Obamessiah Camp Hinting That McCain Cheated at Saddleback Civil Forum

Obama got schooled at Saddleback Church last night. John McCain, asked the identical questions, gave crisp, clear and nuance-free answers while the Obamessiah tried to intellectualize everything. When you live in a world where there are no absolutes, it's hard to give a definitive answer to anything.

So, why did the Obamessiah look so poor by comparison to McCain? Some Obama campaign people are hinting to the media that McCain cheated, and that he was able to hear the questions when they were asked of Obama. Newsbusters has this conversation between David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell on Meet the Press:

MR. GREGORY: Andrea Mitchell, that's a pretty clear contrast (Obama verses McCain on tape).

MS. ANDREA MITCHELL: Oh, absolutely. And, you know, there was the crisp, immediate, forceful response by John McCain, clearly in a comfort zone because he was with his base. And Barack Obama, taking a risk in going there but seeing an opportunity. And a much more nuanced approach. The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because that -- what they're putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MS. MITCHELL: He seemed so well prepared.

That should be simple enough to find out. Given that I have a little bit more knowledge about Pastor Rick Warren than either of these media types on Meet the Press (I'm a member of his church), I'm pretty sure that if Rick said McCain couldn't hear the questions, he couldn't hear them. Rick wouldn't risk his credibility by allowing McCain an advantage that wasn't available to Obama.

Sounds like a bad case of sour grapes on the part of the Obama campaign.

UPDATE: More from CNN:

At the beginning of the forum at California megachurch, Warren told the crowd and TV audience, “I'm going to ask identical questions to each of these candidates, so you can compare apples to apples. Now, Senator Obama is going to go first. We flipped a coin, and we have safely placed Senator McCain in a cone of silence.”

But at 8 p.m. ET, as Warren said that, McCain was actually not in the building. He was just leaving his hotel, with his motorcade arriving at the church nearly a half hour into the event. A. Larry Ross, a spokesman for Warren, says McCain then went directly into the holding room they dubbed the “cone of silence” (in reality, a room with no TV or audio).

Some questioned whether that late arrival might have allowed McCain to hear some of the questions being first posed to Obama.

Warren told CNN Sunday evening, “we flat out asked him” if he heard any of the questions. The McCain campaign “confirmed that McCain did not hear or see any of the broadcast” in the motorcade or after he arrived, Ross said.

Charlie Black, a McCain adviser who was with McCain at the time, confirmed this, saying, "We were in motorcade until 5:30 p.m. ET; then a holding room in another building with no TV."

Warren said, “I trust the integrity of both” candidates, and said he “knew they would abide by the rules.” He joked McCain may not have been in the cone of silence, but “he was in the cone of a Secret Service motorcade”.

I think this is a better explanation for McCain's success than any suggestion he might have cheated.

UPDATE: McCain's campaign has filed a protest with NBC over Andrea Mitchell's comments.

UPDATE2: This should put the cheating allegations to rest.