Democrat Bernard Whitman struck a nerve with Megyn Kelly today during a Fox News focus group convened to attack discuss Candy Crowley’s role as moderator of the presidential debate last night. Whitman said, “It’s sort of amazing that in the face of a relatively poor performance by Romney, all we’re talking about is the moderator, Candy Crowley. That sort of underscores…” Kelly cut him off.
It started when Whitman asked, “Can I talk about a larger point?”
Kelly said, “No, I want to stay on this.”
Whitman, a News Hounds Top Dog. wisely ignored her and proceeded with his comment, “It’s sort of amazing that in the face of a relatively poor performance by Romney, all we’re talking about is the moderator, Candy Crowley. That sort of underscores…”
Kelly snapped peevishly, “Bernard, Bernard, don’t start with me. This is a two-hour program, this is what this panel is focused on. We got a lot of other things in this show.”
Yet Kelly had just allowed Republican Tony Sayegh to cast doubt on Obama’s performance when he said, “Shouldn’t the president be the one defending himself? …Barack Obama was sitting in that chair, you could see it in his face… (Romney) had him on the ropes and Candy Crowley was his lifeline. Let’s remember one thing. What do Republicans want to talk about? It’s the inconsistency of this president on Benghazi-gate. So she’s actually handed us a real opportunity as Republicans to now talk about this.”
Kelly did not interrupt Sayegh.
I’ve long said that Democrats should never just accept Fox News’ framing of any discussion and should do what they can to reframe it when applicable. Whitman did get a chance to speak again and he worked in Romney’s debate performance very quickly.
You may notice that nobody said Romney won the debate.
NOTE TO FOX “NEWS”
You clowns are not worthy of moderating a presidential debate. You are not real journalists. You play one on television.
We’ll talk about Candy, not rMoney. Candy Did Something! rMoney just got peevish with every passing minute!
Proof that rMoney is the looser.
But, Kevin, according to the GOP, we MUST discuss those investigations in public in order to disgrace the current Democrat in the White House, no matter the cost to the security and well-being of every other American, whether in the United States or abroad.
Now, let the Dems even bring up the mere idea of such an investigation (even if the investigation is genuinely warranted) under a GOP President, and the GOPers will rage and howl at such “treasonous actions,” bolstered by the cretins at FoxNoise and the unwitting lackeys of the “lamestream” media that (for some unfathomable reason) seem to blindly support the occupant of the White House. (Has anyone else noticed that the “lamestream” media is greatly respected by the GOP and FoxNoise when it “supports” a GOP President but becomes disrespected when it “supports” a Dem President? I don’t recall FoxNoise chastising NBC or CBS or even CNN as being part of the “lamestream” media* when they were toadying for the Dubya/Cheney cabal; yet when these same news operations report the truth, which far too often supports Obama’s positions, suddenly, they become little more than toadies for Obama and the Dems.)
*Okay. They probably couldn’t be chastised as part of the “lamestream” media since I only seem to be aware of its first use from the blathering mouth of Sarah Palin, though I’m positive it had to have come from another source—Palin’s simply not clever enough to have come up with such a “witty” comment.
The actual facts of the debate are that Obama did show up for this one, where he didn’t do much at the first one. Romney attempted to repeat his performance from the first one, but found himself in a much more challenging situation – one that clearly wore on him as time went on.
In several areas, Romney did major damage to his campaign – and in others President Obama was able to point outt Romney’s inadequacy in a devastating manner.
Romney’s gaffes included not being able to provide specifics about his plans, not being able to answer Obama’s specific charges about the Arizona anti-immigrant law (Obama nailed him by pointing out that Kris Kobach is Romney’s immigration advisor and that Romney has publicly stated he wants to encourage self-deportation), not being able to answer the charges about his investments other than to yelp about Obama’s pension plan, not being able to adequately answer the question about women in the workplace without committing a major gaffe, and then two final ones that may have caused more damage than we’ll know for a few days. First, he misspoke about the President’s remarks about Libya, acting under the assumption that he had scored a major “gotcha”, thus leaving himself open to a humiliating correction by the moderator. And then he left the President a massive opportunity to close with the 47 percent quote, thus defining Romney for millions of Americans as a man who doesn’t understand or care about them.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the post-debate polling show a moderate but increasing drop for Romney, and a moderate increase for Obama. Obama’s supporters will be more enthusiastic about supporting their candidate now when asked by pollers, while the Romney supporters will be circling the wagons. This plus the fact that Ohio will indeed by allowing early voting by everyone is likely causing major concern for the Romney campaign – as they are running out of time and they still haven’t been able to catch up.
My only regret from this debate is that Obama did not correct Romney on the right wing talking point about the “apology tour” – but I believe that this will be batted down on Monday, during which time I have a feeling that Obama will repeat what I thought was a proper and satisfying correction to Romney’s political game-playing with the deaths in Libya.
And if they want to get into a longer discussion about Libya, it’s a pretty simple discussion – there were riots happening across the Middle East as a result of the anti-Islam movie, just as such things happened when the anti-Mohammed cartoon got publicity a few years ago. The riots happened everywhere from Cairo to Libya. During this mess, a terror group was able to take advantage of the situation to mount an attack and kill some people, including the Ambassador. The terrorists who did this are obviously being tracked down, but these investigations are not things that we discuss in public for obvious reasons. So the answer given by the Obama Administration was neither a lie nor a cover-up. There were in fact many spontaneous demonstrations that happened – this specific attack turns out not to be one of them, although there were others in the area. Obama specifically answered this the day after the riots broke out, referring to both the demonstrations/riots and to the killings. He referred to acts of terror, which he said would be investigated and he also urged calm. Romney’s total igorance of what the President actually said and when he said it indicates his debate prep was incomplete – he was clearly prepped to attack on the mistaken basis that the President didn’t mention terror for two weeks – which was an unfortunate fumble for Romney.
Kelly said, âNo, I want to stay on this.â
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Is that acknowledgement that her point about the moderator was small? …or is she just not very good at conversation?
This stuff is getting too much to take…watching these people wallow in their imagined importance.