
already hedging his bets because he’s used to buying politicians.
The exchange on this closed with
TRUMP: I will not make the pledge at this time.
BAIER: OK. Alright.
(LAUGHTER, BOOING)
This audience booed Trump but considered him just a joke.
3: Then, Megyn Kelly, to candidate Ben Carson:
Your critics say that your
inexperience shows. You’ve suggested that the Baltic States are not a
part of NATO, just months ago you were unfamiliar with the major
political parties and government in Israel, and domestically, you
thought Alan Greenspan had been treasury secretary instead of federal
reserve chair.
Aren’t these basic mistakes, and don’t they raise legitimate questions about whether you are ready to be president?
CARSON: Well, I could take issue with — with all of those things, but we don’t have time.
In other words: he refused to answer the
question. Unlike with candidate Trump, there was no follow-up, neither
by FNC’s hosts nor by other candidates.
4: The first “(APPLAUSE)” for a candidate was indicated right after Jeb Bush said that, as Florida’s Governor,
they called me Veto Corleone. Because I vetoed 2,500 separate line-items in the budget.
(APPLAUSE)
This applause suggests that the formula
to sucker Republican voters is to cut government spending as much as
possible, as if everything is better done by the private sector than by
the public sector, or else as if serious consideration of what is better
done by the public sector doesn’t even need to be discussed by
Republicans who are running for public office.
5: The second “(APPLAUSE)” was right after Bush said:
And the net effect was, during my
eight years, 1.3 million jobs were created. We left the state better off
because I applied conservative principles in a purple state the right
way, and people rose up.
(APPLAUSE)
6: The first question that was directed to Mr. Trump was:
KELLY: Mr. Trump, one of the things
people love about you is you speak your mind and you don’t use a
politician’s filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in
particular, when it comes to women.
You’ve called women you don’t like “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.”
(LAUGHTER)
Your Twitter account…
TRUMP: Only Rosie O’Donnell.
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: No, it wasn’t.
(APPLAUSE)
Your Twitter account…
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Thank you.
KELLY: For the record, it was well beyond Rosie O’Donnell.
TRUMP: Yes, I’m sure it was.
In other words: Trump there admitted that
he either had been lying or else had erred in his first response to
Kelly’s question. There was no audience response — no “(BOOING)” — to
that admission of his guilt on this. This audience just didn’t care that
he was either a liar or else a careless speaker. And there was no
follow-up regarding which of the two he was in that exchange. (Do
Republicans really not care which it was?)
7: The
next question was from Chris Wallace, to candidate Ted Cruz; and it
dealt with Cruz’s ability to “reach out to minorities.” Cruz’s answer,
implying that he was proud of not doing it, was the second line of the evening to win an “(APPLAUSE)”:
CRUZ: Chris, I believe the American people are looking for someone to speak the truth.
(APPLAUSE)
So: Republican voters don’t even want to have a President who will “reach out to minorities.” Whew! Are these people Nazis? Republican voters seem to seek that.
8: The next question, from Baier, was directed to candidate Christie:
Under your watch, New Jersey has undergone nine credit rating downgrades.
Christie’s reply:
CHRISTIE: If you think it’s bad now, you should’ve seen it when I got there.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
In other words: when Baier pointed out
that the situation that had preceded Christie’s Governorship was nine
credit-levels better than it now is, the dumb audience first laughed
(indicating that Christie is somehow to them a clown), and then they
applauded when the answer was “you should’ve seen it when I got there”
(indicating that nine credit-levels better was bad, not good; nine
credit-levels worse is good, not bad). First, they laughed at Christie’s
‘joke,’ then applauded his response, which had pretended to the
contrary of what Baier had just asserted to be the actual fact: it was
actually nine credit-levels better “when I got there” than it now is.
Obviously, with voters like that audience, this wasn’t a debate that
would be won on the merits or demerits of the contestants, but on the
prejudices of the audience, who might as well be deaf and dumb.
