Just in case you actually are convinced by what you wrote, if we're going to have debates here (rather than people making posts like they're delivering speeches to themselves), we've got to at least have some common rules of engagement.
I would have thought we could all agree on the following:
1. The context of statements is important to a fair interpretation of what candidates say. As a result, when people use the phrase "caught on video", they should be prepared to consider the entirety of what's been caught on video (or any other media), rather than a selectively edited sound bite. When you are dealing with context, you have to also consider when other statements were made, what the role of the person making the statement was at the time, who the speaker was talking to, etc.
2. There's a difference between communicating poorly and actually taking a position deserving of criticism. In the former case, you could criticize a candidate for being ambiguous, but it would be dishonest to simply pick the worst possible interpretation as what the candidate must have meant. If your criticism of a candidate is that they are a poor communicator, and you think that's an important consideration in determining the merit of candidate, it's reasonable to say so. It isn't reasonable, however, to seek to conflate the issue of communication skill with the candidate holding the worst possible interpretation of their statements.
3. When a candidate clarifies his/her prior remarks, it is reasonable to accept that that the latter clarification is a better representation of their position than their former statement. Continually returning to the earlier statement is a dishonest attempt to perpetuate the ambiguity (or the worst possible interpretation) of a candidate's position. If a candidate completely changes from one clear position to another, you can criticize the candidate as being insufficiently thoughtful, or mercurial, or unprincipled, or unreliable, but you can't continue to say they still take their former position. When we argue about changes to a position/clarifications we should make it clear how we are characterizing the change.
If our "discussions" can't take place on this common ground, then there really is no point to these discussions. If posters can just state "that's what he/she said" without taking into account the context of everything said, you end up with absurd misrepresentations (like the CNN coverage of the sister of the recently shot black man in Milwaukie. CNN reported that the sister had called for peace, when instead, the sister had called for the violence to be moved to the suburbs! That's the power of selective editing.) That's what I mean by "debunked". When exaggerated positions have already been properly clarified by context, they are debunked. I suppose a poster could say "well, although the candidate hasn't actually said what I think they stand for, that's what I believe in my heart". That's a perfectly valid thing to say, and might even be a sound way of thinking - if the poster happens to have the power to read minds! However, such statements of faith are not really capable of discussion or debate.
