Chris Wallace acting like a journalist, for a change

This morning on "Fox News Sunday" -- yes FOX NEWS -- Chris Wallace was a bulldog, going after Carly Fiorina for not answering his question about how she would pay for the tax cuts for the rich. Here's the exchange as reported on Huffington Post:

On "Fox News Sunday," host Chris Wallace told Fiorina that he hadn't "gotten many specifics" from her and said, "So now, as a non-career politician, as the anti-Barbara Boxer, you tell me specifically what are you going to do to cut the billions, the trillions, of dollars in entitlements?" Fiorina replied by blasting talk of a value-added tax, but Wallace interrupted her and again asked her whether she would cut entitlements. The result was a lengthy exchange in which Fiorina accused Wallace of asking her a "political question" and coming up with no answers other than cutting "waste" and saying "we ought to engage in a long conversation with the American people so they understand the choices":

FIORINA: See, Chris, I have to -- you know, Chris, I have to say, with all due respect, you're asking a typical political question. [...]

WALLACE: Ms. Fiorina, but that's where the money is. The money is in Medicare. The money is in Social Security. We've got the baby boomers coming. There is going to be a huge explosion of entitlement spending, and you call it a political question when I ask you to name one single entitlement expenditure you're willing to cut.

This went back and forth a few times, Wallace trying to pin her down and her dancing away, talking about cutting waste and fraud, etc. Then:

WALLACE: I'm going to try -- I'm going to try one last time and if you don't want to answer it, Ms. Fiorina, you don't have to. [...] You're not willing to put forward a single benefit -- I'm not even talking about the people that are 60 or, let alone, 65 or 70. I'm talking about people under 55.

You're not willing to say there's a single benefit eligibility for Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security that you're willing to say, Yeah, I would cut that?

FIORINA: What I think we need to do to engage the American people in a conversation about entitlement reform is to have a bipartisan group of people who come together and put every solution on the table, every alternative on the table. And then we ought to engage in a long conversation with the American people so they understand the choices. Instead of rushing off into a closed room and having 100 senators figure it out for themselves, we need to engage people in the conversation. And I'm willing to consider any alternative. But we cannot continue to just jump over the fact that our government is bloated, wasteful, inefficient, in many cases inept and, frankly, in many cases as well corrupt. We have to deal with that.

And so it went. David Gregory had a similar exchange with Republican Senatorial candidate from Colorado, Ken Buck. Gregory pressed him for specifics of what he would cut, but Buck stayed vague, talking about "cutting expenses" and "growing government."

Now isn't that what we've been needing? Don't let them get away with it, and show them up when they try.

Ralph