By WILLIAM MCGURN
Nov. 2, 2015 7:21 p.m. ET
When even Carl Bernstein is slamming CNBC’s handling of the Republican debate, you know someone’s head is going to roll.
It just wasn’t the head of a CNBC moderator.
On Sunday the Republican National Committee announced a shake-up under which Sean Cairncross would replace Sean Spicer as the new RNC point man for the debates. The move was aimed at appeasing unhappy GOP candidates who are almost as irritated with the RNC for agreeing to let a man as partisan as John Harwood moderate a debate as they are with his employer, CNBC.
Here’s the Republican dilemma: The RNC may succeed in quieting down its candidates and extracting some concessions from the networks, which do not wish to lose out on the premium advertising and large viewing audience a GOP presidential debate brings. But whatever happens, Democratic presidential contenders are unlikely ever to have to stand on a stage even half as tough as what their Republican counterparts endure.
The great irony here is that it was precisely CNBC’s bias that made for such a good evening for Republicans. Republicans are always complaining about the media double standard—and last Wednesday night, CNBC gave millions of Americans the full monty. Viewers also saw how powerful it can be when Republicans take the opportunity to turn questions back on their inquisitors.
It’s a gift that keeps on giving, moreover, as the one-line defense from CNBC spokesman Brian Steel insists on something no one is contesting: that those who run for “leader of the free world should be able to answer tough questions.”
Truth is, CNBC’s Waterloo had little to do with its moderators’ questions and everything to do with the snark and contempt they came drenched in. For example, Mr. Harwood’s characterization of Donald Trump’s bid as a “comic book version of a presidential campaign” did not make his question any tougher. It simply made it insulting.
More illuminating is how the CNBC moderators consistently challenged the anti-big-government assumptions of the Republicans who stood on stage before them.
CNBC’s Sharon Epperson asked Carly Fiorina, “Should the federal government play a larger role in helping to set up retirement plans” for workers? Becky Quick wondered if Mike Huckabee’s complaints about income inequality meant he favored “specific steps” corporate America should be forced to take to reduce it. Jim Cramer asked Mr. Trump whether the feds should be “controlling” drug prices. While Carl Quintanilla fantasized about a role for the federal government in regulating fantasy football.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But compare this with the questions Anderson Cooper and the CNN team asked the Democrats in their debate. With a single exception—Dana Bash asking Hillary Clinton “Really? Another government program?” about her call for laws mandating paid leave—Democratic sensibilities about the fundamental role of government were left unmolested.
What might such questions sound like? Here’s a sampler.
• Martin O’Malley, you were mayor of a city whose recent riots have highlighted its poverty, broken public schools and lack of opportunity. Fifty years and hundreds of millions of tax dollars after LBJ launched the War on Poverty, cities such as Baltimore have almost nothing to show for it. Given this record, why should anyone think government has an answer?
• Bernie Sanders, you say our system of campaign financing is corrupt and has been co-opted by billionaires, to the point where only the well heeled and well connected can get ahead. Yet over on the GOP side, Ben Carson—a political outsider—gets his funds from mom-and-pop donations and has risen to the top of the polls, while the candidate with the big-time corporate bucks, Jeb Bush, is floundering. So how can you claim our political campaigns need more regulation?
• Mrs. Clinton, back in the 1990s your husband concluded the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed legislation repealing the Glass-Steagall restrictions on affiliations between banks and securities firms, and embraced welfare reform and cuts in capital gains taxes. In 1996, he famously declared “the era of big government is over.”
Today you are running on a pro-tax, pro-regulation, pro-spending platform that is almost the opposite of your husband’s economic record. If his policies worked so well in the 1990s, why are you running against them today?
• Here’s one for all three: Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Sanders and Mr. O’Malley, all of you support an increase in the federal minimum wage. Are any of you aware that the Davis-Bacon Act—the first federal minimum-wage law—was passed in part to prevent southern black workers from taking construction jobs from unionized white workers up north?
Of course, it’s impossible to imagine any universe in which Democrats would answer such questions because it’s impossible to imagine their ever being asked in the first place.
