If Ted Cruz was looking for a breakout moment in Wednesday's debate on CNBC, he got it early on. While other candidates ultimately complained about the moderators' questions, Cruz was ahead of the curve, providing
one of the debate's big moments when he railed against the moderators in response to the very first substantive question he got (he had previously interrupted to talk about his flat tax plan):
Let me say something at the outset. The questions asked in this debate illustrate why the American people don't trust the media. This is not a cage match. Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain? Marco Rubio, why don't you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen? How about talking about the substantive issues—contrast with the democratic debate, where every thought and question from the media was, which of you is more handsome and why? Let me be clear. The men and women on this stage have more ideas, more experience, more common sense, than every participant in the Democratic debate. ... The questions being asked shouldn't be trying to get people to tear into each other.
Cruz managed to use up his time to answer a substantive question—he
was asked about his opposition to "a compromise that would raise the debt limit, prevent a government shutdown and calm financial markets that fear of another Washington-created crisis on the way"—with his complaints about how the questions supposedly were unfair. He then became outraged when he wasn't allowed more time to answer the question he'd been asked. The crowd loved Cruz' rant, but reality didn't love it so much. Ezra Klein
points out the gulf between what the candidates were actually asked and how Cruz portrayed it:
Take the question to Trump. He wasn't asked if he was a comic book villain. He was asked why his policies sound like "a comic book version of a presidential campaign." And the question was specific. Moderator John Harwood asked, "Mr. Trump, you have done very well in this campaign so far by promising to build another wall and make another country pay for it. Send 11 million people out of the country. Cut taxes $10 trillion without increasing the deficit." [...]
Similarly, Ben Carson wasn't asked whether he could do math. He was asked whether his tax plan's math added up.
"You have a flat tax plan of 10 percent flat taxes," said moderator Becky Quick. "This is something that is very appealing to a lot of voters, but I've had a really tough time trying to make the math work on this. If you were to take a 10 percent tax, with the numbers right now in total personal income, you're gonna bring in $1.5 trillion. That is less than half of what we bring in right now. And by the way, it's gonna leave us in a $2 trillion hole. So what analysis got you to the point where you think this will work?"
Klein argues that Republican policies are so bad that "simply asking about them in any serious way seems like a vicious attack," and he may have a point, but I don't think that's all. How are these questions less fair
than this?
Senator Cruz, your colleague, Senator Paul, right there next to you, said a few months ago he agrees with you on a number of issues, but he says you do nothing to grow the party. He says you feed red meat to the base, but you don’t reach out to minorities. You have a toxic relationship with GOP leaders in Congress. You even called the Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell a liar recently.
How can you win in 2016 when you’re such a divisive figure?
That was a question from Chris Wallace in the first debate of the year, on Fox News, and it was par for the course in that debate. Cruz responded not with an angry rant but with a calm, "Chris, I believe the American people are looking for someone to speak the truth." Huh. What changed between early August and late October? Maybe the stakes the candidates faced in each subsequent debate?