Posted on 09/27/2014 10:05:42 AM PDT by smokingfrog
LINCOLN, Neb. — There were few surprises during Sunday’s U.S. Senate debate, except when the frontrunner, GOP nominee Ben Sasse, seemed to stumble on a question about gun rights just days after being endorsed by the National Rifle Association.
Sasse earned the highest NRA rating a candidate can get without a voting record, and marked the group’s only endorsement in the general election. But he seemed confused when asked a question about background checks at gun shows by Colleen Williams, anchor for NTV, an ABC affiliate in Kearney.
Here’s what she asked:
It was a loaded question, but one that Sasse — a graduate of Harvard who attended Oxford and got two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. from Yale — could be expected to handle with ease, particularly with that NRA endorsement securely under his belt. He mentioned the endorsement as he waded in.
“My rights as a dad and as a husband to defend my family and to defend my property, pre-date government,” he said. “So I’m happy to be a robust defender of the Second Amendment.”
Then he stunned Williams and others when he essentially said he didn’t know what she was talking about.
(Excerpt) Read more at watchdog.org ...
There's no such thing as a "gun show loophole".
Freedom isn’t a loophole.
Every conversational slip-up/gaffe made by Republicans comes from accepting the proffered premise. All of them, every one, without exception. It is so flaming stupid and infinitely frustrating to get tripped up by this hidden need to be liked, to be “forthright” to people trying like hell to rip your guts out. It’s like losing a chess game in the first 4 moves, there are 3-4 ways to do this, and once you have learned those, you should never be subject to those blunders again, ever.
You NEVER EVER EVER see liberals do this. NEVER. They NEVER answer an question, no matter how pat, with a “yes” or “no”. They ALWAYS question the reporter’s premise. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to be gained by giving ANY answer to a MSM reporter. An aspiring GOP representative will NEVER be quoted accurately, or will NEVER be granted the proper consideration of context, or will actually be cut-and-pasted to give a negative impression.
I am full convinced that the GOP is above all, dedicated to losing to Democrats on my “Harlem Globetrotter” theory....with the idea that in a 2-party system, the job security of the #2 team is identical to the job security of the #1 team.
It absolutely kills me that GOP’ers will spend tens of millions trashing the conservative base and viciously undermining conservative candidates and will not spend $1000 or $2500 or whatever it takes to get the right kind of speaking and “reporter response” training to their candidates. Or even worse, that these candidates think they do not need it and spend their own damn money on themselves.
Yep. countless national incidents?
He should’ve rejected the premise and asked her why she is against the US Constitution.
The person that wrote the headline may have considered it a “stumble” but I think he said what he said in order to turn the tables on the reporter.
The democrat candidate responds in the expected fashion. Universal background checks are fine with him. He doesn’t need an AR-15 to hunt pheasant, etc...
He should have turned the tables on the reporter and asked her if she knew that there were no Constitutional provisions for police protection.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=0
His response should have been “Thank you for making YOUR position on this issue clear to everyone. But I didn’t understand you to be running for office ...”
“Sasse replied by saying she “named another one I didn’t understand.”
“The no compromise stance?” Williams said.
“I don’t know what that means,” Sasse said.
Then he turned the tables on Williams, saying her characterization of “the gun show loophole” is “pretty obviously a journalistic category to have called it a loophole to begin with.” Williams seemed taken aback.
“What is often called the gun show loophole is regularly about family to family transactions,” Sasse said, adding he doesn’t think the government should regulate the sale of guns between fathers and daughters or brothers and sisters.
There are a “bunch of technical issues there we could certainly unpack,” he offered before the moderator moved on to the next candidate.”
Looks to me like he answered correctly. Since there is no such thing as the ‘gun show loophole, it’s reasonable to tell her he doesn’t know what it is.
Background checks are a loophole for aspiring disarmers. They are an Infringement.
No matter how you or I may construe the incident, it is looking in the rearview mirror. There is what happened and your or my interpretation thereof, both of which are 100% meaningless, and then there is what I call the “residue” of the incident.
The residue of the incident is “Sasse stumbles”. That exact word conjunction. No more than 5% of readers will read beyond that headline, no more than .5% would go to C-SPAN and review what actually happened and try to make their own interpretation of it; but of those .5%, absolutely 100% of them are already Sasse voters so there is simply no functionality there.
The fact of the matter is that the mental impression made upon 95% of those who read that headline, whether they read further, use the paper for fishwrap or lighting a fire or swatting a fly, is done. “Sasse stumbles”.
That headline in the Nebraska Whatever Herald today, tomorrow makes the impression it makes. And now, on op-ed day, some dedicated liberal will write in some goofball bumper-sticker based letter and amplify or reinvigorate the misimpression in some dipwad way but IT FUNCTIONS AS IT FUNCTIONS.
And that is why stumbly-bumbly Republican candidates, some of them conservatives, but all of them untrained in media handling and apparently unaware that the media would love nothing more than the opportunity to destroy them (which gives even their supporters the impression that the candidate is unprepared) get picked off one by one using their own words against them. And fine and good people are systematically assassinated this way. It’s a sickening waste and that it happens over and over is my evidence that Republicans in general either do not give a crap about winning or are too stupid to see the same trap being sprung on them.
Sasse is a newbie, this I understand, but what better way is there to negate the appeal of a newbie than to portray them as unprepared?
Colleen Williams, anchor for NTV, an ABC affiliate in Kearney... asked: “With countless national incidents, high profile shootings in Omaha, and according to an FBI crime report nearly 81 percent of Nebraska homicides were caused by firearms, do you think the NRA’s ‘No Compromise’ stance on even the most minimal regulations like no background checks at gun shows is what’s best for the safety of everybody?”The correct response would have been to pistol whip the partisan bitch.
Spot on analysis.
I think I'll just go to his site again and send him a few more dollars!
Because they are too busy raising money and cutting deals and really don't care about the stuff we do?
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