9: The
next question, from Kelly, to candidate Walker, was: “Would you really
let a mother die rather than have an abortion” to which he answered, and
the audience applauded:
WALKER: Well, I’m pro-life, I’ve
always been pro-life, and I’ve got a position that I think is consistent
with many Americans out there in that…
(APPLAUSE)
In other words: Yes — and Republican voters applaud that.
10: The
next was Chris Wallace to Huckabee, about “social issues,” to which
Huckabee responded (assuming that abortion was the topic):
I think the next president ought to
invoke the Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the constitution now that
we clearly know that that baby inside the mother’s womb is a person at
the moment of conception.
The reason we know that it is is
because of the DNA schedule that we now have clear scientific evidence
on. And, this notion that we just continue to ignore the personhood of
the individual is a violation of that unborn child’s Fifth and 14th
Amendment rights for due process and equal protection under the law.
Again, from this audience:
(APPLAUSE)
In other words: Republican voters
overwhelmingly assume that once a sperm-cell meets an egg-cell, there is
a two-celled “person” who has “equal protection under the law” with the
mother, so that her life and health are no more to be protected than is
the mere “potential” of that now-fertilized egg possibly to reach 20+
weeks and so to start to become a consciousness of some sort — a real
being. Republicans are that obsessed with mere flesh, and with sheer
physical matter, they’re that aspiritual (no matter how religious they
are) so that the woman isn’t worth, to them, any more than that
unconscious, two-celled, mere fertilized egg. That stupid conviction,
just stated by preacher Huckabee, was actually applauded (not booed) by
these obtuse people.
11: The
next question, by Baier of Paul, was “you recently blamed the rise of
ISIS on Republican hawks.” Paul replied, and the audience applauded:
I’ve got a proposal. I’m the leading voice in America for not arming the allies of ISIS.
(APPLAUSE)
He ignored Baier’s charge, and was
applauded for doing so, presumably not on account of the audience’s
sharing his conviction against “Republican hawks,” but instead on the
basis of their having ignored what the question actually was, which the
candidate had simply evaded answering. Real issues mean nothing to these
people.
In other words: Mere slogans win this
audience. But the slogans must be ones that repeat things the audience
already believes to be true (regardless of the evidence — and this
applause had preceded any such).
12: Well,
that’s enough. In fact, it’s really too much, though it’s just a few
minutes into the debate. So, now I’m happy that Fox News Channel didn’t
let people such as I am see the debate. I’m happy that they were so unprecedently grubby as to do that. Oh, and by the way: this debate was apparently
an instance when Rupert Murdoch finally laid down the line to his
longtime employee, the former Reagan TV guru Roger Ailes, and told him
to sink Trump’s candidacy so that Trump won’t get these dumbells’
nomination to represent the Party’s other moneybags.
How much do those candidates despise
their audience? And how much are they actually part of their audience?
Or, does that make any difference?
Would it even be possible for
a decent person to win the Presidential nomination of today’s
Republican Party? But one can’t blame only the voters, nor only the
funders, nor only the politicians, for this. The Republican Party itself
is to blame.
THE DEBATE’S OUTCOME:
An NBC News Online Survey that was released on the night of August 9th was headlined “Post-Debate Overnight Poll Finds Trump Still Leading Pack; Carly Fiorina Winner of Debates.”
It reported that Trump now had the support of “23% of Republican
primary voters following the debate,” and that this was a 1% gain for
him, from his previous 22% support. There were much bigger gains for Ted
Cruz, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson. Cruz was now the second behind
Trump, with 13%; Carson was now 3rd, with 11%, and Fiorina was 4th, with
8%. Trump’s 23% were then asked “If Donald Trump does not win the
Republican nomination for president and runs as an independent
candidate, for whom would you vote?” 54% of that 23% answered: “Donald
Trump, the independent candidate.” 19% of that 23% answered “The
Republican candidate.” 21% of them answered “Depends.” It’s conceivable
that Trump might win the Presidency even if Murdoch and his Fox News
campaign against him.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
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