[FairOpinion]

BINGO!

Newsmax picked up on it, but so far they are the only ones I noticed:


Lehrer Stacks Deck Against Bush
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1232043/posts

Here is the transcript of the debate:

http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=71504

All questions to Kerry were openings to give him a chance to expound on his position and attack Bush. All questions to Bush were attacks and accusations.

[RayChuang88]

I hope that the blogosphere will investigate whether Jim Lehrer may have given the questions to Senator Kerry's campaign office in advance. If that is true it will make the recent scandal at CBS seem like a minor event.

[Grampa Dave]

I think that GW and his team set up Kerry by deciding to let Kerry just go for it during the first 2/3's of debate #1. They figured that Kerry had seen the questions and was ready to ramble at full speed. So they had GW stand back and let Kerry do his normal thing, unchecked with the help of the liberal moderator.

The Republicans have fact checkers vetting every lie, every Rathering, every answer, every response and utterance that Kerry made tonight in the first debate.

We will see many of those answers, responses, and utternances in hard hitting ads for our side.

This will set the stage for debates 2 and 3. If Kerry repeats himself re bad answers, responses and utterances in debate #2, he will have defeated himself with his own mouth. Kerry's responses will become great ads for GW.

They set Kerry up in Debate #1 by having GW set back, listen and allowing Kerry to Rather to America.

[RobbyS]

Lehrer got his start in the same time and place as Rather and as a liberal reporter for a liberal Texas paper. But he is not nuts like Rather.

[leadpenny]

I'll say it again, Brian Lamb should be the moderator for all of the debates.

[Mo1]

FYI ping

[Helms]

Lets not forget the side he is on and how deadly serious they are to win.

[Pajamajan]

hmmmmmm...... Do we have the sequel to Rather-fake-memo gate here?

[Helms]

It probably just my inherent VRWC paranoia, but it seems as though Lehrer might have had an agenda in his questions.

Numerous questions to President Bush were phrased in such a way as to put him on the defensive, requiring him to explain how he would correct what Lehrer implies are previous mistakes.

Conversely, most of Kerry's questions were soft balls designed to let him reitrate his new and improved (and presumably final and solid) campaign talking points.

I guess Kerry's two decades of Senate votes on matters effecting foreign affairs were not deemed germane to tonight's discussion of foreign affairs. I'm sure there will be much discussion among the pajamaed (sic?- hell, I don't even know if this is a word-but it should be) hoi polloi regarding this issue.

What's intersting is a novel that Lehrer wrote a few years back. Here's an excerpt: "Taking journalistic activism to unprecedented new heights, the media figures at the heart of this ingratiating post-Clinton political satire overtly change the course of a presidential election. At Williamsburg, Va., a few weeks before election day, Bible-quoting, media-savvy Republican David Donald Meredith will debate an all-but-defeated Democratic challenger. But newspaperman Michael J. Howley, the debate moderator, and the panel of questioning journalists so fear the consequences of Meredith's impending presidency that they conspire to ruin him by dispensing with the set debate format and ambushing Meredith with damning, unpublished documents in Howley's possession." From the novel "The Last Debate: A Novel of Politics and Journalism, by tonights moderater, Jim Lehrer.

Hmm, a cabal of heroic Lefty, err, liberal activists, I mean journalists, go after a Bible-quoting Republican incumbent to in order to save their floundering Democratic challenger. You don't think...no. Of course not.

After all, this was just a work of fiction. I mean really, a Left leaning media. How absurd!

[nopardons]

Exactly so!

[Zeroisanumber]

Lehrer seemed pretty impartial to me. Bush just isn't the seasoned debater that Kerry is and, naturally, he isn't going to look as composed and confident as the former head of the Yale debate team. Also, a siting President will have more (and more pointed) questions about his policies. The Iraq War is a point of great contention between the left and the right and it's not suprising that most of the questions in a Foreign Policy/Internal Security debate would revolve around Iraq and terrorism.

The questions posed for Kerry seemed to revolve more around feeling him out on the issues. Kerry has been notoriously vague about his position on the Iraq War, the WoT, and internal security. Lehrer's questions forced him to take a position, which we can hopefully pick apart later.

Jim Lehrer has been dedicated to complete impartiality through most of his career, to the point of not having voted in an election since Kennedy/Nixon. If Lehrer can't be trusted to write the questions and moderate a fair debate, then we might as well give up on having any debate whatsoever because no one will ever be above suspicion of bias.

[dougherty]

Creepy.

[ApesForEvolution]

NO KIDDING! When I heard James Baker was negotiating the debates, and THEN heard Jim the Boshevik Communist Layruh (Lehrer) was moderating, that hard Left POS, I wondered if...well, it bothered me. lol

[ApesForEvolution]

JUST DAMN

[PGalt]

Outstanding post. Thanks.

[eleni121]

Mushhead Lehrer blurts out how much he loved Watergate because as he opines: If it wasn't for Watergate there wouldn't be any Pubic Broadcasting any more.

Why oh why do we continue to fund the left wing airwaves of PBS?