***UPDATE 4: Politico’s Dylan Byers: “After the debate, even Crowley seemed to acknowledge that she had erred.”
***UPDATE 3: Even Politico’s Mike Allen is questioning Crowley’s call.
***UPDATE 2: Even Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler says Crowley got it wrong: Obama “did not say terrorism.”
***UPDATE: After the debate, Anderson Cooper was the first member of the CNN post debate group to question whether or not Romney really got the Libya issue wrong. They then brought Crowley on and after all the damage she had done during the debate, she finally admitted that Romney was “right” but “picked the wrong word.”
Romney “picked the wrong word!” And for that sin the the referee ran onto the field and tackled the other guy!
This is a scandal; a total and complete media scandal committed by a woman who promised to violate her contract and to insert herself into the debate. All she did for weeks was brag about how she intended to grab the spotlight — and boy did she ever.
Absolutely disgraceful.
We’re done with the second presidential debate, but it was apparent 45 minutes in that between the questions Crowley chose and her handling of who was allowed to speak and when, that this debate was a total and complete setup to rehabilitate Barack Obama.
If these are truly undecided voters, they’re apparently undecided between Obama and the Green Party. Moreover, as I write this, Obama’s already enjoyed four more minutes of speaking time than Romney. In a ninety-minute debate, that’s a big deal.
The lowest and most dishonest part of Crowley’s disgraceful “moderation” was when she actually jumped into the debate to take Obama’s side when the issue of Benghazi came up. To cover for his and his administration’s lying for almost two weeks about the attack coming as the result of a spontaneous protest over a YouTube video, Obama attempted to use as cover the claim that he had called the attack a “terrorist attack” on that very first day during his Rose Garden statement.
Romney correctly disputed that.
Crowley, quite incorrectly, took Obama’s side and the crowd exploded.
Here’s what Obama said that day:
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.
Context matters and the context here is that Obama connected this “act of terror” to … a mob action over a YouTube video — not a deliberate terrorist attack. Obama was using the term generically and it would be almost two weeks before he used it again.
Let’s not forget that Susan Rice said declaratively on the five Sunday shows four days later that it was NOT an act of terror.
And during those two weeks the Obama administration lied like a rug. For Crowley to step in and attempt to correct Romney on a statement that is at best arguable, was completely out of line. The debate over this debate has only begun.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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