There’s an interesting discussion brewing among conservative bloggers about whether the problems with last night’s debate are a reflection of poor choices on the part of CNN, or inherent to the questions of the medium.

My thought: If YouTube had sponsored with Fox News, and Brit Hume & company had vetted the questions, wouldn’t they have selected dramatically different ones? Wouldn’t we all, in all likelihood, be saying more positive things if the queston-vetting had been done by a source conservatives trusted?

Don’t you think Fox, or C-SPAN, or Russert, or John Stossel, or somebody who’s distinctly not liberal would have found a question in a similar style and topic to the one about the Bible, but from a questioer who didn’t look and sound like a David Koresh wannabe? Wouldn’t they have instantly rejected the Dick Cheney cartoon? Wouldn’t they have ditched the inane song at the beginning?

There are times when I think some of the criticism of CNN is unfair, but they stepped in it with this one, and did so repeatedly – both with the lack of Googling of their questioners and their sense of what questions were worth asking.