And now from Hadas Gold, at Politico, "Moderators lose control at third GOP debate":
The CNBC-moderated debate became a debate about CNBC, as various candidates and the audience turned the tables on the network’s three moderators.Keep reading.
The repeated bursts of anger and anarchy were prompted, in part, by questions from the moderators that veered, at times, beyond sharp into contentiousness. By the end of the first hour, the audience seemed to be siding with the candidates, booing when CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla seemed to play gotcha with Ben Carson about his past work for a questionable company.
Taking on the media is a time-honored tradition in Republican debates, from Ronald Reagan in 1980 to Newt Gingrich in 2011. But those were generally one-time outbursts. On Wednesday night, the tension was palpable throughout the encounter, a theme that may have dashed CNBC’s plans to use the night to showcase a broad array of its own anchors and introduce itself to millions of new viewers.
The pattern was established very early by Donald Trump, spurred by a question about his tax plan from CNBC’s John Harwood that suggested the businessman was running a “comic-book” campaign. Trump angrily proclaimed that the network’s own star host, Larry Kudlow, had praised his tax plan.
Soon after, Texas senator Ted Cruz picked up the cudgel declaring, in response to a question from Quintanilla about raising the debt ceiling, “Let me say something at the outset. The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. This is not a cage match. The questions shouldn’t be getting people to tear into each other.”
Cruz, his voice rising in indignation, cited Harwood’s “comic-book” question to Trump and one from CNBC’s Becky Quick to Carson that declared that his flat-tax plan wouldn’t bring in nearly as much revenue as he claimed. After Cruz waxed on about a double standard between Democratic and Republican debates, Quintanilla seemed visibly irritated, and he and Harwood each refused to give Cruz any extra time to answer the original question.
A few minutes later, they seemed to think better of it and did give Cruz the time. But the spuriousness of the decision left them open to further expressions of outrage by other candidates whenever the moderators tried to cut them off.
The unruly atmosphere was a far cry from what CNBC seemed to want and expect, from a gauzy opening photo montage to a series of promotions emphasizing what Quintanilla, at the outset, called, “CNBC’s top experts in the markets and personal finance” and “the best team in business” journalism.
Earlier, the network's efforts to showcase a large number of personalities during a disjointed pre-debate discussion drew jeers on Twitter from reporters, political operatives and others who couldn’t stand the banter between the anchors, correspondents and pundits filling time between the two events.
"The CNBC anchors are just desperately filling airtime with absolute nonsense to kill time,” conservative writer John Tabin tweeted.
"Please run vertical color bars until the debate starts,” wrote U.S. News and World Report’s managing editor for opinions Robert Schlesinger...
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