Ted Cruz got some mileage out of attacking the moderators at last week's Republican presidential debate on CNBC, and he's going to ride this thing as far as it'll take him—no matter how ludicrous he has to be in order to do that. Over the weekend, he said Republican debates should only be moderated by
people who've voted in Republican primaries, because:
“What you wouldn’t have is a bunch of left-wing operatives whose object is that whoever the Republican nominee is, they want him as battered and bruised as possible so the Democrat wins in November,” Cruz said at the Iowa GOP’s Growth and Opportunity Party in Des Moines on Saturday.
“Instead you’d have moderators that were trying to help conservatives make a decision who’s going to be the best and strongest conservative to represent us and win, who is the proven conservative, the consistent conservative,” he added.
Ha ha ha. CNBC, the network that provided part of the spark for the tea party, and also apparently a hotbed of left-wing operatives.
Honestly, though, I'm in favor of Cruz' plan. If Republicans want to have debate moderators egging them on to take the most extreme positions possible, then head into the general election yoked to those extreme positions and never having faced debate questions from anyone but a staunch Republican ... great! Please, guys, go for it. Slant your nomination process toward your most extreme candidate and then send him out less than totally prepared for the general election. But it'll be really pure, so what's not to like?