In analysis provided by News Busters, a conservative media watchdog group the Republican debate on CNN was basically a squabble. You may remember that.
The three CNN moderators asked 55 questions trying to get the Republicans to criticize each other. That was 74 percent of all the questions posed in the entire debate -- 74 percent. Here's a sample.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Senator Cruz, Governor Kasich says that anyone who is promising to rip up the Iran deal on day one as you have promised to do is, quote, "inexperienced" and, quote "playing to a crowd". Respond to Governor Kasich, please.
In an interview last week in Rolling Stone magazine Donald Trump said the following about you. Quote, "Look at that face, would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that the face of our next president?"
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'REILLY: Now, it was obvious that Jake Tapper and his cohorts wanted to provoke the Republicans to attack each other and to some extent that happened. Tonight do you expect the CNN interrogators to do the same thing with the Democrats? I don't
Already we are hearing that Anderson Cooper and his cohorts are not that much interested in confrontation. But if CNN doesn't handle the Democratic debate the same way it did with Republicans that itself will become a big news story.
Now, there are plenty of differences between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the two top poll people.
Sanders is off the chart left and is running a one-trick pony campaign. The barn burner telling folks our capitalistic system is rigged and the rich are taking advantage of everybody else. That's what Bernie has. That's it.
Hillary Clinton is a policy person. The problem is the policies of the Democratic Party and President Obama are not working. And if CNN wanted to, they can go to town on that as "60 Minutes" did on Sunday. But again, I don't really expect many questions about President Obama. I could be wrong.
The other Democratic candidates have absolutely no chance whatsoever and they'll slow down the debate which most likely will not be scintillating anyway. About the only thing -- the only thing that could make the two-hour debate interesting is if the moderators really challenged the Democratic contenders: Hillary Clinton on the e-mail deal and her flip flopping; Bernie Sanders on punitive taxation and socialism in general. Again with CNN's liberal profile you don't really expect that will happen.
One final thing: it's interesting that Fox News is often branded as a Republican-leaning network. But if you watched the Republican debate here on FNC that was one tough forum, was it not?
So we will see tonight whether CNN can rise to the occasion with tough questioning and holding the candidates accountable for their specific answers.
And that's “The Memo”.
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