<p>I’ll play a sort of devil’s advocate because I’m a registered republican, albeit one of those that might be called a rhino. I worked on a campaign too, CGM, during the primaries, and it really didn’t matter what the opposing party did or didn’t do. The election involves candidates within the same party. You better believe that what the candidates stand for is, and should, be compared to the other candidates in that party. The primary season is the most important (and best) time in our democratic process, IMO; it shouldn’t be a time to excuse candidates because they’re not like the opposing party or the standing president. </p>
<p>Now is the time to pick your “all star” team. Can you tell my candidate did not win? And can you tell that the one that did lost the general election? This is the time to discern who will and won’t make the best candidate. Later is the time to stick by your party candidate no matter what. But good solid criticism and debate at the primary level- are you serious? You don’t want that?</p>
<p>It’s "significance’ is that it plays to the opposition and their stereotypes of HC.</p>
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<p>I trust that this is not a new revelation for you. :)</p>
<p>And, of course, it receives more play bcos the vaunted fourth estate just realized that they are part of the bankrupt process, and either: 1) they have been duped by the HC (and other) campaigns and were “shocked, shocked” to find shenanigans going on (while they picked up their winnings); or, 2) they have known all along about such plants, and did not report them to protect their ride on the bus, but, unfortunately a young 'en points out that they have no clothes.</p>
<p>Just too much fun. I can’t wait until the race actually starts. :D</p>
<p>Well, that’s what bothers me about this thread-- a 19 yo kid just tells the truth and some people are bashing her, her college, the midwest–whatever. This was a mistake by a Clinton staffer. I’m quite sure Hillary knew nothing about it. AND I’m sure there are all kinds of staged events happening all the time. I guess my take is that staging these things–whoever you are–isn’t the best idea.</p>
<p>And the Bush presidency is totally a staged event. He can’t even answer the staged questions. This was still a mis-step, but she shoudn’t be held to a higher standard than anyone else.</p>
<p>Did you know that at most every staged play you’ve sat through, the director or stage manager begins the applause by clapping from the back or side of the audience? I’m not excusing anything, just pointing out there are realities about managing an audience. You can’t afford a dull moment or empty pause when cameras are rolling. From this could come the tendency to create “shills” but it’s really not necessary on a college campus. Maybe in a nursing home (or not). Everyone’s got questions.</p>
<p>Some campaign staffer might have interpreted his/her job to make sure there’d be a steady stream of questions to keep up the momentum of the evening. With more growth and maturity, an advance person could learn to trust students but someone underestimated them. That part is depressing to me.</p>
<p>I don’t endorse planting questions but this is a far from uncommon occurrence and it’s the kind of tempest in a teapot, like discussing Hillary’s laugh or whatever, that diverts attention from more meaningful issues, like Lindsey’s re-hab or Britney’s custody case.</p>
<p>My advice would be to watch the debates for yourself and not rely on the talking heads. Three of Russert’s questions to Clinton in that debate included false or misleading quotes or statements in the question.</p>
<p>For example, the drivers license question. His quote was that Clinton had said the plan “made a lot of sense”, when in reality the interview he pulled the quote from was that Clinton said she understood Spitzers plan and that it made a lot of sense that a governor would try to do something, but that it really wasn’t a good solution to put governors in that position and that her position was that the only good approach has to be at the federal level. Russert conveniently chopped off everything starting with the “but” in his quote – thus, making it falsely appear that she was changing her position.</p>
<p>Watch this stuff for yourself. It’s all widely available. Any voter who listens to the media is a fool.</p>
<p>If you want to understand Russert’s world, read his wife’s new column in Vanity Fair, complaining about how badly the Georgetown Social Scene has declined now that women have careers and are no longer paying enough attention to being good hostesses and how horrible it is that nobody puts fingerbowls with scented geraniums on the table at fancy dinner parties any more. This is a perfect example of how vapid Russert and the beltway press corps is.</p>
<p>Tell me you didn’t see NBC’s Gregory “rapping” with Karl Rove at the Washington Correspondents dinner. These are not people you want to turn to for political opinions.</p>
