is it just me or are right blogistan's howls getting progressively more ridiculous?
i guess the republican candidates are such a fragile creatures that they'll collapse into a mound of quivering jelly if asked a question by someone who is not already a republican supporter. i've always thought it was part of the question-from-the-audience format tradition to find questioners who are not committed to the candidates in the debate in the hopes that they will ask hard questions. seriously, these guys are competing for the chance to take on a non-republican candidate in the general election. you'd think you'd want to see how they handle questions from someone who is even (gasp) supporting a democratic candidate. it might give a better understanding of how they'll do in the general election. you know, when they'll have to win over and deal with non-republicans now and then.
and the analogy with the "hillary clinton plants" issue from a few weeks ago shows an utter lack of understanding of what the problem was in that case. the issue was not that clinton (or her campaign) was planting questions, but rather that they were planting questions to be asked of clinton herself. in other words, the concern was that clinton was giving herself softball questions and avoiding being asked harder questions. that's a problem because we generally want candidates to be asked hard questions, not easy ones. if clinton planted questions for any other candidate, it doesn't raise the easy question problem. there's no incentive for the plant to make the questions too easy.
