'Independent' Audience Asks Twice As Many Anti-Romney Questions

Candy Crowley’s disgraceful performance tonight masked her true failure: her failure to pick questions outside the Daily Kos mailbag. Here’s the full list of questions she pre-screened from members of the “independent” audience. They got more and more egregious as the evening progressed.

• QUESTION: Mr. President, Governor Romney, as a 20-year-old college student, all I hear from professors, neighbors and others is that when I graduate, I will have little chance to get employment. What can you say to reassure me, but more importantly my parents, that I will be able to sufficiently support myself after I graduate? Romney answered this one easily, but the question itself was framed from a leftist point of view. It is no president’s job to guarantee anyone employment after they graduate. All a president can do is create the conditions for economic growth, which provides jobs. Score this one as a neutral question.
• QUESTION: Your energy secretary, Steven Chu, has now been on record three times stating it’s not policy of his department to help lower gas prices. Do you agree with Secretary Chu that this is not the job of the Energy Department? This question was directed to President Obama, and it was clearly an anti-Obama question. This led to an exchange in which Obama ended up claiming that low gas prices lead to economic recessions.
• QUESTION: Governor Romney, you have stated that if you’re elected president, you would plan to reduce the tax rates for all the tax brackets and that you would work with the Congress to eliminate some deductions in order to make up for the loss in revenue. Concerning the — these various deductions, the mortgage deductions, the charitable deductions, the child tax credit and also the — oh, what’s that other credit? I forgot.

OBAMA: You’re doing great.

QUESTION: Oh, I remember. The education credits, which are important to me, because I have children in college. What would be your position on those things, which are important to the middle class? This question was so great for Obama that he decided to help the questioner along with it. She was trying to get Romney to talk about how he was going to hurt middle income people by getting rid of deductions for them. Romney answered it beautifully, and took the bat out of her hands.

• QUESTION: In what new ways to you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn? It was at this point that the questions began coming completely off the rails – about 40 minutes into the debate. From here on in, nearly every question was based on false liberal premises, like the nonsense that women are paid less than their male counterparts, which has been debunked repeatedly. Crowley allowed this question specifically to help Obama recover female votes.
• QUESTION: Governor Romney, I am an undecided voter, because I’m disappointed with the lack of progress I’ve seen in the last four years. However, I do attribute much of America’s economic and international problems to the failings and missteps of the Bush administration. Since both you and President Bush are Republicans, I fear a return to the policies of those years should you win this election. What is the biggest difference between you and George W. Bush, and how do you differentiate yourself from George W. Bush? This question was clearly submitted by David Axelrod. It’s absurd. Why not ask Barack Obama how his policies differ from those of Jimmy Carter?
• QUESTION: Mr. President, I voted for you in 2008. What have you done or accomplished to earn my vote in 2012? I’m not that optimistic as I was in 2012. Most things I need for everyday living are very expensive. It’s tough to score this one an anti-Obama question, since it’s the most obvious question of this campaign. But it clearly didn’t help Obama, so we’ll score it that way.
• QUESTION: Mr. Romney, what do you plan on doing with immigrants without their green cards that are currently living here as productive members of society? This question was geared by Crowley to help President Obama among Hispanics, despite his utter lack of a record on immigration. There is no way that Crowley would have approved a question for President Obama on his failure to enforce the border or to comply with the law.
• QUESTION: We were sitting around, talking about Libya, and we were reading and became aware of reports that the State Department refused extra security for our embassy in Benghazi, Libya, prior to the attacks that killed four Americans. Who was it that denied enhanced security and why? This question was obviously anti-Obama. Sadly, Crowley had no interest in getting an answer from the President on it. In fact, when Romney called Obama on his Libya cover-up, she jumped in to save him with a false fact-check she later walked back.
• QUESTION: President Obama, during the Democratic National Convention in 2008, you stated you wanted to keep AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. What has your administration done or planned to do to limit the availability of assault weapons? Precisely nobody outside the far left cares about this question. Nobody.
• QUESTION: The outsourcing of American jobs overseas has taken a toll on our economy. What plans do you have to put back and keep jobs here in the United States? Clearly a set-up for Obama to hit Romney about his supposed penchant for outsourcing.
• QUESTION: Hi, Governor. I think this is a tough question. To each of you. What do you believe is the biggest misperception that the American people have about you as a man and a candidate? Using specific examples, can you take this opportunity to debunk that misperception and set us straight? This is a straightforward, non-partisan question.

So here’s the final tally. There were 11 total questions. Six of them were clearly and obviously anti-Romney. Three were anti-Obama. Two were relatively neutral (and one of those leaned toward Obama). The questions that were anti-Obama were also the two most obvious questions of the evening: why are gas prices high? And what have you done to earn re-election? The questions against Romney were the height of absurdity, ranging from gender gap nonsense to gun control to outsourcing.

Something else worth noting: Romney actually answered the questions he was asked. Barack Obama didn’t.