The Trump-Media Debate

 What does “winning the debate” mean?

In 1960, the first televised debate was between Kennedy and Nixon. If you ask people who watched the Kennedy-Nixon debate on TV, Kennedy won. People who listened to it declared Nixon the winner. In the end, Kennedy won the election. Did the debate make a difference? Perhaps.

It’s 2024, and we’re talking about the Trump-Harris debate. Thanks to the moderators, Harris performed better. However, a poll of 10 uncommitted voters went heavily for Trump.

Epoch Times

headline:

Trump–Harris Debate Attracts More Than 67 Million TV Viewers, Most Watched Debate in 16 Years

The Sept. 10 ABC News presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris was the most-watched network debate in 16 years with an average of more than 67 million TV viewers, according to the outlet

The number does not include streaming and is a combination of those who tuned into ABC, CNN, Fox News, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and Fox. It does not include those who watched it on Newsmax, PBS, NewsNation, Scripps News, BET, Univision, Headline News, Telemundo, and Fox Business.

An average of 26.4 million people watched the debate on linear and streaming platforms.

What did people see? It depends. Deep Blue Democrats like abortion, glittering generalities, platitudes, and promises. They hate Trump and threaten to move to Canada. Aided by the moderators, she confirmed their allegiance.

For the undecided voters – whoever they may be – she ducked issues they cared about and offered no solutions to their problems. Her answers were the word salad that she’s famous for.

Trump supporters - MAGA enthusiasts - got the Trump they wanted, although they wished he would have hit Harris harder.

However, the entire audience - the big networks and streaming media- saw corporate media bias without the mask. ABC moderators were delivering rabbit punches and shots below the belt in the ring. They lied when they said Trump lied and never once called Harris on her lies. This was a debate between Trump and the Corporate Media, and Harris was the color commentator.

The information universe is changing rapidly. A large and growing part of the audience gets their information from internet sources, which means that the problems of people in Springfield, Ohio, are being told even though the Corporate press spikes these stories.

The truth is that Haitian immigrants practice voodoo and have imported their culture into the middle of America. People know it in part because Elon Musk allows “X” to be a platform for citizen journalists where information and truth are not throttled by curators at the networks and the major newspapers.

I believe that we’ve reached a tipping point. A tidal wave of information and truth is washing away the carefully constructed Potemkin Villages that the media has erected. In a way, ABC stepped on a landmine and blew itself up. The rest of the Corporate Media are collateral damage.

Harris didn’t win; the Democrats and their allies in the Corporate Media lost. Trump will win in a landslide, and ABC helped make that happen.

Don Surber has great questions for Donald Trump

 The fourth RINO debate in this presidential cycle was another waste of time without The Donald. He is the only one who matters because the nation has to see if he is worthy of a second presidency.

Of the three questioners last night, only Megyn Kelly mattered because the nation knows who she is. I almost watched the shit show to see if she still can hack it as a journalist but the four candidates who did show up are minor leaguers. I wish she and Trump had another go at it because I want to know what have each has learned in the last eight years since their first debate encounter of the Fox kind....

Megyn Kelly interviewing Trump would help both by raising her profile. He could use some tough questions about his first term, beginning with his personnel decisions.

Here is what she could ask.

First question: Your first Cabinet by and large failed you. Outside of Ric Grenell, Wilbur Ross and Betsy DeVos, secretary of education, you had a Cabinet of Frenemies because a Republican Senate vetoed the people you wanted. How will you avoid hiring losers again?

Do Democrats hate the country?

The Diplomad 2.0 commented on the Democrat debates.

Biden can't keep up, as revealed by the tentative way in which he raised his hand in accord with the others that we should provide "free" medical care for illegal aliens. At times, Biden reminded me of Ted Kennedy when asked why he wanted to become President and couldn't say.

I say all that about Biden while acknowledging that he's the best of the Dem bunch--kinda like when I declare American universities junk but the world's best . . . junk. The others range from absolute delusional morons to crazy Communists. Any one of them would make Carter and Obama look like great and patriotic presidents. Biden, at least, doesn't seem to hate the country: A low bar, but one that the other candidates can't seem to clear--they seem auditioning for the CPUSA Chairmanship.

