posted November 10, 2007 12:23 PM            

It's easy to see why Hillary wants planted questions and planted questioners in her audiences. Every time someone asks Hillary an unscripted question, she blows it and goes off the rails....then accuses the questioner of bias...as in Tim Russert of the evil vast right wing conspiracy.

What a maroon.

Clinton aides plant student's question
By PATRICK CALDWELL

The Iowa caucuses are known for their “living-room chats” where ordinary Iowans can meet candidates face-to-face and talk about what interests voters. When candidates have larger events or make major policy speeches, the crowds are bigger, but there is often still an opportunity for questions. But under the pressures of major media coverage, with polls narrowing in Iowa, campaigns can potentially control questions and coverage by planning questions ahead of time.

While no campaigns admit to this practice, at a recent Hillary Clinton campaign event in Newton, Iowa, some of the questions posed to the New York Senator were planned in advance, planting some audience members in the crowd.

On Tuesday Nov. 6, the Clinton campaign stopped at a biodiesel plant in Newton as part of a weeklong series of events to introduce her new energy plan. The event was clearly intended to be as much about the press as the Iowa voters in attendance, as a large press core helped fill the small venue. Reporters from many major national news outlets came to the small Iowa town, from such media giants as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, and CNN.

After her speech, Clinton accepted questions. But according to Grinnell College student Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff ’10, some of the questions from the audience were planned in advance. “They were canned,” she said. Before the event began, a Clinton staff member approached Gallo-Chasanoff to ask a specific question after Clinton’s speech. “One of the senior staffers told me what [to ask],” she said.

Clinton called on Gallo-Chasanoff after her speech to ask a question: what Clinton would do to stop the effects of global warming. Clinton began her response by noting that young people often pose this question to her before delving into the benefits of her plan.

But the source of the question was no coincidence—at this event “they wanted a question from a college student,” Gallo-Chasanoff said. She also noted that staffers prompted Clinton to call on her and another who had been approached before the event, although Clinton used her discretion to select questions and called on people who had not been prepped before hand. Some of the questions asked were confusing and clearly off-message.

The practice of planting audience members to ask specific questions does not appear to be a common practice, or at least not a politically acceptable one. “Our campaign does not plant questions,” said Lauren Rose, Communications Director for Governor Bill Richardson’s campaign. When asked what she would think of other campaigns who did plant audience members, Rose said, “I think campaigns should give Iowa caucus-goers the chance to ask the questions they want.”

When asked if the John Edwards campaign employed such practices, Jenni Lee, Edwards’s Iowa Press Secretary said, “No, they ask whatever they want.”

But the Clinton campaign also denied the practice of planting. “It’s not a practice of our campaign to ask people to ask specific questions,” said Mark Daley, Clinton’s Iowa Communications Director. Daley said that when an event is focusing on a specific topic, such as health care or Iraq, “people are encouraged to ask questions in these regards,” but denied that they are given specific questions.

But when directly asked if his statements meant that planting does not occur in the Hillary campaign, Daley could only say, “to the best of my knowledge.”

“[Planting] is not something that is encouraged in our campaign,” he said.

The event in Newton was a particularly major policy speech, more informative than rallying. The campaign’s apparent tactics at this event may have little or no relationship with the questions at less formal campaign events.

Other presidential campaigns were approached for comment on the topic, but no others responded before the paper went to press.

posted November 11, 2007 01:55 AM              

(*yes, just in case you missed this; I am not a fan of the Clintons at ALL!)

posted November 11, 2007 04:59 AM              

Well... I VOTE FOR HONESTY!

posted November 13, 2007 12:38 PM            

Hillary is the perfect presidential candidate for Cuba...or...communist China...or communist North Korea...or communist Vietnam.

Hillary just doesn't have the right stuff to be president of the United States....unless one considers felonious political and financial corruption to be the very things which "uniquely qualifies" Hillary to be President.

Of course, Hillary's far left radical supporters DO think those are the very things which "uniquely qualify" Hillary. Those are the very qualities which radical leftists defended in her husband, Commander Corruption...aka, Bill Clinton...and still do defend.

Student describes how she became a Clinton plant
Student says Clinton staffer showed her a binder with about eight questions
Student said she was not the only one told what to ask

GRINNELL, Iowa (CNN) -- The college student who was told what question to ask at one of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign events says "voters have the right to know what happened" and she wasn't the only one who was planted.

