For Ideological Primary Debate Moderation

I’m with Drum and Waldman — whatever their reasons for doing so, moving all of the Republican primary debates to Fox is probably a good thing. This point of Paul’s is especially important:

Republicans are convinced that previous debates have been problematic because the network talking heads who moderate them are a bunch of liberal activists trying to trip them up, a critique which is always wrong. The problem isn’t that the network personalities are liberals, it’s that they’re just terrible. They try to come up with clever “gotcha” moments to trap Republicans and Democrats alike, and they ask one inane question after another, like what sporting event they’ll be watching this weekend or what kind of pizza they prefer (watch this horror show and tell me that John King shouldn’t have had to do some kind of community service as penance).

Too many television journalists seem to equate “fairness and balance” with “focusing on random horse-race and/or personality trivia” rather than issues somebody who’s not a mediocre journalist would care about. (The example sticks out for me was the gruesome performance of Stephanopoulos and Gibson during the 2008 Democratic primary. Especially telling is Stephanopoulos grudgingly allowing that perhaps they shouldn’t have started out with 45 straight minutes of inane questions, but distributed them more evenly throughout the debate. Just dropping the inane questions would apparently be out of the question.) The thing about more ideological pundits is that at least they care, care about actual politics. They’re far more likely to be informed and to ask relevant questions. Cutting “neutral” journalists largely or entirely out of primary debates is almost certainly a good thing.