I would of gotten to this story sooner if had not been for that damn day job.
I’m certain everyone has already heard about this story, but as usual I just have to throw my two cents into the mix. Last night we found out that one of the YouTube questioners, Brigadier General Keith Kerr, was a Hillary Clinton supporter and served on her steering committee along with John Kerry’s steering committee. Here is his question:
After which Cooper hit Romney with a 13 year old quote of his in which he said he looked forward to the day when gays could serve in the military.
It was a big gotcha moment, and it came from a Democrat operative.
Andersons excuse for the plant? They didn’t know….
COOPER: “Bill Bennett earlier mentioned he was getting some reports
from friends of his on the Internet that Brigadier General Keith Kerr,
who asked a question about gays in the military during this debate, was
on a steering committee for Senator Hillary Clinton. That was something
certainly unknown to us, and had we known that, would have been
disclosed by us. It turns out we have just looked at it. Apparently,
there was a press release from some six months ago. Hillary Clinton’s
office saying that he had been named to some steering committee. We
don’t know if he’s still on it. We’re trying to find out that
information. But certainly, had we had that information, we would have
acknowledged that in using his question, if we had used it at all.
An excuse that is almost insulting seeing that they could find the time to dig up that quote from 13 years ago but couldn’t find out about Kerr’s affiliations with the Democrats. I don’t buy it and no one else does. Wizbang:
Anderson Cooper would have you believe that a network that could select
this question, find that 13-year-old Romney quote, create the trap for
Romney (which he fell face first into), and (presumably) fly Kerr to
the debate, could not type “Keith Kerr, retired Colonel” into Google
and find the link to the Hillary Clinton press release, which prior to
the debate appeared in the first 10 results for that search?
The blogosphere went into overdrive and discovered that Kerr was not the only plant. In fact it’s looking like you would be hard pressed to find one of the questioners who WASN’T a Democrat plant:
This girl asked the abortion question and can be seen in this video of hers wearing a Edwards shirt and declaring on her blog that she is a Edwards supporter. (h/t Michelle Malkin)
This guy asked the log cabin Republican question and is a Obama supporter as evidenced by his profile page: (h/t SixMeatBuffet)
Powerline has a few more:
Adam Florzak asked a question on Social Security. It turns out that Florzak quit his job with Caterpillar to work with Dick Durbin on Social Security reform. Then there was Mark Strauss, who pleaded with Ron Paul to run as an Independent. It turns out he’s a Richardson supporter (more here).
Now many would say that just because most of the questioners were Democrats AND supporters of the Democrat competition, that this fact does not invalidate their questions, to which I would agree.
But the lack of any disclosure on the part of the CNN, when you know damn well they could have found all this stuff out quite quickly, speaks volumes to me. The network pretended to be neutral but came up with “gotcha” quotes that are 13 years old in an attempt to sandbang the candidates AND on top of that they put on a bunch of Democrats to ask the questions from over 5,000 submitted.
It doesn’t invalidate the questions but it invalidates the debate in my mind.
And one more reason why, as I stated in my first post on the debates, this format sucks ass!
Its not Presidential, its amateurish, and makes the candidates on both sides look foolish having to answer some cartoon character.
Oh, one other thing. I thought the left’s battle cry has been that Fox is a shill for the GOP. In fact the Democrats run and hide from debating on that network. Meanwhile the Republicans say “bring it on!” to a network that will pull this kind of stunt.
What does that say about the Democrats?
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