CBS Email Shows Michele Bachmann Was Intentionally Asked Few Questions at Saturday's Debate

November 13th, 2011 10:05 AM

Those watching Saturday's Republican presidential debate in South Carolina might have noticed that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) didn't get a lot of questions.

According to a CBS News email message sent to the Congresswoman's communications director, this was intentional (photo courtesy AP, vulgarity warning):

For those not familiar with the players, John Dickerson is a CBS News political analyst. Caroline Horn is senior producer for politics at CBS News. Alice Stewart is Bachmann's communications director.

Bachmann had the following to say about this as reported by CNN.com late Saturday evening:

"I think it's only respectful to allow the candidates to be able to speak and not intentionally ahead of time make a decision to limit candidates' opportunity to speak to the American people," the Minnesota congresswoman said after the debate, which was held in South Carolina. "Clearly this was an example of media bias."

Keith Nahigian, Bachmann's campaign manager, said the following concerning this matter:

While Michele has been onstage at tonight's debate demonstrating strong leadership on foreign policy and national security, we received concrete evidence confirming what every conservative already knows - the liberal mainstream media elites are manipulating the Republican debates by purposely suppressing our conservative message and limiting Michele's questions.

View the attached email by CBS News' political director from earlier today--we need to show the liberal media elite that we won't stand for this outrageous manipulation.

Nahigian had more to say about this in the post-debate spin room according to CNN.com:

"John Dickerson should be fired. He is a piece of shit. He is a fraud and he should be fired."

 


Viewers of these debates have likely observed that the so-called front-runners have typically gotten most of the attention, but is this something you put in an email message to a campaign's communications director?

Also, the message was mostly concerning Bachmann's attendance or lack thereof on a "webshow" following the debate.

It therefore was unacceptably snobby and condescending of Dickerson to say "in the hopes that we can get someone else" in a message the Congresswoman was bound to see.