Conservatives are sick and tired of the Republican Party apparatchiks who meekly surrender to liberals in the mainstream media like whipped puppies. It didn’t take a genius to see signs of trouble building for last night’s presidential debate in Boulder, Colorado (I did so twice: here and here), but the reality was even worse.

This execrable art promoting the debate was an accurate foretaste of what was to follow from the moderators who tried to paint the GOP candidates just as ugly as the graphic their network produced:

RNC officials in charge of debate arrangements should have known better.                                                                                                                           

Ed Meese, Ronald Reagan’s attorney general and senior adviser, has said what needs to be said. Terrence Jeffrey reports at CNS News:

…former Attorney General Ed Meese said the leaders of the Republican National Committee who allowed CNBC to moderate the debate should be condemned.

"After 15 minutes it was clear that this was not a debate, but a verbal shooting gallery set up by CNBC, with the targets the Republican candidates and the shooters their biased antagonists from the press,” said Meese. 

“Ted Cruz accurately described what was going on,” he said. “Whoever selected the ‘moderators’ should be fired and the RNC leaders who allowed it should be condemned.”

E. Edmund Wright’s excellent account of the debate and the flaws of the moderation includes the helpful expression, “change the game.”  Although the ratings for last night are still unknown, it is clear that the first two GOP debates were a huge draw, and that the lackluster, downright boring Democrat debate was far less appealing to a mass audience. The GOP has what Hollywood agents call “star power” – the ability to bring in an audience. Instead of gratefully accepting locations in liberal bastions like Boulder and moderators like John Harwood, the GOP should negotiate from a position of strength.

Let’s find out the names of the people who approved the arrangements for last night. Reince Priebus, the ball is in your court.

Update: Scott Johnson of Powerline has some great comments:

...the RNC has set up a program of debates that has served up a prominent forum for smash face attacks on our leading candidates by moderators who sound like Democratic operatives — groin kicking Democratic operatives.

I have a few questions for the chairman of the RNC and his colleagues. Who among you thought it would be a good idea to authorize a panel of CNBC moderators to smash up the leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination? Will you please identify yourselves for the record and explain your thinking? In retrospect, do you think it was a good idea? If not, will you explain why you let it happen? Will you do the decent thing and resign your position of leadership in the Republican Party?

UPDATE: RNC Chairman Priebus disapproved of CNBC’s performance. I guess we are to infer that he is just an innocent bystander.