DRUDGE on the third debate.

Chris Wallace Grills Clinton on Corruption...
TRUMP: She Should Return Money To Abusive Countries...
'I'll Keep You in Suspense' About Accepting Election Outcome...
FLASHBACK: Gore explains why he won't concede election...
Reporters Caught Cheering for Hillary...
DANNEY WILLIAMS, 'ABANDONED SON' OF PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, WILL FILE PATERNITY SUIT...
New Bill Clinton Sexual Assault Accuser Goes Public for First Time...
Video...
WIKILEAKS DUMP #12...
Podesta Says: OK for Illegals to Vote With Driver's License...
Emails Reveal Cozy Relationship With Hollywood, Iger, ABCNEWS Chief...
Soros Mentioned Over 50 Times... 
HILLARY 'DOESN'T KNOW WHAT PLANET SHE'S ON'...
She Tested 85 Slogans!
CNN live feed drops as Congressman mentions WIKILEAKS... 
NBCNEWS: USA Pressured Ecuador to Act Against Assange...
O'KEEFE: DNC Schemes to Bully Women at Trump Rally...
Operative Who Oversaw Agitators Visited White House 342 Times...
LATIMES POLL: ALL TIED UP!
RASMUSSEN: ALL TIED UP!
*IBD/TIPP: TRUMP +1...
*Was most accurate in 2012... 

Jonah Goldberg admits defeat

Obviously, I have my agreements and disagreements with everybody on the stage, but as a political matter I’m not sure any trend lines will change appreciably because of tonight. A lot depends on which clips and exchanges become the basis of TV chatter over the next few days. But one thing is clear, any hopes of destroying Trump on a debate stage are now dead.

You don't get to where The Donald is in the polls by being a bad debater.

Carly Fiorina Stings Hillary Clinton With Brutal 14-Word Jab: ‘Unlike Another Woman in This Race…’

Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina took a brutal 14-word jab at Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton during Thursday’s undercard GOP debate.

“Unlike another woman in this race, I actually love spending time with my husband,” Fiorina said.

Cruz rips press in debate

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Democrat Debate

By Sultan Knish

Anderson Cooper: Can anyone find Syria on a map?

Hillary Clinton: Well Anderson, as a woman...

Anderson Cooper: Can you find Syria on a map?

Hillary Clinton: As a woman...

Anderson Cooper: Syria on a map. Can you find it?

Hillary Clinton: As a woman...

Anderson Cooper: Never mind. Senator Sanders, do you agree with the Secretary?

Bernie Sanders: SYRIA? Why are we talking about Syria when 41 PERCENT OF 99 PERCENT of all the money is going to the 1 PERCENT.

Anderson Cooper: Can you just answer the question.

Bernie Sanders: Syria is CONFUSING. Lots of PEOPLE fighting. Economics is SIMPLE. You just take away all the money from all the people who have the MONEY.

Anderson Cooper: The question is about Syria.

Bernie Sanders: Right NOW the 1 PERCENT are eating BABIES. They have piles and PILES of babies in their MANSIONS and on Wall Street and they're chowing down on them like hungry dogs.

Read the whole thing.

SHAHEEN TEAMED WITH DEBATE MODERATOR STEPHANOPOULOS ON BILL CLINTON CAMPAIGN

Why must the moderator of a political debate be a member of the press?  In Glenn Reynold's words, they are Democrat operative with bylines.  Candy Crawley, call your office.

Romney knocks CNN’s Crowley over debate flap

Mitt Romney said Monday that CNN's Candy Crowley overstepped her bounds by playing fact-checker during a debate between Romney and President Obama in 2012.

Appearing on Hugh Hewitt's radio show, Romney said Crowley shouldn't have interjected to confirm President Obama's claim about the evolution of the administration's talking points about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

"Well, I don’t think it’s the role of the moderator in a debate to insert themselves into the debate and to declare a winner or a loser on a particular point," Romney said. "And I must admit that, at that stage, I was getting a little upset at Candy, because in a prior setting where I was to have had the last word, she decided that Barack Obama was to get the last word despite the rules that we had."

It's a little late Mitt.

Let’s talk about the Republican split.

Let’s talk about the Republican split.

