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By Amber Phillips<\/p>\n
At this point in the campaign, Republican debate moderators should have a healthy understanding that they’re one exchange away from being dragged into the debate themselves. (See: Kelly, Megyn<\/span><\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n Candidates at Wednesday’s CNBC debate in Boulder, Colo., seemed\u00a0extra anxious\u00a0to go after their questioners \u2014\u00a0so much so that clashing with the moderators became a\u00a0major theme of the debate.<\/span><\/p>\n Debate watchers on social media rightly criticized<\/span><\/a> CNBC’s moderators for some of their questions and for not being able to rein in\u00a0candidates when they went out of bounds,\u00a0either on time or substance. But, at times, the\u00a02016 hopefuls on stage seemed to pounce on the moderators with little reason or disputed some facts that\u00a0weren’t exactly in their favor.<\/span><\/p>\n The arguments were often left unsolved as the moderators tried their best to, well, moderate and keep the debate moving on.<\/span><\/p>\n Here are five instances of candidates sparring with the moderators, along with (hopefully) some clarity.<\/span><\/p>\n 1. Carson vs. “propaganda”<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n One of the first moderator\/candidate showdowns of the night came when CNBC moderator Carl Quintanilla asked Ben Carson about his decade-long relationship with Mannatech, a nutritional supplement company that made dubious (and litigated) health claims.<\/span><\/p>\n Carson denied his involvement, explaining away his photo on the company’s Web site\u00a0as “total propaganda.” Oh yeah, and he did a few speeches for them and takes the product (which he endorsed on-stage). But that’s it.<\/span><\/p>\n Quintanilla pressed him. “Does that not speak to your vetting process or judgment?”<\/span><\/p>\n At this point, the audience jumped to the soft-spoken Carson’s rescue, booing Quintanilla loudly.<\/span><\/p>\n “See?” Carson said. “They know.”<\/span><\/p>\n The follow-up wasn’t a great moment for Quintanilla. He might have been better focused on the substance of Carson’s connections to the company, which are\u00a0much more complicated<\/span><\/a>\u00a0than Carson let on.<\/span><\/p>\n 2. Cruz vs. the clock<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Cruz criticizes the debate moderators<\/span><\/p>\n Play Video<\/b>1:00<\/span><\/p>\n Speaking at CNBC’s main debate in Boulder, Colo., Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) put the spotlight on the debate moderators saying their questions illustrated why the American people don’t trust the media. (CNBC)<\/span><\/p>\n When it was Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Tex.) turn to answer a direct question \u2014\u00a0about the debt ceiling \u2014 he\u00a0first had some grievances\u00a0to air about the debate itself. Cruz felt the moderators were too busy pitting the candidates against one another and talking about the horse race rather than\u00a0asking questions about serious\u00a0policy.<\/span><\/p>\n “The men and women on this stage have more ideas, more experience, more common sense than any participant in the Democratic debate,”\u00a0Cruz said.<\/span><\/p>\n It was, as The Post’s David Fahrenthold and Abby Phillip note,<\/span><\/a> one of the most reliable attack lines in a candidate’s debate portfolio: Attack the moderators for asking the wrong questions. And it definitely got Cruz\u00a0big applause.<\/span><\/p>\n The problem? Cruz left no time in his takedown of\u00a0the debate’s apparent lack of substance to actually comment on\u00a0a question that was, well, substantive.<\/span><\/p>\n Quintanilla noted that Cruz had not answered that question about the debt ceiling, but Cruz continued to attack the moderators. By\u00a0the end of the exchange, his time was up, and he was not allotted more time to answer the specific question.<\/span><\/p>\n 3. Trump vs. his own words<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Another candidate-vs.-fact moment came when moderator Becky Quick asked Trump why his immigration plan criticizes Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, calling him Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) “personal senator.”<\/span><\/p>\n Trump responded with a classic politician denial: “I never said that.” Quick apologized.<\/span><\/p>\n Except that Trump did<\/i> say that. As The Washington Post’s Max Ehrenfreund points out<\/span><\/a>, a screen shot from Trump’s campaign Web site\u00a0reveals his white paper on immigration \u00a0is critical about the controversial program to allow visas for skilled immigrants, known as H-1B. It also criticizes Zuckerberg’s stance on the visa program. And it includes the “personal senator” language.<\/span><\/p>\n Trump’s apparent contradictions didn’t stop there. Ehrenfreund notes Trump appeared to praise\u00a0the program, despite what his Web site says.<\/span><\/p>\n “I am all in favor of keeping these talented people here, so they can go to work in Silicon Valley,” he said.<\/span><\/p>\n 4. Rubio vs. John Harwood’s work<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Time for a drill-down into Rubio’s tax plan. Moderator John Harwood wanted to know why the nonpartisan Tax Foundation found Rubio’s tax plan gives more\u00a0after-tax gains to the top 1 percent than to middle-class Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n “Since you’re the champion of people living paycheck-to-paycheck, don’t you have that backward?” Harwood asked.<\/span><\/p>\n Rubio flatly insisted Harwood was wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n “You wrote a story on it, and you had to go back and correct it,” Rubio said.<\/span><\/p>\n It was Harwood’s turn to offer a stern\u00a0denial:\u00a0“No, I did not.”<\/span><\/p>\n The situation quickly devolved into a he-said, he-said, with the audience applauding, apparently taking Rubio’s side.<\/span><\/p>\n