You know it's bad when Chris Christie can look someone in the eye and say, "Even in New Jersey what you're doing is called rude." However, that's exactly what he did at one point during the highly criticized CNBC Republican debate on Wednesday, addressing not a political opponent on stage but the moderators themselves.
In fact, while there were surely plenty of elbows thrown between candidates, no attack was so vicious — or resonated so deeply — as Ted Cruz's takedown of the moderators and, more generally, the media as a whole. According to a "live dial" test pollster Frank Luntz has been using at debates since 1996 to measure "human emotion and feeling," Cruz's tirade reached the highest score among viewers ever recorded, peaking at a 97/98 out of 100.
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