Last night’s prime time debate among the Republican candidates at the Reagan Library made one thing point clear to me. I thought one big loser emerged. I thought the loser was Jake Tapper (and CNN).

The current arrangement for debates is the product of the Republican National Committee’s rethinking of the 2012 experience. Politico reported on the current set-up sanctioned by the RNC this past January here. The current arrangement represents a move in the right direction — MSNBC is out — but it doesn’t go far enough. It is time for the RNC to rethink the debate structure set up for this contest and for contests to come. I have a (non-satirical) modest proposal.

CNN’s Jake Tapper ran the show last night. Jake Tapper and CNN are not friendly to the GOP or to the interests of GOP voters. Indeed, I think it is fair to infer that he is a walking paragon of conventional wisdom on the issues of the day, or close to it. He is an enemy of the GOP. Why cede control of the event to Tapper and CNN? Also on the schedule noted by Politico are CBS, NBC/Telemundo (a twofer!), and CNN again.

As the New York Times accurately observes in its account of the event: “CNN came to the second Republican primary debate looking for a fight.” In another account, The Times puts it this way: “[M]oderators at the CNN debate tried repeatedly to pit one Republican after another against Mr. Trump.” Tapper framed a series of questions calculated to produce catfights among subsets of the candidates.

Read the article “Will Moderator Jake Tapper’s Agenda at Last Night’s GOP Debate Backfire?” on powerlineblog.com.