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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.

Comparing screening attendants to planting questions are 2 entirely different things. What I went to was a pep-rally as are most of the events. Of course you want campaign workers there, that is completely different than handing a person a question and asking them to pretend it is theirs. It doesn’t appear that is what you were doing which is exaclty what Harpy was doing.

Pray for W and Our Victorious Troops

"...I helped to make sure the questions were asked. The last election was for a governor."

Are you talking about debates, or just routine campaign stops? Also, this is a case where a supposedly objective media outlet, which was responsible for the conduct of the debates, was co-opted to do the dirty work for just one of the participants. Seems to me that's quite different from what you're talking about.