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No not everyone does this. Do you have proof that people have asked planted questions.

I asked President Bush a question when he was down 15 pts last election. It was his first Q&A before the real season began and nobody approached me or noticed anyone else being approached by the campaign. I was doing phonecalls at the time so I would be a great plant.

I seriously doubt it happens on other campaigns. If you have absolute proof fine, lets hear it.

Pray for W and Our Victorious Troops

I do because I helped to make sure the questions were asked. The last election was for a governor. We just wanted to make sure that the questions were fast and to the point- sound bite material. That they did not make the candidate look foolish. That the question had a relevance to what the speech was about. That the same questions was not asked and re asked. This is what staffs often do. Maybe not so much plant as control.

The main point that I want to make is this. When elected officials speak to groups of people, those groups of people are generally checked out--That is why many meet and greets and speeches have tickets. You might not have been able to ask the president a question if you weren’t a republican. Maybe you could have. Every camp is different, but every staff wants their candidate to look their best, and bad questions and even worse answers are a fast way to stall (or end) any campaign. You try to avoid that at all costs. Just look at some of the biggest campaign screw ups- a lot of them were caused by a question the candidate could not or would not answer.