How Much of a Set-Up Was Crowley's Libya Question? -- American Thinker

[bsteadman]

How Much of a Set-Up Was Crowley's Libya Question?

American Thinker
Jack Cashill
10/19/2012

Excerpt:

On Tuesday night's debate, the evening's most notorious exchange did not begin with moderator Candy Crowley's wildly inappropriate intervention on the "act of terror" question. It almost assuredly began minutes earlier.

The audience question that prompted the exchange came from Long Islander Kerry Ladka, who, reasonably enough, asked in regards to the Libyan consulate, "Who denied enhanced security and why?"

The question went to President Barack Obama, and he launched into a well-rehearsed set piece about how he was handling the issue. Mitt Romney responded much as one would expect him to respond, criticizing the White House response to the attack, especially Obama's Las Vegas trip a day afterwards, and Obama's Mideast policy in general.

It was at this point that the debate, certainly from appearances, took a turn for the prearranged. It was now 70 minutes on. Crowley conceded a shortage of time and an excess of audience questions. Nevertheless, instead of moving on to that next question, Crowley asked a question of her own. Even before she began to ask, however, Obama was strolling confidently towards Crowley as though he knew what was going to happen next.

The question involved Secretary of State Clinton's taking responsibility for embassy security. Asked Crowley, "Does the buck stop with the secretary of state?" Obama was more than ready for this one. "Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job, but she works for me," said he forcefully. "I'm the president, and I'm always responsible."

From there Obama launched into a pitch-perfect, if thoroughly dishonest, defense of his own role in the affair:

The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden, and I told the American people and the world that we were going to find out exactly what happened, that this was an act of terror, and I also said we are going to hunt down those who committed this crime.

Obama did not throw the "act of terror" line away. He said it clearly and defiantly, as though he knew he could get away with it. Feigning outrage, Obama then told of how he manfully greeted the caskets as they arrived at Andrews Air Force Base and how he was offended at the very suggestion that anyone on his "team" would "play politics or mislead when we have lost four of our own."

Sensing an opening, Romney moved in for the kill over Crowley's protestations that he respond "quickly." Romney looked straight at Obama, raised his eyebrows quizzically, and asked, "You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror? It was not a spontaneous demonstration, is that what you are saying."

Now back on his stool, Obama answered uncomfortably, "Please proceed. Please proceed, governor." Romney turned back to Crowley and said that he just wanted to get Obama's response on record. With the camera still on Romney, the TV audience heard Obama say off-camera, "Get the transcript."

The camera then moved to a wide-shot and showed Crowley waving a piece of paper. Several of my correspondents -- and, I am sure, many others -- believed that to be the transcript and wondered how Crowley just happened to have it.

"He did in fact, sir, call..." said Crowley hesitantly to Romney, "so let me call it an act of terror."

"Can you say that a little louder, Candy?" said a suddenly revived Obama while the Obama fans in the audience, Michelle included, cheered in violation of the rules.

"He did call it an act of terror," said Crowley, consummating the most egregious act of real-time media malpractice in recent memory. She then stumbled through a temporizing bit of nonsense about the two weeks it took for the "whole idea" to be revealed.

When Romney then tried to discuss Ambassador Susan Rice's appearance on five Sunday talk shows, Obama walked into his space and started talking over him. At that point, Crowley said, "I want to move you on and people can go to the transcripts." She then turned quickly to an audience member who wanted to talk about AK-47s -- "a question we hear a lot," said Crowley preposterously.

As to what Obama actually said in his September 12 Rose Garden speech, there is no mystery. He laid out the cause and effect of the Benghazi attack as he saw it one and a half minutes into the presentation: "While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants."

It is hard to misinterpret his meaning. The effort "to denigrate the religious beliefs of others" clearly refers to the absurd trailer for the would-be film The Innocence of Muslims. The violence that followed, says Obama, was "senseless." Here, Obama strongly implies that four Americans were killed in a spontaneous outburst devoid of strategy and provoked by the offending video. There is no other way to read this.