Student Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff said a staffer told her what to ask at a campaign event for Sen. Hillary Clinton.

In an exclusive on-camera interview with CNN, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, a 19-year-old sophomore at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, said that giving anyone specific questions to ask is "dishonest," and the whole incident has given her a negative outlook on politics.

Gallo-Chasanoff, whose story was first reported in the campus newspaper, said what happened was really pretty simple: She says a senior Clinton staffer asked if she'd like to ask the senator a question after an energy speech the Democratic presidential hopeful gave in Newton, Iowa, on November 6.

"I sort of thought about it, and I said 'Yeah, can I ask how her energy plan compares to the other candidates' energy plans?'" Gallo-Chasanoff said Monday night.

"'I don't think that's a good idea," the staffer said, according to Gallo-Chasanoff, "because I don't know how familiar she is with their plans."

He then opened a binder to a page that, according to Gallo-Chasanoff, had about eight questions on it.

"The top one was planned specifically for a college student," she added. " It said 'college student' in brackets and then the question."

And while she said she would have rather used her own question, Gallo-Chasanoff said she generally didn't have a problem asking the campaign's because she "likes to be agreeable," adding that since she told the staffer she'd ask their pre-typed question she "didn't want to go back on [her] word."

Clinton campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee said Clinton had "no idea who she was calling on."

"This is not acceptable campaign process moving forward. We've taken steps to ensure that it never happens again," she said in a written response to CNN.

Gallo-Chasanoff wasn't so sure.

"I don't know whether Hillary knew what my question was going to be, but it seemed like she knew to call on me because there were so many people, and ... I was the only college student in that area," she said.

In a statement, the campaign also added, "On this occasion a member of our staff did discuss a possible question about Senator Clinton's energy plan at a forum. ... This is not standard policy and will not be repeated again."

Gallo-Chasanoff may have some doubts about that one as well.

"After the event," she said, "I heard another man ... talking about the question he asked, and he said that the campaign had asked him to ask that question."

The man she references prefaced his question by saying that it probably didn't have anything to do with energy, and then posed the following: "I wonder what you propose to do to create jobs for the middle-class person, such as here in Newton where we lost Maytag."

A Maytag factory in Newton recently closed, forcing hundreds of people out of their jobs.

During the course of the late-night interview on Grinnell's campus, Gallo-Chasanoff also told CNN that the day before the school's newspaper, Scarlet and Black, printed the story, she wanted the reporter to inform the campaign out of courtesy to let them know it would be published.

She said the "head of publicity for the campaign," a man whose name she could not recall, had no factual disputes with the story. But, she added, a Clinton intern spoke to her to say the campaign requests she "not talk about" the story to any more media outlets and that if she did she should inform a staffer.

"I'm not under any real obligation to do that, and I haven't talked to [the campaign] anymore," Gallo-Chasanoff said, adding that she also doesn't plan to.

"If what I do is come and just be totally truthful, then that's all anyone can ask of me, and that's all I can ask of myself. So I'll feel good with what I've done. I'll feel like I've done the right thing."

Asked if this experience makes her less likely to support Clinton's presidential bid, Gallo-Chasanoff, an undecided voter, said, "I think she has a lot to offer, but I -- this experience makes me look at her campaign a little bit differently."

"The question and answer sessions -- especially in Iowa -- are really important. That's where the voters get to ... have like a real genuine conversation with this politician who could be representing them."

While she acknowledged "it's possible that all campaigns do these kind of tactics," she said it still doesn't make it right.

"Personally I want to know that I have someone who's honest representing me."

Gallo-Chasanoff's story comes at a time when a second person has also come forward with a similar one. Geoffrey Mitchell of Hamilton, Illinois, a town located on the Iowa border, told CNN the Clinton campaign also wanted him to ask a certain question at an Iowa event in April.

"He asked me if I would ask Sen. Clinton about ways she was going to confront the president on the war in Iraq, specifically war funding," said Geoffrey Mitchell, a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois. "I told him it was not a question I felt comfortable with."

No questions were taken at the event. Elleithee said this incident was different than what happened with Gallo-Chasanoff in Newton. Elleithee said the staffer "bumped into someone he marginally knew" and during a conversation with Mitchell, "Iraq came up." Elleithee denied the campaign tried to plant him as a friendly questioner in the audience.

Mitchell said he had never met the staffer before the event.