Circus #3-Fox Business moderators laugh off GOP demands for debate

[JackLuis]

Fox Business moderators laugh off GOP demands for debate

This Tuesday, its rival, Fox Business Network, has the opportunity to either put the last debate to shame, or faceplant right next to its competitor when it hosts the fourth GOP debate. The two networks are in fierce competition: Fox Business, which still trails in the ratings, is a much younger insurgent that cropped up in 2007 to break CNBC’s grip on the finance world.

To further add to the high-stakes network rivalry underlying Tuesday’s debate, one of the Fox Business moderators is, in fact, a recent transplant from CNBC: Maria Bartiromo, now the host of Fox Business’s “Maria in the Mornings.” She sat onstage with John Harwood four years ago during CNBC’s 2012 GOP debate, best-known for the moment when Gov. Rick Perry struggled to remember all three agencies of government he would obliterate as president.

Now, Bartiromo, a veteran financial journalist and the first person to ever report live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, is playing for the other team after arriving at Fox last year. Along with her colleague Sandra Smith, who will be moderating the “undercard” debate of low-polling backbenchers, she sat down with International Business Times to talk about what went wrong for CNBC and how Fox plans to pull off a non-disaster.

With a Clown Car Cast, how can it not be a disaster?