It’s de ja vu all over again.  We all remember screaming at our TV sets when Candy Crowley seemed to join the Barack Obama debate team against Mitt Romney, speciously claiming that Obama had in fact called the Benghazi attack “terrorism.”  Now Wolf Blitzer is pulling a “Crowley.” 

As the moderator of the New Hampshire Senate debate between Scott Brown and Jeanne Shaheen earlier this week, Blitzer came armed with a ‘gotcha’ quote by Brown in which he lists Romney’s prescient policy positions in 2012, and says we would not be worrying about Ebola right now had Romney won.  The actual quote from an interview with Brian Kilmeade:  “Gosh, can you imagine if Mitt was the president right now? He was right on Russia, he was right on Obamacare, he was right on the economy, and I guarantee you that we would not be worrying about Ebola right now, or worrying about a foreign policy screw ups…”

Blitzer, of course, was trying to spin this as though Brown believed that Romney’s victory would have miraculously wiped out Ebola.  But one could more reasonably interpret the quote as to mean that we would be worrying less about Ebola, because perhaps Romney would have issued an immediate travel ban, being less PC than our president.  Regardless, how exactly does this statement, a hypothetical conjecture, have any bearing on the policy positions of the two respective candidates?

Brown flippantly responded to Blitzer, “Thank you for repeating that quote for the fourth time,” and again explained that it was taken out of context.  Blitzer insisted it’s not taken out of context.  So the moderator was literally debating the Republican Senatorial candidate. 

Speaking of prescience, I myself audibly groaned as soon as I heard Blitzer’s voice and realized he would be moderating.  Blitzer has a kind of poker face which belies his rather staunch partisanship.  This stoic front is therefore all the more enraging.

Otherwise, Brown won this debate handily.  He made a point to highlight his support for a travel ban in response to Ebola, whereas Shaheen gave a canned response that she would “listen to the experts,” and accused Brown of “fear mongering.”  Unfortunately, the “experts” over at the CDC are ideological hacks.  One can just hope that New Hampshire voters will also realize how handily Brown won this debate.  

Contact Malcolm Unwell via email.