Early on at Wednesday night’s CNN debate for Republican presidential candidates, a young woman in Huntsville, Ala., asked the field what they would do “to repair the image of America in the eyes of the Muslim world?” Given the current of state of international diplomacy, it seemed like a reasonable question.
But last night, far-right activists discovered that the woman who asked the question was, at some point in the past, an intern for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Therefore, conservatives now argue, the question was a “plant,” and evidence of negligence and carelessness on the part of CNN.
I realize that every few weeks, the right needs to find something new to get hysterical about, but all of this is painfully silly. Conservatives have worked themselves into high dudgeon since late Wednesday night, but I can’t quite figure out why they’re so apoplectic.
Apparently, some of the selected YouTube clips aired during the debate came from people who are Democrats. The retired general who asked about DADT supports Hillary. A young woman who asked about product-safety works for a union. A young man who asked about farm subsidies once worked as an intern for a Democratic congresswoman. All of these constitute, in the minds of a wide variety of right-wing activists, “Democratic plants” at a Republican debate.
Let’s take a deep breath here. Say, hypothetically, we here at The Carpetbagger Report decided to host a presidential forum, and I invited readers to submit questions for the candidates. Once I had a complete list, I’d go through them and pick the ones that seemed interesting, provocative, policy-oriented, relevant, etc. The goal would be to produce a spirited, though-provoking discussion.
Would I do background checks to see where the questioners interned years ago? Probably not, because it doesn’t matter. Whether questions came from candidates’ harshest critics or their own family members is largely irrelevant — the point is to consider the questions themselves on the merit.
That’s what CNN did. Republicans are, in response, demanding that heads should roll.
The LA Times went back and looked at some of the questions used at the Dems’ YouTube debate four months ago, and found “at least two of the citizen-interrogators had clear GOP leanings.” Guess what? That doesn’t matter either. Republicans asking questions of Dems; Dems asking questions of Republicans — it’s all just public discourse.
Indeed, you’ll notice that it didn’t occur to progressive blogs to do background checks on the folks who submitted questions to Dems at the last YouTube debate — in large part because we don’t care. The important part of the debate were the answers, not where the questioners interned years ago.
Indeed, Malkin herself conceded on Wednesday that “the questions were almost all coherent and well-framed.” But now that she knows more about the backgrounds of those who asked them, the questions are an outrage?
Seriously?
The right is extraordinarily good at creating manufactured outrages based on nothing but misplaced fury, but this latest “scandal” is particularly inane.
The poor folks at Red State have gone completely around the bend, issuing a list of demands:
1) Republican candidates for President should boycott CNN.
2) Republican viewers should boycott CNN until they fire Sam Feist, their political director; and David Bohrman, Senior Vice President and Executive Producer of the debate.
3) One or more of the Republican candidates should demand a do over wherein we can have a substantive debate about substantive issues that exclude CNN’s agenda, which is clearly out of touch with the Republican party, and the drivel we saw from YouTube.
I’m at a loss to understand how so many conservatives could complain so bitterly about such nonsense. CNN hosted a debate, Americans submitted fair questions, candidates answered them. So what, exactly, is the problem? That CNN didn’t impose ideological tests on voters with inquiries?
Even by the right’s embarrassingly low standards, this is just dumb.