Three minutes later, near the end of a five-plus-minute speech, after discussing the events of September 11, Obama adds, "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation." This bit of generic tough talk is the rhetorical life raft to which Crowley, the president, and their fellow travelers cling. Before the emergence of the internet, they might have gotten away it, but as this American Crossroads video unequivocally shows, Obama's "team," the president included, did play politics with the truth for as long as two weeks after the event and right up through the debate.

(bold, underline and color emphasis added in nine of the above paragraphs)
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View the complete article at:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/..._question.html

[bsteadman1]

Free Republic is running a thread titled, 'Re: 2nd debate: Was “get the transcript Candy” a pre-arranged and scripted setup?', which was started on 10/18/2012 by 'FiddlePig'

The thread references a 10/18/2012 post on 'Stop the Leftist Propaganda Machine' by 'NotMe' - http://www.fireandreamitchell.com/20...s-claim-video/

Posted on Thursday, October 18, 2012 8:59:46 AM by FiddlePig

View the complete Free Republic thread at:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-.../2946586/posts


The following is COMMENT #7, by 'TigerClaws' in the thread:

Obama and Crowley choreographed the debate? (Posted on 10/17/12 at 10:14 p.m.)
When the inevitable Libya question was asked, Obama baits Mitt by saying, “I said on day one that it was an act of terror.”

Mitt, knowing the administration sold the youtube theory around the world for nearly two weeks after the attack, moves in for the boom.

Obama says “check the transcript.”

Moderator picks up a piece of paper and says “he’s right.”

Why did Obama say “check the transcript” and Crowley just happened to have one sitting right in front of her? What are the odds?

Then what else is left for her to do, but incorrectly back up the president in front of millions of people. The most puzzling thing during this orchestrated insanity is the crowds applause as if the president has just been exonerated. They were in effect applauding the idea that the president knew it was a pre-planned terror attack on day one and had been lying to the world the whole time.

Did the president and Crowley orchestrate this exchange and bait Mitt into it?

When Mitt brought up Fast and Furious Obama says “Candy?”. Immediately she interrupts Mitt and tells him to stop talking about it.


The following is COMMENT #42, by 'Mach9' in the thead:

Thanks for this. Most revealing. It’s probably been said somewhere, but it’s only now beginning to sink into my consciousness: Why would a “moderator” feel the need for at-the-ready research materials? Particularly a moderator who had chosen the questions? If she weren’t planning on reffing, what was the point?

Also striking is Obama’s cryptic “Proceed, Governor” (or something like that) as if the question weren’t finished or posed fully enough to elicit an Obama response. But the question WAS fully formed requiring only a yes or no answer—which the president decidedly failed to give. How convenient—since either a yes or a no would have sunk him. Time out. Ball to ref.


The following is COMMENT #46, by 'Boogieman' in the thread:

Even the cinematography was choreographed, I noticed that last night. Go to the part where Obama is “vindicate” regarding his statements on Benghazi, and they show Obama standing in the background, looking back at Romney, who they show sitting in his chair, from behind, in the foreground. This shot was arranged to make Romney look small, as if he was a schoolboy being lectured by Professor Obama. It’s a pretty standard cinematic trick.

Now, the proof that this was intentional is that, if you look at the rest of the debate, there are many times when Romney looks back at Obama sitting in his chair to talk to him, but they NEVER shoot that from an angle where you see Obama’s back. It’s always either a wide angle shot showing the front of both of them, or a shot showing Romney’s back. They purposefully placed the cameras so that they could get shots making Romney look diminutive and Obama superior.


The following is COMMENT #50, by 'firebrand' in the thread:

She didn’t get carried away. The applause tactic was planned too. The applause is what gave all the dumbasses the idea that Obama won the debate. Sealed the deed.

And then the lamestream coat-carryers were all too happy to corroborate the “judgment.”


The following is COMMENT #75, by 'carolinablonde' in the thead:

After reviewing the debate, I think it was absolutely setup and choreographed between Obama and Crowley. Obama says "Check the transcript" before she even says she has it. How would he know that she had it? And why would she only have that one transcript for that one question?

The Dems were desperate for Obama not to look like an idiot again and this bunch from Chicago will do ANYTHING to win an election.

