I'm not generally what you might call a bias sniffer (life is too short!), but John Podhoretz is right about CNN's so-called "standards" for questioners during last night's GOP debate:
The scandalous aspect last night is that three Democratic operatives were allowed to pose as 'unaffiliated voters' asking questions specifically designed to embarrass the entire Republican party, not just the candidates on stage. Given the fact that it took bloggers all of 12 seconds to figure this out, one has to ask how on earth CNN producers didn't think to do the elementary spade work of simply Googling the names of the questioners to ensure they met the 'unaffiliated voter' standard CNN and YouTube had set out. It's easy to see why CNN's producers liked their questions. It's because those questions echoed the partisan prejudices of CNN producers. This sort of liberal media bias would have been far less of an issue if we were talking about a debate between the Democratic and Republican nominees for president, because in those circumstances both candidates are seeking to govern all Americans, even those who don't vote for them. But in a Republican primary debate, when it is GOP members who are trying to determine which candidate should best represent their party, an overwhelmingly Democratic institution like CNN needs to be specially conscious of the way its biases might play into question selection.
What CNN did last night was annoying, but it's worth remembering that Republicans have won six of the last nine presidential elections, media biases notwithstanding.