It Was No Debate: Republican Candidates Ignored Questions, Made Up Facts--The Usual Circus [Picture, Video]

 Early in the fourth Republican debate, Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker, one of the debate moderators, asked Carly Fiorina a question that cut at the heart of the rationale of every candidate on stage. Under Barack Obama, Baker noted, the United States has added an average of 107,000 jobs a month. Under Bill Clinton, it added an average of 240,000, and under George W. Bush, just 13,000 jobs a month. Economic growth is the ultimate basis for the entire Republican economic program – the inducement they can offer to explain why Americans should give up things like cleaner air, a higher minimum wage, and more generous social programs.

Fiorina’s reply had no point of contact with the question whatsoever. Indeed, she said, “Yes, problems have gotten much worse under Democrats” – the exact opposite of what the question had stated – before launching into a generic denunciation of the evils of big government. The basic case for changing parties turned out to pose an obstacle that all the candidates had difficulty surmounting.

Neil Cavuto told Marco Rubio that he had called the last Democratic debate “a night of giveaways, including free health care, free college and a host of other government-paid benefits.” Cavuto asked which of those giveaways he would take back. Rubio did not name any, instead launching into the story about his immigrant parents and his standard stump speech, portions of which he managed to repurpose for every question posed to him

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