I was going to call it a “Civil War” but that would be an exaggeration. There is a very deep fissure in the Republican ranks. There are any number of ways it can be described, but one of the best descriptions I have read of the "establishment" Republican Party is that it's the “Not-Democrat Party.” By that I mean that the Republicans are the party you vote for when you don’t want the Democrats to win.

The Democrats have become firmly ideological. When Michelle Obama spoke about her husband wishing to fundamentally transform America, she meant it and so does he. They, and a majority in Congress, desire a socialist welfare state and are doing everything they can to transform the country into one.

Those who quibble with my use of the term - socialist - are simply playing semantic games suitable for academia.  They are trying to re-define terms.  They do that all the time.  They won't use the phrase "raise your taxes," but will talk instead of "revenue enhancement."  It means exactly the same thing but it sounds better.

You don’t have to nationalize the country’s basic industries, at least not now, when you can tell them what to do via agencies like the ACA, EPA, DOJ, NSA, HEW, SEC, IRS and a host of other agencies including those “friendly” guys in the Smokey the Bear hats at the National Park Service who are ready to follow orders, block views of Mt. Rushmore, imprison elderly tourists at Yellowstone and threaten to arrest old veterans in wheelchairs,  like good Germans.

The establishment Republicans, on the other hand, hope that the Democrats will screw up enough so that they can win some elections, get the better offices, control the committees and get more of the PAC funds to fatten their campaign coffers. But they are the polar opposite of being ideological. Oh, they remember the words and the music enough to give a rousing stump speech about the direction the country’s headed, the debt and the deficit, the need for a strong national defense. But they check their beliefs with pollsters before they utter them and pander to the Democrats in the press. They want to get good press and so, like Groucho Marx, they proclaim:

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.

They come to Washington to compromise.  Not having any firm principles, they see nothing wrong with helping build the Welfare State, but hope to do it on the cheap.  But having arrived in Washington  their compromise is always with the Left, never with the Right.  The Right lives in flyover country while the Left is right outside their door. 

Drew at "Ace of Spades" explains...

For too long the GOP has wooed conservatives by talking tough but acting very moderate when elected. I think you can trace it back to George H.W. Bush breaking his "no new taxes" pledge. Conservatives rallied around the elder Bush and put aside their distrust and dislike of him mostly out of respect for Ronald Reagan only to find out Bush the Elder was exactly who conservatives thought he was all along...an old school country club Republican.

The support for his son, Bush 43, was largely a result of 9/11 and the subsequent - incredibly poorly named -  War on Terror. Outside of that his presidency was as country club as his father, with a Texas drawl. Remember his mantra: “compassionate conservatism?” What was that all about?  Did he believe the Liberal lie that conservatism was not compassionate?  Visit, if you dare, the "urban" neighborhoods of Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Camden or any of the other festering sores that "Liberal compassion" has built and tell me again that Conservatives need to apologize for their positions.

What Liberals have done is created a group of people who are three days away from anarchy and starvation. Richard Fernandez at Belmont club:

Fifty million. Consider that for a moment. Most of those 50 million people live in high-density cities. Many are proud owners of Obama phones, Obama food stamps, Obama unemployment checks and Obama subsidized housing. They have absolutely no clue that the government upon which they wholly depend to put food on the table is teetering on the verge of permanent collapse. (Seriously, they cannot conceive of the idea of government “running out of money” because they do not understand where money comes from.) Because of this distorted belief, they do not prepare for any future events other than more Obama handouts. Their entire “preparedness” plan is to vote for Democrats, because that’s who they know will give them the most handouts. And they will always win the popular vote, too, because any politician promising to restore responsible fiscal spending to the government by cutting programs will be viciously accused of being “mean” or involved in “hating poor people.” So the government handouts will only ratchet higher and higher, ensnaring more and more people, until the entire system is unsustainable and collapses under its own weight.

When that system of dependence fails, those who depend on it will panic in mere hours. As proof of this, consider the fact that this mass looting of Wal-Mart stores happened in less than three hours after the Saturday EBT card glitch struck. Police had to be called in to prevent the situation from getting completely out of control, and it was offline for only part of one day.

