Tucker Carlson: Crowley's fact check was like Abraham Lincoln's assassination

Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson says that Candy Crowley's real-time fact check of Mitt Romney during Tuesday night presidential debate was so devastating that it can be compared to John Wilkes Booth's assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.

During Tuesday night’s second 2012 presidential debate, Crowley’s instant fact check had the GOP hopeful by undermining his claim that President Barack Obama had not initially referred to the recent attacks in Libya as “acts of terror.”

But conservatives -- -- have ignored their candidate's poor performance at the debate and instead directed their outrage at Crowley.

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs on Wednesday wondered if there was "any way to excuse the commission having used that format and that moderator, Candy Crowley, behaving as she did?"

"I think it's the single most outrageous thing I've seen in 30-odd years of watching presidential debates and I'm a Democrat and will remain one," Fox News Contributor Doug Schoen, who identifies himself as an "influential Democratic campaign consultant," told Dobbs.

"Well, you may not," Dobbs noted. "You could be mustered out, I think."

"For most of the play, John Wilkes Booth set there politely, but it was the moment when he didn't that made history," Carlson explained, referring to Crowley's fact check of Romney. "And I thought this was the definitive point in this debate."

"This changed the debate, this is exactly what moderators are not supposed to do," he added. "This is kind of serious. There's only three weeks and we want to know what these guys are like and she prevented us from learning."

Watch this video from Fox Business' Lou Dobbs Tonight via Media Matters, broadcast Oct. 17, 2012.