<p>Bluebayou, because it is late and we want to see how we can twist the path of this thread so we can get back to the really newsworthy issues mentioned by TheDad.</p>
<p>And why has not a single person mentioned FEMA’s infamous press conference yet? Talk about “planted”! (Let’s divert this thread even more)</p>
<p>Here’s how Russert misstated Clinton’s position: “You told the Nashua, N.H., editorial board it makes a lot of sense. Why does it make a lot of sense to give an illegal immigrant a driver’s license?”</p>
<p>Here’s the actual video the Nashua Telegraph put on YouTube of her full answer Russert cherry picked from:</p>
<p>See for yourself how “honest” the media is in their questioning. Watch the three minute video and see if you think Clinton was endorsing Spitzer’s plan.</p>
<p>What we have here is a situation where Clinton never endorsed the Spitzer plan to the Nashua Telegraph and didn’t endorse it in the debate. But, by intentionally misrepresenting her answer to the Telegraph to make it sound like she had endorsed the plan, we have an “inconsistency” manufactured out of whole cloth and a beltway press corps beating her up over an inconsistency that was never even real.</p>
<p>President Bush and his political operation has a much better way of making sure only the right, and none of the wrong questions are ask at their town hall meetings. They simply restrict admissions to their events to people who are loyal Bush supporters.</p>
<p>I really hate that if you give a complicated answer to a complicated question you get accused of being weasley. I didn’t love Spitzer’s original driver’s license plan, and liked the modification even less, but yeah, I think there was a lot more sense in it than he was given credit for.</p>
<p>I want to address the Charles Simic quote, which I find pretty reprehensible.</p>
<p>One of the things I have learned during my adulthood is that politics is an art and a profession. Some people are better than others at it, some people are more honest than others, too, and some are even both. But watching some skilled politicians work – and I include in that Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Ed Rendell, Pennsylvania’s governor – has shown me that it is not at all easy to accomplish anything in our political system, and the people who do accomplish something are those who spend a lot of time and effort figuring out how to do that, and then executing on it.</p>
<p>There are a number of qualities that are necessary for a politician. First, you have to want to do it. That means, to some extent, being turned on by power – a suspicious and unpleasant quality to most of us, but nearly universal among politicians, and absolutely universal among successful ones. It means needing the approval of others – another quality I’m generally ambivalent about. And it absolutely means being willing to compromise principle and being able to triage priorities. But the best politicians are thoughtful and proactive about the compromises and sacrifices they make, and manage to be principled in the way they compromise their principles.</p>
<p>That is not “scummy” at all. It is what is required to mobilize a majority in electoral politics, and in representative government. It is what is required to wield the power to kill people at home and abroad, directly or indirectly.</p>
<p>Poets have generally done a pretty poor job of it, too. I love poetry, but I would rather hire a politician than a poet to do a politician’s job.</p>
<p>“In the past, the Republican Party has funded National Right to Life, and while the committee can raise money on its own, it needs funding” from outside sources.</p>
<p>So here we have a political party funding a whole independent organization, which makes the standard campaign tactic of planting questions in the audience a pikers play. </p>
<p>Tommybill, that fact of that funding is information available to the public who can then decide how best to act upon that information, whereas the “planting” issue is hidden. I don’t think the “plant” is a big deal, but I don’t think it’s a state secret either. People like my daughter who will vote for the first time next year are better served by knowing that these public events are often staged. I’m a Hillary loather, but this isn’t a big deal and I can’t imagine why either side would make it one. The defensiveness is noteworthy, though. Why not just say “we had a point that we wanted to be sure to get across” and leave it at that?</p>
<p>From Post 57 . that (sic) fact of that funding is information available to the public </p>
<p>I am not so sure the information has been public until this newspaper story .I did not know it and I keep up with the news .do you have information that I dont that shows that this information was public?</p>
<p>“I am not so sure the information has been public until this newspaper story….I did not know it and I keep up with the news….do you have information that I don’t that shows that this information was public?”</p>
<p>Funding information is available if you choose to look for it. Which I do and have done. Feel free.</p>