By Mollie Hemingway, OCTOBER 27, 2015

It’s not news to anyone that political journalists tend to be liberal. That alone doesn’t mean they’re bad at their jobs, but the presence of strong political views combined with the lack of ideological diversity can pose problems for those with differing political views.

We see this frequently with mediated political debates, where journalists moderate and control what topics are covered, how questions are framed, and what assumptions are built into topics.

Some journalists are better than others, of course, but too often the moderators — from smug local journalists to Candy Crowley — become part of the story. They frequently don’t have the policy chops to ask good policy questions or respond to dumb policy answers. When they generally agree with a politician, they won’t push back on even the most erroneous or outlandish claims. But if they disagree with a candidate, they’ll push back, no matter how uninformed about the matter at hand they may be. This is related to another point of confusion: they seem to believe it’s their job to argue with candidates rather than facilitate discussions among candidates. The debate is supposed to be with one other, after all, not with the moderator.

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Many Republican observers were excited by the news that Reince Priebus, Republican National Committee chairman, had announced changes to the 2015 primary debates. Here he was on Hugh Hewitt’s show earlier this year explaining why liberal media will partner with conservative media figures, including Salem Media and Hugh Hewitt, this time around:

Reince Priebus: Well, hey, congratulations to you and congratulations to Salem Media. This is exactly what I wanted to do a couple of years ago when we talked about taking control of the presidential primary debate process. And I was never interested in turning the debate process into some kind of patty-cake session, but that we would have serious journalists, serious people that wanted to get involved in asking questions and creating a debate environment that would bring honor to the Republican Party, not a debate environment spurred on by nefarious actors like Chris Matthews and others. And so, you know, we’re going to have a reasonable number of debates, and we’re going to have conservatives help in the moderating and the management of these debates, and today was a big announcement. I’m excited about it. I’m happy for you.

That was a big announcement.

So permit me to ask the obvious questions: Why in the world is liberal journalist John Harwood moderating Wednesday’s Republican debate? And where the heck is his conservative media partner?

Wednesday night’s debate will be hosted by CNBC at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. It will be moderated by Harwood along with CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla and Becky Quick and is supposed to focus on economic issues, though previous CNBC debates have strayed far from that topic.

Harwood frequently angers conservatives for his partisan takes on the news. I mostly laugh off his predictably liberal views because I don’t take him that seriously. But that only leads us back to figuring out why he’s moderating this Wednesday’s debate. Let’s just look at a few examples of how he covers news.

These Headlines Tell You Most of What You Need to Know
Harwood works for both CNBC and The New York Times. You can get something of a feel for his predictable but conventional liberal takes from the headlines of just his most recent pieces:

On the Economy, Republicans Have a Data Problem
Tax Plans of G.O.P. Favor the Rich Despite Populist Talk
Timing Gives Sanders a Lift in His Quest
Republicans Vow to Erase Obama’s Record, but Such Promises Are Rarely Kept
Outsiders Stir Politics, but Often Fail to Win or Govern Well
Angry Bent of Party Let Trump Rise
Bernie Sanders: A Revolution With an Eye on the Hungry Children

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I could go on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on with Harwood’s lambasting of Republicans in general and conservatives in particular, his increasingly ludicrous defenses of Hillary Clinton’s scandals and gaffes, his concern trolling about the GOP, and his excuses for Dems.

The problem isn’t that Harwood is biased or not particularly worth reading or watching. That’s between him and his employers.

But why is he moderating a GOP debate? And why doesn’t this debate have a conservative partner?

http://thefederalist.com/2015/10/27/cnbc...dential-debate/
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She goes into MANY, MANY, MANY examples of Harwood's ruthless bias against conservatives. He has been a consistent cheerleader for Obama, Hillary and all of their Leftie causes!

Her article was published a day BEFORE the Republican debate.Chuck Todd put this perspective in your pipe and smoke it. Why do Republicans consistently allow themselves to be humiliated by "journalists" from the Left? What's WRONG with Reince Priebus that he allowed this to happen? I'd like to think it was strategic but I don't think it was. It appears to have been ignorance! TM