Posted on 06/27/2011 5:14:17 AM PDT by tobyhill
Via POLITICO's Jennifer Epstein, Michele Bachmann isn't accepting an apology from Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace for asking her yesterday, "Are you a flake?" Continue Reading
ABC News' Jon Karl, who's been getting face-time with Bachmann in Waterloo in advance of her formal campaign announcement, played a clip of the web video in which Wallace said, "I messed up. I'm sorry."
When Karl asked if she accepts the apology, Bachmann brushed aside the question this way: "I think that it's insulting to insinuate that a candidate for president is less than serious."
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
She has already said she was not running, you just refuse to listen, and fox knows her contract arrangement.
Maybe by “Are you a flake?” he meant to say, “Are you related to Jeff Flake?”
I am still wondering why we are now seeing Fox News called by the left-wing slang (Faux News) here at FR.
You posted the numero uno comment on this thread.....and the most cogent.
Wallace's question was framed utilizing a technique of master propagandists the world over. He is no neophyte, learning cunning interrogation techniques growing up at the knee of his leftist television muckraker father, Mike Wallace.
Chris Wallace's question was deliberately planned and designed to trap her no matter how she answered or did not answer.....and it worked with a lot of folks, some of them here.
It's remarkable that posters are getting all bogged down in the minutia of the Q & A, ranging all over the place, parsing this and parsing that.
What is paramount here is the fact that trained TV leftists like Wallace know exactly what they're doing....he didn't "blurt" anything out, and his "apology" is an integral part of his carefully-planned attack gig. We will be seeing more of this in the months leading to the primaries.
I'm not a Palin supporter or detractor at this time. However, I respect that she has assumed the difficult mantle of being both a candidate and a target of the Left.
She was correct in her response to her interrogator. Ignore him. He showed no respect to a candidate in a free society.
However, it's important to know that though he may be classless, he's NOT clueless. He knew exactly what he was doing.
Therefore, his bluff should be called and he should name names of those who "called her a flake". He should be challenged. However, in this case, let OTHERS, not Bachman, put him in a corner. She has to keep moving ahead.
Conservative candidates have to be alert to trained lefty operatives like Chris Wallace during the course of the campaign. I'm pretty sure they are. He won't be the first to pull a stunt like this.
IMO, Rep. Bachman won this encounter in the long run. Wallace always had that uppity veneer that made him look "above" bias, yellow journalism and hack-ism. That veneer has now been severely cracked. His professionalism has taken a blow, make no mistake. I'm sure he knows it, too.
Leni
I didn't mind the question either. I just wish Chris was more "fair and balanced". How about asking "Are you a flake?" to Biden (pick your favorite gaffe), Soetoro (57 states, 'I see dead people', corpse vs corps, ATMs taking jobs away, NASA's prime mission is the promotion of Islam, this is the day the ocenas recede, etc), and the list goes on.
I thought Michelle Bachman did great with the question that starts out "There are those who say...." with the Couric-esque snide lead-up unbecoming of Chris Wallace. Michelle doesn't fit the "nuts and sluts" narrative that is imposed on Conservative women, even with that narrative coming from a "fair and balanced" journalist like Chris.
We'll see as the campaign goes on, but I hope Chris stops asking such stupid questions - especially when directed to Conservative female candidates who seem to have a corner on guts and true grit.
I must have missed that. Please post a link to her saying she’s not running. Everything I’ve read and viewed said she hasn’t ruled it out.
Exactly...
We are in a WAR to get rid of obama before he destroys the country. It's nonsense for some Republicans to be shaking their finger at Bachman and criticizing her for not accepting an apology from Wallace.
Republican women need support from Republicans when they are called names. It's offensive the way Republican women are treated.
Everyone on this thread and all over Free Republic has heard that exact word used in conjunction with michele bachmann since long before she announced. Whether it came from the liberal press, bloggers on both sides, conservatives, people who worked with her and for her, whatever. The entire political atmosphere has bern saturated with it for months.
Chris Wallace gave her the opportunity to refute the perception and change it, even after she had made a fool of herself throughout the entire interview.
Instead, she gave a stump soundbite that said nothing to alleviate the mess she had alrady jumped into with both feet. Her answers were like watching a contortionist who got stuck in a yoga position and couldn’t get loose.
Did any of you people who are defending her actually SEE the interview? Did you listen to what she said?
She was given the opportunity to set herself apart from romney. She didn’t take it. She was given the opportunity to set herself apart from pawlenty. She didn’t take it. She lied about her farm subsidies that no one really cared about, but they will now. She opposed her own self on the gay marriage vote in New York. It could not have gotten much worse.
Defend her all you want. The woman is not ready for primetime.
why would she give all her family freedom and guaranteed millions up to take a severe pay cut and let the MSM Piranha Press take over every aspect of their lives?
As I said, he did a poor job of framing the question.
Now, Chris isn't a first-team enemy or anything like that ... just a quivering little girly-man who couldn't handle one day of Michele Bachmann's life, or yours, or mine. But he's the enemy who stuck his head up, and he should have been knocked off with extreme prejudice.
Maybe, since he was such a kluntz about the mission, his bosses will take him out pour encourager les autres.
My opinion is you are seeing ghosts that are NOT there. I watched FNC that weekend she did the bus tour and they did endless news segments about what the bus tour means to a potential Palin presidency campaign. Why ?? THAT WAS NEWS $$$$$. And I saw all the Palin bus tour thread comments here talking about tuning into the FNC coverage of the Palin tour.
So HER FELLOW FNC commentators have moved on? (most are establishment Republicans anyway) So what? You imagine Roger Ailes' writes their opinions for them before they go on? That is what I call seeing ghosts.
You can change all this. call up Palin and tell her you want her to run and why it's so important, if that's what you think. Stop blaming others for the results of her personal decisions that you dont like, that she is not even complaining about herself.
All Bachmann did here was refuse to accept the premise that Wallaces apology was to her. It wasn’t, it was to viewers.
Considering the source is Politico, you have to have doubts and know that creating angst on our side is a definite possibility.
I'd have to agree.
ANYONE REMEMBER WHO ASKED THIS RUDE QUESTION? "You already are the oldest president in history and some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale. I recall yet that President Kennedy had to go days on end very little sleep during the Cuba missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?"
You don't know that it was HENRY TREWHITT from the Baltimore Sun because Reagan handled that slap against his age like this:
PRESIDENT REAGAN: I want you to know also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience."
Mondale later said he thinks that was the point even he knew he was toast.
If Wallace had asked her the flake question and she hit it out of the park, then nobody would be slamming the interviewer.
She could've stayed on message about how FLAKY a party is in the midst of a severe debt crisis are floating the idea of MORE SPENDING....and probably not just flaky but mentally unstable.
She could've hammered the left's inherent misogynist hypocrisy against the "wrong feminism" of her and Palin by calling her names like that.
She could've reminded people how they destroyed Santorum for "stepping near Hillary's space" during that debate, and yet it's ok for reporters now to essentially verbally slap her across the face with these terms like "flake."
But she didn't. Same as Palin. If Palin had hit Couric's "what do you read" question out of the park, Couric would've remained a zero. Palin could've challenged her on relevance of tree killer "Dinosaur Media" etc.
Critical points like that don't create character in a candidate, they reveal it. For better or worse.
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