Conservative bloggers have been claiming all night, and still today, that Candy Crowley not only erred in her correction of Mitt Romney's saying that President Obama did not say on Sept. 12 that "no acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation," but also that she has admitted it and retracted her correction. Crowley has reasserted that she did not retract this correction, as reported by Jack Mirkinson in Candy Crowley: I Didn't 'Backtrack' On Romney Libya Fact Check.
The confusion started when Crowley added "that Romney was "correct" to say that it took Obama weeks "for the whole idea of there being a riot out there about this tape to come out."
Later, she said that she thought Romney had been right "in the main" about the Obama administration's broader response to the attacks, but that he had not been correct in the words he chose. This caused conservatives to crow that she had eaten her words.
Eric Erickson wrote last night on RedState that Crowley had admitted she was wrong, and Soledad O'Brien reported that Paul Ryan, was interpreting Crowley's later comments to "say that Romney had been correct." So, Soledad asked Candy Crowley if she was backtracking?
Listen, what I said on that stage is the same thing I said to you, actually, last night. What I was trying to do ... I was trying to move this along. The question was Benghazi. There is no question that the administration is quite vulnerable on this topic — that they did take weeks to go, “Well, actually, there really wasn’t a protest and actually didn’t have anything to do with the tape. That took a long time. That’s where he was going. That was his first answer. And then we got hung up on this, “Yes, he said. No, I didn’t. I said terror. You didn’t say terror.” And then there was this point they both kind of looked at me. You know, he was looking at me and the president was looking at me. And what I wanted to move this along — could we get back to this? So I said, “He did say acts of terror, called it an act of terror. But Governor Romney, you are perfectly right that it took weeks for them to get past the tape.
"Not a backtrack?" O'Brien said.
"No," Crowley said.
Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz, who was also on the show, said Crowley should not have intervened.
"I felt like it wasn’t necessarily your place to try to be fact-checker right there," he said. "I happen to think that your assessment of that was wrong." Crowley didn't have a chance to respond before a commercial break.
This isn't going to be enough to stop the right-wing which has been trying to create a meme of President Obama's foreign policy weakness by suggesting that all the reporting and any comments about the incendiary video tape "The Innocence of Muslims" causing riots in the Middle East after the Benghazi attack was either confusion, or intentional deception by the Obama Administration to cover-up a terrorist attack taking advantage of security weakness at the Consulate in Benghazi.
The President's actual position was to denounce the "acts of terror," and announce that his administration was investigating the facts and would bring the perpetrators to justice. I remember reporting this here many times, including but not limited to the President's speech when the coffins arrived, and in his weekend radio address. But, the right has been investing in trying to manufacture a scandal by asserting that the administration ignored warnings and failed to increase security. Reminding conservatives that Paul Ryan led the effort to cut the budget the Administration's request for security enhancements has not helped, as their response is that he should have reallocated other funds.
So for now, please just be aware that the right appears to have chosen this area as one of their primary focal points to argue that Mitt Romney actually won this debate, and Candy Crowley has retracted her correction.
That none of their "facts" are correct has never stopped them before, and is going to take some extensive getting down into the mud to refute for swing voters who in many places are still hearing an "alternative reality" version of this story.
2:05 PM PT: I just noticed Meteor Blades has written an excellent documentation of President Obama's statements at the ceremony for the receiving the returning coffins. Mitt Romney's missteps in Libyan exchange produce viral video moment he can never erase+*
2:20 PM PT: Skillet optimistically noted that thank goodness this crazy Benghazi conspiracy meme is dead, but, in an illustration of how truly bizarre and weird the right-wing alternative realities can be, last night, after the debate, Eric Erickson was celebrating at Redstate that the "mainstream media" was not going to have to get into the scandalous details of the Presidents Benghanzi conspiracy.
Erik Erickson of RedState
Candy Crowley should not have tried to referee the Libya answer as she moderated. Herding the cats was a difficult enough task. Interjecting on the Libya story made her part of the story in a way she should not have become. But for all the people heaping aspersions on her (full disclosure: I am a political contributor for CNN and have long thought the world of Candy Crowley even before I had a relationship with CNN), they should be thanking her. It was her interjection to clarify what was and was not said that muddied the water on what the President actually said.
The media, which has tried to move past the story as quickly as possible, is now going to have to go back and revisit what actually happened. As last night dragged on in the post debate analysis, the initial cursory “he did call it an act of terror” fact checking turned into “actually, he didn’t and it took him forever to do so” fact checking. It was not pretty. And it was a hell of a thing for Obama to accuse Romney of politicizing a cover up, then hide behind the rhetoric of greeting coffins as they returned home.
Within an hour of the debate being over, Candy Crowley herself acknowledged on CNN that “Mitt Romney was right in the main.” CNN and other networks then proceeded to point out all the times Obama Administration officials kept denying terrorism was responsible for what happened. The fact checkers had to explain just how wrong the President was and just how misleading he tried to be last night. This will continue in the lead up to the foreign policy debate.