The Fat Lady Sings!
Crowley sparks controversy as presidential debate moderator.
If Tuesday night's presidential debate proved nothing else, it demonstrated one thing: CNN's Candy Crowley is definitely not an "uncommitted voter." The moderator's handling of the town-hall debate at Hofstra University was heavy-handed and one-sided throughout, not merely giving more time to President Obama, but repeatedly cutting off Mitt Romney when the Republican attempted to counter accusations from the president.
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In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday night's debate, the liberals on MSNBC gave enthusiastic praise to both Obama's performance and Crowley's handling of the debate. Rachel Maddow said the president had given the best debate showing of his entire political career, Ed Schultz said Obama was "stellar" and Chris Matthews was so ecstatic that, as I said on Twitter, he was "wetting his pants in joy, gibbering like a meth freak on laughing gas."Yet Crowley's intervention on the Libya question, which seemed an effort to help Obama, may have actually worsened the president's larger problem. Crowley herself admitted in a CNN post-debate interview that Romney "was right in the main" in his criticism of Obama's handling of the Benghazi attack.
Meanwhile, on Fox News, Charles Krauthammer said that Crowley's "incorrect and unfair" intervention had "contaminated" the debate. By highlighting the Libyan issue and adding a new element of controversy, however, Crowley inadvertently ensured that the administration's failure in Benghazi will be the focus of post-debate news coverage -- which is unlikely to improve Obama's re-election chances.
The facts of the Libyan debacle simply are not in the president's favor, and the final debate -- Monday at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida -- is specifically devoted to foreign policy. The venerable Bob Schieffer of CBS News will host that debate, and is unlikely to repeat Crowley's mistakes...
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
