In the second presidential debate, Barack Obama set a rhetorical trap for Mitt Romney regarding the Benghazi consulate attack. Romney, caught off-guard, stepped into the trap. Luckily, getting out of this trap will be as easy as calling Obama's bluff during the final debate. To my mind, the key question regarding Obama's snakelike "Please proceed, Governor" enticement to Romney to continue his claim that Obama had never used the words "act of terror" in his Rose Garden address, followed by his "Get the transcript" gotcha moment, has been somewhat obscured in the initial fallout from this exchange. Some have cited the Rose Garden speech's placement of the words "acts of terror" to suggest that when Obama used those words, he was not talking about the Benghazi attack at all, but rather about September 11, 2001. However, this argument is highly speculative, given the overall context of the remarks, namely an address to the nation regarding the murder of Ambassador Stevens. At the very...(Read Full Post)