Seriously! There should be a video montage shown to every conservative candidate of the damage that poorly-worded responses to gotcha questions cause.
So many candidates that would be competitive get blown away by these unforced errors. Not only do the media deliberately try to inject gotcha questions, they also will sit on edited footage waiting for a candidate to win a nomination before releasing the moment publicly.
You’d think by now that candidates could learn to deflect or turn the question around at the interviewer. Some of the best ways for a politician to gain support is to challenge the premise of a question and put the interviewer on the spot.
Just look what Newt Gingrich did to Juan Williams, John King, or Chris Wallace. They were humiliated publicly when they tried to pull this stuff.
“This is an absurd question, the sole purpose of which is to make a person like me who is pro life to look foolish. But I’ll try to answer as best I can. I can understand the dilemma facing a young girl who is contemplating an abortion. Scared, desperate without resources I would want our state to have a place where she could get counseling on choices other than to abort the child. I would not support a process that would lead to the death penalty.”
I remember when Newt tried to explain why women soldiers should not be sloshing around in water filled trenches, certain periods of the month.