Now imagine what will happen when EBT cards go offline for 24, 48 or even 72 hours. And imagine it happening in every U.S. city simultaneously.

Remember those young black kids in Detroit talking about Obama's stash?  Those are the people who, if the EBT cards don't work,  are not going to be looking for a job, but to ransack the Wal Mart until the shelves are bare. Don't believe me?  Read this.

Here's what the Republican establishment needs to hear:

Conservative voters are feeling neglected betrayed and unappreciated by the GOP (and I think for good reason). Instead of telling conservatives to suck it up and fight Democrats, Republicans are going to have to treat conservatives as voters they have to woo. Maybe instead of telling conservatives to shut up and fight Democrats they should spend sometime telling conservatives what the GOP has done for them (and, "but the Democrats really suck" isn't good enough). If the GOP has been so good for conservatives (and I mean small government conservatives here), it shouldn't be hard to come up with a long list of positive achievements. Of course, there will be an alternative and likely longer list of GOP actions against small government conservative interests.

Increasingly the GOP is going to have convince wayward conservatives the GOP is good for them like they try and win over any other voting bloc. You don't see the GOP berating moderates, women, minorities or other blocs that aren't assumed to be part of the base the way they do "tea party" conservatives.

The members of the Tea Party and the rest of the grass root conservatives are accustomed to being treated no better than Democrats treat blacks: they are useful for winning elections but told to get to the back of the bus at other times.  In return blacks are rewarded by a subsistence existence via welfare; Conservatives don't even get that much. 

But the members of the Tea Party are not helpless welfare cases whose monthly check comes from the government.  They are independent and, in fact, contribute to the government rather than feeding from it.  These are free people who will rebel and have the means to do it. 

Back to Fernandez:

William Galston, writing in the Wall Street Journal warns that the institutional Republican Party — the political equivalent of the Washington Generals — may have lost its audience after the longest losing streak in history. A large part of the GOP base is walking out — led by an “aroused, angry and above all fearful [Jacksonian America] in full revolt against a new elite”. They’re no longer entertained, no longer spellbound by suspense after finally being convinced that the Washington General’s secret job is to lose every exhibition match against the Democratic Party Hokum Globetrotters. 

I do not believe that the Republican establishment will listen.  They lack both the spirit and the energy to fight the Democrats; it's easier to join the Democrats and try to destroy the insurgency.  If the establishment wins, as it well could, the Republican Party will return to it's status as an irrelevant minor party.   Keep in  mind that's exactly what it was in Congress for many years until the Gingrich revolution. 

But it's possible for the Tea Party to win.  They view the last few weeks as a loss for the Republican establishment but a trumpet call for the Tea Party. 

The Washington Times:

Far from chastened by the debt debate, tea partyers and conservative groups signaled Thursday they’ve concluded they didn’t lose, but rather were sabotaged from within by weak Republicans — and they took the first steps to oust one of them.

Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel announced he would challenge U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in the Republican primary next year, a day after the GOP’s senior senator voted to end the 16-day government shutdown and grant President Obama more borrowing authority.

Mr. McDaniel immediately saw a flood of support from the outside groups that had rallied against this week’s debt and spending agreement.

“Our country can’t afford any more bad votes that stem from old friends and back-room deals,” said Daniel Horowitz, deputy political director of the Madison Project. “And as witnessed from the recent budget battle against Obamacare, we cannot win against Democrats if we don’t grow our conservative bench in the Senate.”

That doesn't sound like they're taking the establishment's advice.  The test will be in the country, not in Washington,  The country is being tested and we will see what kind of people we are. 

One more thought from Fernandez:

But the assumption that Third Party must only come from conservative ranks bears closer examination. For the Democrats need money too. In fact they need it more than anyone else, a fact underscored by their obsession to lift every limit on their credit cards. The truth is they are only one step ahead of disaster; for if once the EBT system stops working, even momentarily, there is a drastic disturbance in the force.

Nor is this surprising. It has been argued and proved by natural disasters that the entire fabric of civilization is but nine meals from anarchy. After 3 days without food most people are willing to do anything to anybody to get a meal. The hard reality is that the current deficit system will inexorably create a situation when the grub literally runs out.

