Fahrenkopf said he was proud of his role in helping to pick the debate moderators, but then added, shockingly I thought: “We made one mistake this time: Her name is Candy,” a reference to Candy Crowley of CNN, who absorbed hosannas from the left and brickbats from the right after she corrected Mitt Romney during the second debate.Candy Crowley was more than a moderator at the Hofstra town hall-type debate, she was an active participant not allowing Romney to answer Obama’s attacks, even fact-checking the GOP candidate (using incorrect facts).
The most controversial part of the debate began with Romney’s response to Obama’s answer to a Libya question:
ROMNEY: Yeah, I -- I certainly do. I certainly do. I --
I think it's interesting the president just said something which is
that on the day after the attack, he went in the Rose Garden and said
that this was an act of terror. You said in the Rose Garden the day
after the attack it was an act of terror. It was not a spontaneous
demonstration.
OBAMA:Please proceed.
ROMNEY: Is that what you're saying?
OBAMA:Please proceed, Governor.
ROMNEY: I -- I -- I want to make sure we get that for
the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the
attack in Benghazi an act of terror.
OBAMA:Get the transcript.
CROWLEY: It -- he did in fact, sir. So let me -- let me call it an act of terrorism -- (inaudible)
OBAMA:Can you say that a little louder, Candy? (Laughter, applause.)
CROWLEY: He did call it an act of terror. It did as well take -- it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea of there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that.
This one exchange was the main topic by the spin-meisters I spoke to after the debate.
John Sununu, Romney surrogate and form NH Governor said, “the moderator and the President were dead wrong.
“The President threw the world out in his statement at the Rose
Garden but never said it was an act of terrorism. And two weeks
afterwards the President said, not in a news conference, not in a
passing comment but went to the UN and at the UN, six times blamed it on
the video. It was the most dishonest statement I have ever heard by a
president in a presidential debate.”
I asked him about the Crowley interruption:
“Candy was wrong and Candy had no business doing that and she didn’t even keep the time right.”
The day after the terror attack in Benghazi, President Obama gave a Rose
Garden Speech of 801 words. He mentioned the word terror once near the
end of his speech but not in reference to Benghazi.
During that brief statement, President Obama referred to Benghazi as; An attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi; this outrageous and shocking attack; attack; terrible act. Obama called the people who perpetuated the attack “the killers who attacked our people.” He did not call them terrorists.
In the fourth paragraph of that Rose Garden speech, the alluded to the
anti-Muslim video. Obama knew at the time (and we know now) that video
had nothing to do with the attack:
Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects
all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs
of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of
senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to
unequivocally reject these brutal acts.
No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.Crowley was supposed to be an impartial moderator instead she was an advocate for her political views. A strong debating point that could have thrown Obama off his game, instead threw the challenger for a loop.
Then there was that "Other" debate incident. @hen I returned to my MacBook after listening to the pre-debate spin, this is what I saw on my desktop.
It was a bit unsettling to find that the debate moderator was trying to share her MacBook with me, especially one who had a stripper-name like Candy Crowley.Hopefully mistakes like this one will not be repeated in 2016
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