Moderators for Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary debate, hosted by Fox Business, went almost entirely unnoticed during an event heavy on economics and policy, and in the eyes of many outdid the moderators of the CNBC-hosted debate in October.
Ahead of the debate, co-moderators Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business, with assistance from Wall Street Journal editor in chief Gerard Baker, planned to go minimalist in their roles. In multiple interviews, Cavuto had said it was it was his intention to be virtually “invisible,” focus on policy questions and let the candidates make the news.
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It seemed to work, and many political and media professionals lauded the debate format as more issue-oriented than the previous one, hosted by Fox Business competitor CNBC. The CNBC debate was largely panned by conservatives and media critics who said the moderators were ineffective and lost control of the forum.
Veteran Republican operative Rick Wilson remarked on Twitter that the Fox Business effort was “a vastly more serious and grounded debate.”
This is also a vastly more serious and grounded debate.
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) November 11, 2015
“Debates are better when the moderators don’t openly despise all the candidates and the audience,” remarked conservative writer Jon Gabriel, referring to the CNBC debate moderators who many on the right claimed were unfair to the candidates.
Debates are better when the moderators don’t openly despise all the candidates and the audience. #gopdebate
— jon gabriel (@exjon) November 11, 2015
Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center, praised the Fox Business moderators in a statement after the debate ended. “Fox did not best CNBC, Fox utterly humiliated their competition,” Bozell said. “They asked fair, serious, substantive questions, and did so respectfully.”
By contrast, Bozell had said that the CNBC debate was the “absolute worst” in recent history.
The candidates also seemed pleased with the moderating.
At the CNBC debate, several of the candidates took turns hitting the moderators for their questions, climaxing with Ted Cruz accusing them of manufacturing a “cage match” out of the event.
But the Fox Business moderators received no push-back or criticism from the candidates during Tuesday’s debate.
After it was over, Donald Trump, in a virtual tie with Ben Carson as the party frontrunner and the most outspoken media critic of them all, called the hosts “fantastic.”
At the CNBC debate, Trump lashed out at moderator John Harwood.
“It’s not a very nice question, the way you say that,” Trump began his first answer of that debate, after he was asked if he was running “a comic book version” of a campaign.
