One of the better moments at last night’s CNBC debate was when Ted Cruz called out the moderators for their idiotic questions and hit Democrat candidates as a really just a “debate between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.”
.@tedcruz: "[Democratic debate] reflected a debate between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks." #GOPDebate
— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 29, 2015
Cruz meant the Bolshevik/Menshevik line as critique of the Dem debate moderators who accepted the candidates’ embrace of socialism without any critique of the failed economic doctrine, but that was lost on the CNBC crew last night:
Wonder if @BeckyQuick @JohnJHarwood @carlquintanilla even got that the Bolshevik/Menshevik remark by @tedcruz was meant as criticism?
— BHall (@consunite) October 29, 2015
It was also lost on NBC’s Chuck Todd (maybe):
CNBC has a Bolshevik choosing the screen tweets. Not a Menshevik.
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) October 29, 2015
@jpodhoretz Menshevik was new to me. Are they socialists who speak Yiddish?
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) October 29, 2015
We’re not sure if he was joking or not, but last night and early this morning, the reaction was pretty much in the “he’s serious” camp:
@chucktodd @jpodhoretz dude, use a little invention called Google. There's countless sites explaining what a Menshevik is.
— Joe Marshall (@marshall5912) October 29, 2015
From Wikipedia:
The Mensheviks subscribed to an Orthodox Marxist view of social and economic development, believing that socialism could not be achieved in Russia due to its backward economic conditions, and that Russia would first have to experience a bourgeois revolution and go through a capitalist stage of development before socialism was technically possible and before the working class could develop the necessary consciousness for a socialist revolution.[8] Thus, the Mensheviks were opposed to the Bolshevik idea of a Vanguard party and pursuit of socialist revolution in Russia.
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So, no Chuck. Mensheviks are not just socialists who speak Yiddish, be he should have known that (Or maybe he did know that):
Dude. History started before 1980 https://t.co/IG8RdLIDRF
— DaveinTexas (@DaveinTexas) October 29, 2015
This is the media attitude that's OUTRAGED when you'd call Obama a socialist. https://t.co/9H8DqdQxNU
— David Reaboi (@davereaboi) October 29, 2015
Oh.
My.
— I'm a woman, and I'm mad as Hell (@nowhere_nh) October 29, 2015
Just… wow. https://t.co/cQPmgXiuep
— NeoN: Automataster (@neontaster) October 29, 2015
I. Just. WHAT? Dear God In Heaven Above. https://t.co/pNY6uURTXw
— alexandriabrown (@alexthechick) October 29, 2015
@chucktodd @jpodhoretz this is why people hate Cable News. How can we trust you to inform us when you aren't informed on basic facts?
— Joe Marshall (@marshall5912) October 29, 2015
Now there is some debate if Todd’s tweet was just a joke or not:
Has @ChuckTodd – @NBCNews' political director – pretended he was "just joking" with this asinine tweet yet? https://t.co/3M3yrhyNpb
— Nima Shirazi (@WideAsleepNima) October 29, 2015
I owe an apology to @chucktodd; as @davidfrum points out, his tweet actually featured a good joke and I missed it. https://t.co/gE7X1ELjLL
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) October 29, 2015
it's a joke. Mensch-evik. https://t.co/MSZfkO3qaB
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) October 29, 2015
For the record, we don’t see any indication that Chuck Todd has specifically said he was joking however. To be continued…
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