Posted on 11/11/2007 10:28:50 PM PST by neverdem
At two campaign events in Iowa this year, aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton encouraged audience members to ask her specific questions, a tactic that drew criticism from an opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination and led her yesterday to promise that it would not happen again.
Mrs. Clinton, speaking to reporters in Iowa, said she was unaware that her aides had ever planted questions.
“It was news to me,” said Mrs. Clinton, of New York, “and neither I nor my campaign approve of that, and it will certainly not be tolerated.”
Staff members have been told to avoid doing so in the future, advisers said.
Planting questions with audience members, while not unheard of in political campaigns, is generally avoided because of the embarrassing image it suggests when the tactic becomes public: that a candidate is uncomfortable facing tough questions or campaigning in unpredictable settings.
Iowa’s presidential caucuses are less than two months away, and Mrs. Clinton is in a tight race there with Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina.
Political analysts said that while planting questions is not the worst sin of a campaign operation, the practice could reinforce negative opinions about Mrs. Clinton.
“The problem for Hillary Clinton is the whole spin that’s going to happen — that she and her campaign are manipulative and scheming and that she is essentially trying to bend the rules to maintain her lead in the polls,” said Steffen W. Schmidt, a political science professor at Iowa State University.
The practice came to light late last week when a student at Grinnell College in Iowa, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, told her campus newspaper that a Clinton aide had asked her to pose a question to Mrs. Clinton about global warming...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
A/K/A Vince Foster II if this goes badly for Queen Hillary.
"Off with her head I say", said the presumptive Democrat primary winner...
The smartest woman in the world is always unaware or can't recall, except when it's scripted.
This is Mrs. Clinton we’re talking about isn’t it. We don’t need to investigate this. It is the Clintons, the darlings of the dinner circuit.
We should move on. If deaths surrounding this mall aren’t worthy of investigation, what’s the marketability of a thing like fraud?
Has anyone run this by Bob Woodward? I think we ought to before we run off and do something that might damage the reputation of someone the nation adores.
/s
Shills for Hillary!
Bet most of them are guilty of it.
BRAVO SIERRA, OVER!
WHAT'S BRAVO SIERRA, THE STORY OR THE EXPLANATION? OVER.
Of course, this is absurd. What would be the point of planting questions if the person being questioned didn’t know in advance and was prepared to answer the question in a way that would have political affect of the audience?
What if they planted a question Clinton didn’t want to answer? Your right: Bravo Sierra.
She knew.
The VRWC strikes again.
However, if she can't keep a tight enough ship to prevent this being found out, that says a lot about her organizational skills.
Notice the damage control in the very first paragraph...
The NY Times wants you to think that only after both incidents occurred did she promise to not let it happen again.
In reality, she made that promise after the *first* planted question incident and then it *did* happen again (only now to be reported in the NY Times).
More on that ‘train’ of thought.
“It was news to me,” said Mrs. Clinton, of New York, “and neither I nor my campaign approve of that, and it will certainly not be tolerated.”
Staff members have been told to avoid doing so in the future, advisers said.
If they would not approve of doing this, why would they?
And they were not told never again, but to ‘avoid’ .....(getting caught?)
Yes
Yes
Do you mean both, or just the latter? A complete statement in the affirmative would be appreciated.
The fact that a campaign staff would interview and steer the line of questioning does not seem to be an unreasonable thing, nor morally wrong, to do.
Any staff that doesn’t cull out the crazies doesn’t deserve a MAIDRITE hamburger.
Staff members would likely suggest certain policies, current events issues, or future goals as good questions to choose from.
You know, some people, if not ‘led’ a little, would get up to the microphone, and waste everyone’s time by asking Hillary what her favorite recipe is.
So, there is good reason for being selective, and ensuring the quality of the questions. After all, it is their job to help their boss win the election, by looking good at the dog and pony show.
So, let us focus on the real problem.
If you have to keep voters from using their brains, by trying to tell THEM what do to, what to think, what to ask, you will get a revolt, sooner or later.
The peasants are getting tired of being told to eat cake.
People don’t like fakes, phonies, or cowards.
HRC and staff have shown themselves to be all three.
(Which is why they will do anything to be ‘in power’.)
Well, there's an obvious lie...if it was one of her campaign aids that planted the questions then they most certainly DID approve it as they were the ones who did it. Of course a Clinton lying is not news.
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