Three days before the key winner-take-all Florida GOP primary, the popular narrative said that Romney, with 25 years of successful private sector experience turning around struggling companies, would benefit, rightly, from polls showing that 40% of Floridians said the economy was the main issue - Iraq and terrorism were a distant 2nd and 3rd.
This Romney advantage was not because of an attack on McCain or a key endorsement for Romney, it was an advantage earned through years of excellence as a leader in the world’s largest and most competitive economy.
Though earned, the McCain camp decided that this advantage will not stand. However, with just three days to go, what could McCain do? It was not enough time to become an expert on the economy, that takes years, so McCain did something that surprised even McCain supporters:
McCain lied - big time.
McCain’s new narrative: Romney wanted U.S. to surrender in Iraq.
To help the rest of us get to the new narrative, because we were miles away, McCain implied that Romney was undecided about the surge and never supported it whole-heartedly, until after results were undeniable. Even worse, McCain implied Romney wanted “timetables” - the buzz word at the time for surrender.
Of course, these are fighting words to the military, and anyone who supports our troops and their mission - including myself. Surely, given the seriousness of the accusation, the proximity to the Florida primary and the absence of this charge from 14 GOP debates, the evidence must be overwhelming.
However, McCain only offered this one GMA interview on April 3, 2007:
Is this it? Is this interview so compelling it wipes out months of interviews and debates where Romney publicly supported the surge and mocked Democratic requests for timetables?
OF COURSE NOT!
In fact, in the first 8 seconds the interviewer says, “You (Romney) have been very vocal in supporting the President and the troop surge yet the American public has lost faith in this war.”
So, when America had doubts, Romney took the road less traveled by supporting the surge - not timetables for the enemy.
So, how could McCain possibly pull this off? The narrative that Romney was for surrender would pull in a lot of military votes for McCain - very important in Florida - but parts of this GMA clip actually contradicted the McCain narrative.
This is where Fox News comes in.
Most of the Main Stream Media (MSM) was for McCain and would cooperate with the political hit job (see “Meet the Press earns first “R” rating after McCain-Russert love fest“). However, most Republicans, including Florida’s elderly and military, watch Fox News not the MSM. So how Fox News handled the hit job would be influential. The problem was that the only evidence McCain had, to refute months of evidence to the contrary, was the GMA interview.
So, Fox News solved the dilemma this way:
For their viewers, Fox News cut the first 8 seconds of the GMA clip - where Romney is said to be a “very vocal supporter of the surge”.
It was hard for me to believe, but the network with a strong history of being fair and balanced, especially as far as holding the evil Democrats accountable, was unfair and unbalanced covering Mitt Romney. I first saw the FNC redacted version on that same day at 12:18 PM EST, when Bret Baer ran the same clip I showed you above, but cut out the first 8 seconds, and
Fox News cut out the last 44 secs, where Romney was asked if he’d veto a Democratic request for timetables and said, “of course”.
Later, on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace showed the same redacted 20 second version of the original 72 second clip shown above. Again, the first 8 seconds and the last 44 seconds were gone. On Monday, Megyn Kelly, at 11:10 AM EST, interviewed Mitt Romney and played the same 20 second FNC version of the clip - again, without the parts that refuted the McCain narrative.
Back to the injustice of McCain’s accusation just 3 days before Florida GOP primary.
The GMA clip was the only evidence McCain had for this outrageous accusation. McCain never confronted Romney about his “timetables” theory for the last 8 months of the campaign and during 14 GOP debates. Romney has made hundreds of interviews that contradict McCain’s narrative, including this one on CNN from March, 2007, where Romney tells Larry King that not only does he support the President and the surge and is against withdrawal but he demonstrates intelligent understanding of the dynamics in Iraq at the time:
Why did Fox News enable McCain’s political hit job?
How many votes, especially military votes, did it cost Romney in Florida? It’s hard to say, but the economy was taking center stage, McCain was struggling and Romney was rising. Arguably, McCain could not have changed the conversation back to National Security without such an outrageous accusation and without the help of Fox News. Nothing else would have gotten so much coverage with key voter groups in Florida.
Obviously, many at Fox News are McCain supporters and lost their objectiveness just in time for the Florida primary.
That will only make each Romney victory sweeter.