CNN struggled...

CNN struggles to contain debate fireworks

As Rubio and Cruz rush to pummel Trump, the network's moderators get bowled over.

By Hadas Gold

At the tenth Republican debate, the candidates took charge.

Trailing Donald Trump in most Super Tuesday states, both Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz seemed determined to assume the role of questioner themselves, peppering Trump with missives from either side of his lectern, tag-team style. At times, they relegated CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and his three fellow moderators to NFL-style clock monitors.

CNN can’t be faulted for allowing some of the most revealing exchanges to play out. But sometimes Blitzer and fellow moderators — CNN correspondent Dana Bash, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, and Telemundo’s Maria Celeste Arraras — let sparks on stage turn into barely controllable brush fires.

There were many dramatic, finger-wagging encounters. But often they devolved into cross talk and bickering as Blitzer, or his co-panelists, tried to call out “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” to calm them down.

"Wolf, you said I got a response,” Cruz demanded at one point, when Blitzer tried to pivot to questions from Arraras on ISIS.

Blitzer interjected that he’d have a chance later.

"You're saying I can't respond to being called a liar?” Cruz asked incredulously.

The moderator relented, leading to a five-minute exchange that devolved at one point into Trump and Cruz squabbling uncontrollably.

“This debate could have used a moderator,” tweeted The Atlantic national correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg.

"Very intrigued by Wolf Blitzer's moderating strategy of 'do absolutely nothing at any time' ” tweeted New York Times reporter Dave Itzikoff.

At another point, Cruz turned the tables on the moderators, and tried to get Trump to answer one of his own questions.

"Donald, true or false, you've said the government should pay for everyone’s health care?” he demanded during an exchange about "socialized" medicine.

Cruz kept going, trying to fact check Trump as he said that was false, then asking him to “explain his plan” and “who pays for it?”

Blitzer regained control, warning the candidates they had “agreed to the rules,” before turning back to Trump.

During most of the debate the moderators concentrated on the top three candidates, with the camera zooming in on the three who were center stage, thereby cutting Ben Carson and John Kasich out of the frame.

The attention, in particular, was on Trump. The frontrunner spoke for 11 minutes more than any other candidate, clocking in at more than 30 minutes.

Then, moments after the debate ended, the network switched to a one-on-one conversation on stage between CNN anchor Chris Cuomo and Trump, essentially allowing Trump to continue the debate without his challengers. It’s a move that the network has made before. But the reaction online was swift, especially when 30 minutes later, Trump joined CNN once again for another interview in the spin room. (Cruz was interviewed from a theater box seat after Trump’s initial interview).

"Why stage a debate and then immediately go interview the guys who were just talking for two hours?” wrote CNBC anchor and former debate co-moderator John Harwood on Twitter.

“Wait, CNN is interviewing Trump a second time post-debate???” tweeted Yahoo editor-in-chief Megan Lieberman.

After the debate, Blitzer and Bash defended their performance, claiming that they weren’t expecting both Rubio and Cruz to attack Trump in the way they did – even though attacks from both were widely expected.

“What you have to do as the moderator, when one of them goes after Trump you have to let Trump respond, when the other goes after Trump you gotta let him respond, as a result Trump is on the defensive, he’s responding,” Blitzer said. “The hard things is to try to get them from talking over one another."

Added Bash: “You have a lot of questions ready to go. There were many we didn’t get to because we didn’t realize, I guess we should have, that they’d be so determined to be engaged with one another.”

But according to the chattering classes on Twitter, Blitzer was also at times stepping too much on the conversations.

"Wolf making a real unfortunate mistake stepping on these exchanges,” wrote National Review’s Jonah Goldberg.

One of the rare breaks from the attack-response pattern came from Arraras, the first representative of Hispanic media at a Republican debate. She challenged Rubio on whether his position on allowing American-born children of undocumented immigrants to stay in the country had changed, and asked both Rubio and Cruz a pointed question about how their own backgrounds as Hispanics clashed with their policies.

"Senator Cruz, you and Senator Rubio are the two candidates of Hispanic descent on the stage. As a matter of fact, you are the first Hispanic candidate ever to win a caucus or primary. And yet there is the -- and yet there is the perception in the Latino community that instead of trying to prove to Latinos who has the best plan, the best platform to help them, that you two are spending the time arguing with each other, trying to figure out which one is tougher on immigration, in order to appeal to the majority of Republicans. So my question to you is, are you missing a huge opportunity to expand the Republican base?” she asked.

Neither Cruz nor Rubio seemed prepared for the question, shifting to standard talking points on how a weak economy hurts all ethnic groups.