Why is there no comment, let alone outrage, that Ben Carson was overlooked for most of the Republican debate?

One journalist said Carson was “strangely silent” for the first part of the debate, but he was not called on! As a Ben Carson fan, I was very upset that he was not given a chance to at least talk about healthcare and abortion, two things he is well qualified to express his opinion on.

Carson truly seemed to be the invisible man in the room. And he still came out fourth. If he had had more of a chance to speak his mind, it might have been even higher.

And, the format of this debate was frankly confusing and frustrating. The moderators asked questions prefaced by an accusation, true or not, so that the candidates had to dig themselves out of a hole before they could even answer the question. In other debates, people are just asked questions to answer.

So, I felt Trump was not the only one attacked: I felt they all were. That is something I have not previously seen in a debate, and I did not like it.

With 10 candidates, there was little enough time to hear the candidates’ views. If this were a Democrat debate, would moderators do the same thing? The moderators blatantly encouraged the candidates to fight each other, but the men wisely refrained from doing that, for the most part.

The debate seemed to be more between the moderators and the candidates, not between the candidates themselves, and I felt that was a choice of the moderators in the way they handled the event.

Let us hope that future debates will be handled better.

 

Brenda Beadenkopf

Edwardsburg