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More Criticism, Response After GOP Debate
Those who encouraged reluctant Republicans to actually show up at the CNN/YouTube debate in Florida Wednesday are now encouraging YouTube to avoid partnering with CNN. Conservative bloggers and online strategists with the Save the Debates Coalition issued a statement criticizing the process of choosing questions.
http://techrepublican.com/blog/save-the-debate-coalition-statement-on-cnns-flawed-editorial-process
Bloggers have been critical especially of one on gays in the military from retired Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr who turned out to have advised the Hillary Clinton campaign on gay and lesbian issues.
“I’m terribly sorry those who helped push for the debate now think it’s tainted,” said CNN senior vice president David Bohrman, who produced the debates, in an interview in today's Technology Daily.
Bohrman said he was on the lookout for Democratic plants and did a Google search on Kerr before the question qas chosen. He said the search at that time revealed Kerr was indeed a retired general and active on gay and lesbian issues. Next he said CNN did a Federal Elections Commission search and found Kerr had not given any money to any of the candidates.
Bohrman said the research stopped there, but the important part is it was still the best gays in the military question among several they received. Had the connection been discovered, he said the CNN was "smart enough to know there would be blow back."
He said the process of vetting questions shouldn't be changed and the questions selected were the most appropriate for the Republican candidates. Bohrman said Democrats and Republicans would like to have them select zingers for the other side, but the real need with the debate was for questions that allowed the candidates to differentiate themselves on the issues that matter to Republican voters.
"The questions were very good. The questions were very interesting," Bohrman said. "People are just building up this incredibly bizarre strawman because of one mistake that wasn't a major mistake, but one we didn't discover."
Posted by Heather on November 30, 2007 04:10 PM | Permalink
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