Alexis de Tocqueville’s argued that slavery should be abolished because it was a money loser. “The colonies in which there were no slaves became more populous and richer than those in which slavery flourished”. That fading system was not only bad, but bad for business. Similarly it can be said wide sections of the Democratic Party have an interest in rising against The Plantation in order to survive.

In the same way that Tocqueville maintained that slavery could be condemned “in the name of the master”, so it can be said that the members of Democratic Party should also rise in the ‘name of their pensions, jobs and other expected benefits’. Without reform those ‘gains’ are toast. Lincoln Steffens once said of Soviet Russia, “I have seen the future and it works.” People with pensions should visit Detroit. That is the future and it doesn’t work.

The middle-class Democrats who want their pensions paid, the teachers and the college professors, the city and state employees by the millions need the system to stay solvent at least during their lifetimes.  They are going to find out what it means to compete with people dependent on Obama's stash as cities go bankrupt and decisions have to be made about who gets the money that remains. It's not going to be Republicans vs. Democrats but the working class versus everybody else.  The pitchforks are being shouldered and the torches are being lit, and the people in the castle are in for a surprise.
 

 

Coulter versus Libertarianism

The Fox News Wrap-Up After Debate 3

There seems to be no disagreement on either side about the debate.

David Gergen: Romney Passed The Commander In Chief Test

Metaphor alert:

I have very little respect for David Gergen, but he is the ultimate Washington survivor, the reliable weathervane. If Gergen is jumping on the Romney bandwagon on CNN, the handwriting is on the wall. The fat lady is singing. Stick a fork in Obama, he’s toast.

Liberal Columnist Richard Cohen Giving Up on Obama

Thanks to the internet, we can find views that are congenial to our own and live in the kind of opinion bubble that the MSM has been creating for its readers and viewers since …. forever. So after reviewing my favorite websites to get their take on last night’s Foreign Policy debate between Romney and Obama (check out Krauthammer), I decide to check the ideological opposition. The first one I read was the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen. He wrote a “pox on both your houses” column, but put his thumb on the scale for Obama even while calling him a liar.

But he concludes with this:

The result, though, was that he [Romney] could draw few distinctions to Obama on almost any foreign policy issue. The night went to the president — but given the esoteric nature of the subject, election day may be a different story.

I think this is a very important point. In the paragraph preceding the last one Cohen says:

For Romney, caution was clearly the byword. He has closed with Obama in the polls, and the last thing he needs is to rattle the electorate by ratting some sabers. That will not close the gap with women voters.

All the polls and focus groups tell us that "it's the economy stupid."  It’s obvious that Romney could have gone after Obama on Libya and we on the Right would have cheered. But Romney already has us; not least because he is not Obama and we desperately want this horrible four-year nightmare to end. What Romney needs are the mushy “undecided” voters who don’t want a bellicose President who will drag out a war that has gone on too long or start others when people are suffering at home. Romney was not going to let Obama paint him as a warmonger.

The Romney strategy for this debate was to make no new ripples and allow the tide that is sweeping Obama out of office to continue. That’s a man who won’t allow his emotions over rule his judgment. That’s the next President of the United States.

Krauthammer on Romney’s ‘unequivocal’ win: ‘Romney went large — Obama went very, very small’

Obama Third Debate Prep

CNN admits that Crowley’s disregard of the rules was intended to help Obama

If authentic, CNN’s memo explaining why Candy Crowley permitted President Obama to speak four minutes more than Mitt Romney during Tuesday’s presidential debate is devastating to that network:

On why Obama got more time to speak, it should be noted that Candy and her commission producers tried to keep it even but that Obama went on longer largely because he speaks more slowly. We’re going to do a word count to see whether, as in Denver, Romney actually got more words in even if he talked for a shorter period of time.

One of Crowley’s main jobs as moderator was to enforce the rules that were established for the debate. The rules established time limits, not word limits.

Via Powerline

Crowley had two jobs at the debate.  The first was to be sure that Obama had time to make his arguments and to prevent Romney from making his but cutting him off.  The second was to ambush Romney on the issue of Benghazi and "terrorism."  Since she knew the questions in advance, in fact had picked the questions, she knew how that part of the debate was going to go and was ready to rally to Obama's defense. 

And in This Corner ...

Ramirez