There was one rule evangelical pastor Rick Warren wanted to make clear about his questions to both candidates during his forum on Saturday night, and he said it more than once.
"Don't give me your stump speech on these."
"Now, I don't want to hear your stump speech."
Barack Obama rarely had the opportunity to delve into his stump speech, perhaps because Warren tended to change the subject as it seemed Obama was making that turn towards his stump.
But John McCain, who has been deemed a “maverick" for years, played the part well and seemed not to play by Warren's guideline. Instead, he took the opportunity during the discussion, carried live by cable news networks, to stick hard to the message he's been driving across the country since running for president.
Almost none of the lines or stories were new, but McCain jumped from sharp, brief answers to weaving through his tried-and-true anecdotes, many of which his audience, and Warren, seemed to have never heard before.
Corsaro laughingly promotes the absurd premise that whatever you say on the campaign trail could not be used in the forum:
He told Warren that we should divert money spent overseas to domestic growth in alternative energies, saying, "We're sending $700 billion dollars a year to countries that don't like us very much, that some of that money is ended up in the hands of terrorists organizations."
That's one McCain has brought up a few times this month.
So I guess because he talked about this while campaigning, McCain must be prohibited from mentioning it in his answer. Corsaro also displays stock liberalism in a very schoolmarmish critique about what types of Supreme Court judges McCain said he favored:
But he circled back to tried-and-true comments from the trail when he said, "This nomination should be based on the criteria of proven record of strictly adhering to the Constitution of the United States of America and not legislating from the bench. And by the way, Justices Alito and Roberts are two of my most recent favorites, by the way."
On Wednesday in York, Pa., McCain said something similar: "I want to look you in the eye and assure you that I have supported Justice Alito and Justice Roberts. I will nominate only judges who have a clear record of strict adherence to the Constitution of the United States and do not believe in legislating from the bench."
Perhaps Corsaro would have felt better had McCain given a non-stock answer that he favored Justice Souter and Justice Breyer? The litany of his trivial complaints goes on. It seems that Corsaro wants us to believe that it is somehow "unfair" of McCain to use positions and even words he used while campaigning in the forum. Amazingly Corsaro even objected to McCain giving a very emotional account of why he refused an early release from prison camp in North Vietnam. Why? Because the account matches what he has said before. Would Corsaro prefer that McCain retell a biographical incident with the facts changed?
Corsaro's entire blog must be read to be believed as to its incredible level of pettiness. Of course, McCain's real "crime" was that the audience, both at Saddleback church and those watching on television, reacted very positively to him because of his openess and liveliness in contrast to the rather passive Obama whose answers sounded evasive and incomplete. The liberal media just can't let the fact that McCain smoked Obama, which even the leftwing blogosphere has grudgingly admitted, remain in people's minds. Thus we have Corsaro's silly complaint about "stock answers."
There was a great comment about Corsaro's obvious bias that was left on his blog by a certain mr_max1:
Just like his employer, CBS, this guy CBS News'' Ryan Corsaro is in the tank for obama. Talk about resorting to stock answers: Corsaro resorted to typical CBS STOCK REPORTING; ie, McCain is bad and the merciful and caring god obama is great.
Stock reporting laced with stock liberal bias.
