{"id":2822,"date":"2004-10-21T10:31:49","date_gmt":"2004-10-21T15:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2822.html"},"modified":"2004-10-21T10:31:49","modified_gmt":"2004-10-21T15:31:49","slug":"robertson-throws-bc04-off-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/robertson-throws-bc04-off-message\/","title":{"rendered":"Robertson throws BC04 off message"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe we should all chip in and get TV preacher Pat Robertson a gift basket or something, because his uncontrollable popping off on CNN Tuesday night threw the Bush gang wildly off message yesterday. (Insert Nelson Muntz&#8217;s &#8220;ha, ha&#8221; here)<\/p>\n<p>It was a golden opportunity that the Kerry campaign was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A49088-2004Oct20.html\">quick to seize on<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mike McCurry, adviser to the Kerry campaign, said: &#8220;We believe President Bush should get the benefit of the doubt here, but he needs to come forward and answer a very simple question &#8212; was Pat Robertson telling the truth when he said he didn&#8217;t think there&#8217;d be any casualties or is Pat Robertson lying?&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It didn&#8217;t take long for reporters to start wondering the same thing. All three of Bush&#8217;s top spokespersons didn&#8217;t hesitate to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-robertson21oct21,1,3869294.story?coll=la-headlines-nation\">throw Robertson aside<\/a> and brand him a liar.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>* Karen Hughes: &#8220;I don&#8217;t believe that happened. He must have misunderstood or misheard it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>* Scott McClellan: &#8220;Of course, the president never made such a comment.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>* Karl Rove said, &#8220;I was right there&#8221; for Bush&#8217;s Feb. 10, 2003 meeting with Robertson, but that the televangelist was incorrect in his recollection.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The truly hilarious part was seeing Robertson release a statement on the controversy in which he refused to back down.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In a statement yesterday, Robertson did not back away from his comments about Bush and said, &#8220;I emphatically stated that I believe &#8216;the blessing of heaven is upon him,&#8217; and I am persuaded that he will win this election and prevail on the war against terror.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s fascinating, Pat, but in case you hadn&#8217;t noticed, that&#8217;s not the point of the controversy.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThe national press was, thankfully, all over this, with every major daily running a story about the controversy today. It might be a challenge to get yet another day out of this, but there&#8217;s still one more question an enterprising political reporter might ask.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday confirmed that Bush and Robertson did meet on Feb. 10 and their discussion did, apparently, include discussion of Iraq. With this in mind, here&#8217;s the question someone should ask McClellan\/Hughes\/Rove: Why was the president meeting with a crazed TV preacher and discussing a military invasion strategy a month before the U.S. went to war?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe we should all chip in and get TV preacher Pat Robertson a gift basket or something, because his uncontrollable popping off on CNN Tuesday night threw the Bush gang wildly off message yesterday. (Insert Nelson Muntz&#8217;s &#8220;ha, ha&#8221; here) It was a golden opportunity that the Kerry campaign was quick to seize on. Mike [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}