Posted on 10/12/2012 7:01:15 AM PDT by Clint N. Suhks
At other times she was the seasoned ABC News war correspondent who kept the two guys in suits taking snarky swipes at each other in line.
She pressed the candidates to give firm answers, such as when Vice President Joe Biden said Republican challenger Rep. Paul Ryan was just saying "a bunch of stuff."
"What does that mean, 'a bunch of stuff?'" Raddatz asked Biden.
Moderator on the hot seat The role of the debate moderator Perspective from a moderator The 2012 debate moderators Raddatz also pressed for specifics such as when she demanded of Ryan: "I want to know how you do the math and have this increase in defense spending?"
Five things we learned from the VP debate When she wanted to direct the foreign policy debate to a new topic, she commanded: "Let's move to Iran."
And to Iran the conversation moved.
She forced the candidates to do a bit of self reflection when she asked: "are you embarrassed by the tone of this election?"
If her trending status on Twitter was an indication, Raddatz schooled the two candidates -- hard news reporter style -- and won accolades from journalistic colleagues in the process.
As veteran PBS journalist Charlie Rose tweeted: "Everyone seems to agree that @martharaddatz is the star of this debate."
His network colleague, Jim Lehrer, host of "PBS NewsHour," was widely criticized last week and skewered by late night comedy shows after serving as moderator of the presidential debate.
Raddatz netted a different reaction.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
I stumbled into the early part of the debate while clicking around for something else to watch. The first thing I see is Raddatz debating Ryan on some point. That was enough of that.
When Biden started debating her I had to laugh. That really ticked off women voters and put him into the argumentative drunk at a bar territory.
Praise from Charlie Rose - that says it all right there!
Lehrer was better than RadRATz.
I was kind of hoping Ryan would close with, It’s been a pleasure debating the two of you!
joe is getting all the attention..and i think that is what the dems were after..not many are talking about ryan
You know Martha Raddatz was the biggest loser of the night by the way the Left gushed over her while the right hated her
An honest moderator would of pissed off both sides.
What Martha does not realize is the Left will worship her for about a week then forget she exists while the right will be using her for years as example of the blatant political corruption in the Mass Media
15 minutes of fame for a life time of shame is hardly a smart choice
Biden's performance last night will not play well in middle America, which is where the swing states reside. This debate will fire up the base in NY, MA and CA. But it will hurt Obama in OH, WI and MI.
The fact that Obama and Biden chose to shore up their base says a lot about how much trouble they are in. Paul Ryan won some swing votes last night and Biden turned off a lot of moderates.
Raddatz timed her interruptions of the candidates brilliantly based on a simple rule: Let Joe talk over Ryan any time he wants and don’t let Ryan get going on anything damaging to the Obama reelection campaign. The best example of the latter is when she shut down Ryan when he brought up the Catholic church lawsuit.
More proof: 82 interruption by Biden in 90 minutes.
No wonder Charlie Rose thinks she did great.
The best was when she kept pressing for “details” on how lowering taxes generates greater tax revenue. As if Ryan had time to explain basic economics while being interupted every two seconds!
She cut Paul Ryan off so many times I lost count.
And she let Slo Joe berate her with no rebuttal.
As a 3rd debater she was a disgrace.
If Biden didn't interrupt a Ryan response, Raddatz did.
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The Benghazi question was the first one, by intent. It got responses and interruptions and grins and chuckles. Thus, it got vetted. Move on. Benghazi was not mentioned again.
Mission Success: By the end of the debate, no one remembered anything about Benghazi or the 4 deaths. The after-debate discussion was about Biden and his actions.
My husband said the same thing!
-Mrs Hodar
She looked like the bride of the crypt keeper!!!She was UUUUUgly!!
Martha Raddatz interrupted Paul Ryan 31 times. Slo Joe 82 times. Total of 113 times.
Raddatz interrupted Slow Joe 19 times, Paul tried to interrupt Slow Joe a few times when he was interrupting him but I don’t think Ryan interrupted Slo Joe once other than that.
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