I'm not talking about Fox's actual 'debate', that portion needs little explanation. Heck, the state's own party pulled out of the forum. As other bloggers have already noted, it was the usual Fox lovefest where the candidates pretty much got to give their stump speech with little challenge from the 'moderator' Wallace. I'm talking about the panel of 30 'undecided' New Hampshire voters they went to after the 'debate' for some 'real peoples'' opinions.
I found oh-so-many things laughable about this crowd. To begin with, the first thing Fox's analyst asked the crowd was if any of these 'undecideds' supported Mitt Romney. Not any other candidate, and he didn't ask them to step aside. Sooo... Mitt Romney supporters are undecided?
The very next question was how many now planned to support Romney after the 'debate'. About 25 of the 30 hands in the room shot up. Now, good for Romney if it's true, but somehow I doubt it. Ignore, for a moment, the Romney supporting undecideds. You're really going to tell me that a 'random' sampling of 'undecided' voters, in a state where Romney is falling fast even by Fox's own poll (yes, it's a link to Fox News, I'm sorry) they managed to find a bloc of voters about 90%+ for Romney?
And this was all before the 'undecideds' started to speak. As SpiderStumbled22 mentioned in response to a post I had made in an Open Thread on this topic.
The 2nd guy said that Romney came across very strongly pro-life but that other Candidates waffled on it. Romney's only mention of Abortion was citing it as something that he had changed his mind on. Huckabee mentioned it once or twice in passing such as "commitment to life is a core principal" bullshit but he's never been accused of waffling on that issue. That man was either a Romney plant or someone who lied about being uncommitted on his own accord.
This is true, and was only one of the many interesting 'off-the-cuff' responses. Fox News, looking for someone to be an establishment candidate suddenly discovers a massive bloc of voters for the collapsing Romney. Essentially the narrative of the entire thing was centered on Romney (and how bad Huckabee is). The progress of questions went:
-Romney is awesome and has tons of supporters
-Boy howdy I love Romney
-That Huckabee guy is way too religious.
-Romney is better than Huckabee
-Romney can beat Obama
But, and I put this at the end because I feel this is the big fun piece of the diary, check out this image someone just showed me.
Yea, ok Fox, or Faux, or whatever your name is.
UPDATE - Here are a couple of clips of the reponses. What a surprise I got them from Mitt Romney's account.
UPDATE #2 - A Ron Paul supporter provides definitive proof: