Far from an open forum in which he tackled tough questions, it was instead a campaign rally in which the questions were provided ahead of time to selected individuals that McCain was directed to by aides. He answered a total of seven questions from the audience, and abruptly ended the "town hall" when it went off-script.
The seating for the event was arranged ahead of time, and with cameras in mind. Those cameras were also directed to be turned off by McCain's staff whenever it was convenient.
The seating was staged. There were about 20 people with Veteran's hats and all were seated directly in line with McCain's podium in the front and back. Your cameras from home would make it appear that half the people there were veterans. In reality it was about 1%. Mixed into the Veterans was one angry woman who had a sign claiming she was a Hillary supporter voting McCain. This one sign was placed directly in the spot where the cameras were most likely to pick it up. She was planted there. It also appears that there was one singular woman who pulled the same stunt Thursday night at the so called Fox News McCain town hall meeting in New York. These people aren't real Clinton supporters, this too is staged.
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The questions and answers were not chosen among random people. 5 of the 7 questioners came from the VIP section including a woman in a wheelchair who was placed there ahead of time by a senior McCain staffer and then pointed to for a question even though she never raised her hand. They were plants. A couple of them were reading from index cards. A sixth questioner was also a plant in the bleachers about 40 feet to my right. He was a local Republican mayor whom the locals were familiar with.
So we have five questions coming from a group of pre-selected people in the "VIP section", some of which were reading from index cards. One of the two questions coming from the audience came from a known-to-be-sympathetic local Republican politician. The last question, which was from the audience, was the one that ended this charade, and was the only question that McCain was asked during the entire affair that wasn't scripted or pre-arranged.
How did this minor gamble work out?
The 7th questioner was chosen because McCain thought a 9 year old child was going to ask the question. But the father took the mike, told how his wife and child flew out of Newark on 9/11 and that could have been them. He then asked a very simple question, "Why haven't we gotten Bin Laden?"
A bunch of Obama people and others cheered. (I refrained, I was to be the next question.) McCain got pissed, started rambling about the Diamondbacks and Yankees and Rudy Giuliani on a screen, said as President Bin Laden would be caught (Guess this means Bin Laden is still safe for another few months) and people were laughing that McCain wasn't answering the question.
You could see the veins in McCain starting to burst, he got very uncomfortable that his scripted rally just got derailed by this gentleman and then he ended the rally by thanking everyone and saying God Bless America.
So this is the kind of forum that McCain expects Obama to submit to?
Seven questions, 70% of which came from people that the campaign hand-picked, vetted, and most probably handed the proper questions to beforehand, another from a known Republican politician, and the last one was intended to be from a child, and this was supposed to be some kind of open forum where "tough questions" are asked?
The moment it goes off-script with a question from a well-meaning and sympathetic audience member, the whole thing is called to an end. This unscripted question wasn't even really answered.
During the 2004 campaign, Bush also only appeared before pre-screened audiences in staged affairs like this one. He continues to only publicly speak before military audiences and hand-picked crowds, or in front of organisations known to be sympathetic in which everything is arranged beforehand. No dissent can be displayed in Republican America. A fairy-tale world in which everyone loves the Decider is all that the media is allowed to show, and McCain is emulating that practise.
Meanwhile, Democrats are criticised for refusing to appear on openly hostile outlets such as Fox News by people who think that this kind of "town hall meeting" is for real.
This might play well with the Republican Faithful, but the rest of America will not be persuaded by this North Korea-style of public discourse. Republicans, however, really believe that America - the "true" America, the Silent Majority America, the "real people"- still supports them and will swallow this kind of act.
They are in for a surprise in November. Their delusion is what is preventing them from cancelling elections altogether due to some concocted "emergency".
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