Ironically, I think the after-effect will be exactly the opposite of what they were trying to create. Everybody is again reviewing what he said in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12 and all the mentions afterward of how that stupid, unknown video was to blame, not only by Obama but Susan Rice, Hillary, Jay Carney, et al.

And I think more and more people are questioning what happened at the debate and how it's just a little too much of a coincidence.


The following is COMMENT #83, by 'Kenny', in the thread:

He didn’t say “look at the transcript” which is what you would probably say if you meant to look at it later. He said, “Get the transcript” which is what you’d probably say if you knew it was there.

Just sayin

[bsteadman]

What If Crowley and Her Accomplices Succeed?

Such an outcome would be worse than a scandal, it would be downright dangerous.

The American Spectator
David Catron
10/19/2012

Excerpt:

Shortly after Obamacare was passed and signed by the President, Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute noted a sudden plethora of articles that had begun to appear in a wide variety of MSM outlets about the probable ill-effects of "reform." This prompted him to ask, "Where were these reporters before the passage of the health care bill?" The answer to this question is now pretty obvious. They were colluding, via JournoList and other such forums that we don't know about, to make sure that no one screwed up and told the truth before that morass of taxes and regulations became the law of the land. To the nation's cost, their self-censorship succeeded.

Today, we face a similar but much more dangerous situation. The "reporters" of the establishment news media are engaged in a concerted campaign of misinformation to get Barack Obama re-elected. This has been evident for some time, but the breathtaking mendacity of this effort was writ large by Candy Crowley during last Tuesday's presidential debate. Everyone has by now seen the video clip: the President made the preposterous claim that he had identified the attack on our Benghazi consulate as an act of terrorism as early as September 12. Then, when Romney called him on this egregious whopper, Crowley repeated the lie.

This was no misbegotten attempt at instant "fact checking." It was a deliberately disingenuous attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the debate's 65 million viewers. Crowley herself admitted that she had reviewed the transcript of Obama's September 12 Rose Garden remarks in advance of the debate, and she is not dumb enough to believe Obama's characterization of his boilerplate comment about "acts of terror" in general. This tag-team prevarication may well backfire. Jeffrey Lord suggests, in Thursday's American Spectator, that it may turn out to be the "tipping point that makes Mitt Romney the 45th President of the United States."

That would certainly constitute a splendid example of poetic justice. But what if Lord is wrong? What if Obama's MSM pimps succeed in getting him re-elected? As we saw with Obamacare, these people wield a great deal of power and they are obviously willing to abuse it. Moreover, despite the increasing distrust with which the public regards the effusions of the Fourth Estate, nearly half of the nation's adults still believe what they see and hear in the media. Gallup released a survey last month showing that 40 percent of the electorate still has some measure of confidence that the MSM reports the news "fairly, accurately and fully."

This percentage constitutes an all time low, and it also means that 60 percent of the public has a healthy distrust of the media. Another good sign is that the survey showed enormous skepticism among the all important independents, only 31 percent of whom trust the media. Nonetheless 40 percent amounts to tens of millions of Americans, and its implications for last Tuesday's face-off are scary to contemplate. It suggests the possibility that 20 to 25 million of the debate's viewers could well have accepted at face value Crowley's misleading statement about the President's immediate reaction to the Benghazi attack.

If the final debate contains similar misrepresentations of fact, and it probably will, that could well dampen Romney's momentum and even cause him to lose the election. And this is where the media become dangerous. Pat Caddell, a Democrat and former pollster for Jimmy Carter, recently outlined the peril: "The press's job is to stand in the ramparts and protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from organized governmental power. When they desert those ramparts and decide that they will now become active participants … they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy …"

It is no coincidence that Caddell's remarks, which were made on September 27, were largely focused on the Benghazi attack. He was clearly shocked and outraged by the failure of the media to do its job as it relates to that particular "act of terror" and the disgraceful conduct of Obama and his minions in its aftermath. "We've had nine days of lies over what happened because they can't dare say it's a terrorist attack, and the press won't push this. Yesterday there was not a single piece in The New York Times over the question of Libya. Twenty American embassies, yesterday, were under attack. None of that is on the national news."
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View the complete article at:

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/1...and-her-accomp