Peggy Noonan hits the Debate of a Thousand Plants right square on its biased little noggin.
I will never forget that breathtaking moment when, in the CNN/YouTube debate earlier this fall, the woman from Ohio held up a picture and said, “Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mr. Edwards, this is a human fetus. Given a few more months, it will be a baby you could hold in your arms. You all say you’re ‘for the children.’ I would ask you to look America in the eye and tell us how you can support laws to end this life. Thank you.”
They were momentarily nonplussed, then awkwardly struggled to answer, to regain lost high ground. One of them, John Edwards I think, finally criticizing the woman for being “manipulative,” using “hot images” and indulging in “the politics of personal destruction.” The woman then stood in the audience for her follow up. “I beg your pardon, but the literal politics of personal destruction–of destroying a person–is what you stand for.”
Oh, I wish I weren’t about to say, “Wait, that didn’t happen.” For of course it did not. Who of our media masters would allow a question so piercing on such a painful and politically incorrect subject?
I thought of this the other night when citizens who turned out to be partisans for Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards asked the Republicans, in debate, would Jesus support the death penalty, do you believe every word of the Bible, and what does the Confederate flag mean to you?
You and I both know that there is very little chance of that happening. CNN has an opportunity, on December 17th, to do exactly the opposite of what it did at the last Democratic debate when it intentionally removed a tougher question and replaced it with a fluffy one for Senator Clinton. I’ll be interested to see if they try the old referee trick of “evening the calls” with a couple real questions from Republicans (and, the one Peggy Noonan posits is a heck of a good one. I think she ought to record and post it). I’d be genuinely surprised if they do, though. Not for nothing do some people refer to them as the Clinton News Network.
By the by, it looks like the total number of queries from potted perennials is approaching a third of all the questions asked.
