Candy Crowley debates bias on record

Tuesday's moderator - and friend of White House - Candy Crowley on record as not submitted even to Commission's standards.

One can only hope that people are fed up enough with this regime, that no matter what they throw at us, we will prevail!

Moderator Role Under Scrutiny -- Before the DebateBy Mark Halperin | October 14, 2012

In a rare example of political unity, both the Romney and Obama
campaigns have expressed concern to the Commission on Presidential
Debates about how the moderator of the Tuesday town hall has publicly
described her role, TIME has learned.

While an early October memorandum of understanding between the Obama
and Romney campaigns and the bipartisan commission sponsoring the
debates suggests CNN's Candy
Crowley would play a limited role in the Tuesday-night session, Crowley,
who is not a party to that agreement, has done a series of interviews
on her network in which she has suggested she will assume a broader set
of responsibilities. As Crowley put it last week, "Once the table is
kind of set by the town-hall questioner, there is then time for me to
say, 'Hey, wait a second, what about X, Y, Z?'"

(MORE: What Happened at the First Presidential Debate)

In the view of both campaigns and the commission, those and other
recent comments by Crowley conflict with the language the two campaigns
agreed to, which delineates a more limited role for the moderator of the
town-hall debate. The questioning of the two candidates is supposed to
be driven by the audience members themselves -- likely voters selected by
the Gallup Organization. Crowley's assignment differs from those of the
three other debate moderators, who in the more standard format are
supposed to lead the questioning and follow up when appropriate. The
town-hall debate is planned for Tuesday at 9 p.m. E.T. at Hofstra
University in Hempstead, N.Y.

According to the town-hall format language in the agreement, after
each audience question and both two-minute responses from the
candidates, Obama and Romney are expected to have an additional
discussion facilitated by Crowley. Yet her participation is meant to be
otherwise limited. As stated in the document: "In managing the
two-minute comment periods, the moderator will not rephrase the question
or open a new topic ... The moderator will not ask follow-up questions or
comment on either the questions asked by the audience or the answers of
the candidates during the debate or otherwise intervene in the debate
except to acknowledge the questioners from the audience or enforce the
time limits, and invite candidate comments during the two-minute
response period." The memorandum, which has been obtained by TIME, was
signed by lawyers for the two campaigns on Oct. 3, the day of the first
presidential debate in Denver.

But if the Obama and Romney campaigns agreed to such terms, there is no evidence that Crowley did -- or was ever asked to do so.

Read more at Time