First, let’s note that I didn’t watch the debate live. Instead, I was out with my family for a bit, won a trivia contest at the local brew pub, loaded up on brown ale, and wound up singing a handful of Styx songs with a guy named Carlos.
That’s how life sometimes goes in rural-ish Colorado.
When I got home, however, I sat down with some Thai noodles and watched the debate without having read or heard the first thing about it. And from that perspective, I can tell you all this — prefacing the remark with the rather obvious statement that I’ve been highly critical of Romney, and that, aside from perhaps Huntsman, he was my last choice to be the GOP nominee: This debate, no matter what any polls tell you or no matter how the pundits scored it or the headlines trumpet an Obama victory, belonged entirely, without a shadow of a doubt, to Mitt Romney.
First, let’s get this out of the way: I can’t understand why the GOP keeps agreeing to debate formats that are openly hostile to the very notion of debating rather than presenting, and worse still, allow these formats to be moderated by devoted activist progressives posing as journalists. It’s a tactical blunder right out of the gate, and it wins them no points with that same media it appears hoping to appease.
That being said, the collusion between the President and the moderator last evening was perfectly — and often painfully or even laughably — obvious, even, I’d bet, to the doltish “undecideds” to whom we’re all reduced to pandering to in the last weeks before the election. And I think that any “points” Obama may have scored — when they were aided by Candy Crowley’s absurd and obvious forestalling of responses by Romney, punctuated by what appeared to be a desperate need, on her part, to change topics, where the public would have been better served to hear a complete discussion of topics already introduced — will only matter to pundits who will pretend to objectivity and sober analysis; to the rest of us, we know what was going on, and we know we had a moderator, along with a crowd weighted toward Obama, that was trying to create an impression of an Obama “win” where in fact there was none.
If Obama scored any rhetorical points at all, he did so with lies — and the reinforcement of those lies by Crowley. But the truth is, I can’t remember a single moment in that debate where I thought Obama came across as convincing or even competent.
Romney had answers to all of Obama’s attempted innuendo or calumny; not only that, he was able to answer those attempts at personal indictment, do so while appearing gracious, serious, and friendly to the moderator, the questioners, and even on most occasions to Obama himself — all while fitting in, to the best he was allowed before Crowley tried to trip him up or change the subject, a barrage of indictments against the Obama record, including Obama’s rather obvious unwillingness to discuss that record.
Now, I’ve since read some criticisms of the debate, and from the pragmatic right, the consensus seems to be that Romney performed fine — but he missed a number of opportunities to really hammer the President on Libya or Fast and Furious. They also say that, on points, Obama likely scored a victory, though not one that will move the needle one way or the other.
But like most of their analysis over the past 4 years, they are entirely and pretentiously wrong. Again, I don’t care what the media says or what flash polls indicate about who won. Mostly because I suspect many Republicans scored the debate Obama’s way in order to tell themselves just how dispassionate they are in their analysis.
Instead — and I’ve seen nothing about this so I can’t say for certain — I’d be willing to bet that any of those deplorable “focus groups” that sit together and watch a debate like this will come away thinking this: Romney just pounded the President again for 90 minutes, and the President, despite the help he received from the venue, the moderator, the makeup of the audience and its questions, and the low expectations people held out for him (hey, he had a bounce in his step! And his shoulders didn’t look quite so alarmingly narrow! It’s a return of the Mojo!), is simply no longer nearly as convincing when he makes promises or tries to paint Romney as an out of touch vulture capitalist out to screw the “middle class.”
In fact, people know he’s lying — yet we seem now, by way of our punditry, to as a political culturej udge these debates on how smoothly some sleazy, play-acting poser was able to lie, how easily the the misinformation and massaged statistics slip from his tongue.
Not me. I judge it this way: Romney thoroughly eviscerated Obama’s record and laid bare the failures (from the perspective of a constitution republic; from Obama’s perspective the plan to “fundamentally change” the country is moving along rapidly apace) of his years of Utopian bullshit.
Simple as that. And people who aren’t interested in pretending to objectively “score” the debate will, if they are at all sentient beings, take away just that from this latest engagement.
That Obama was forced to lie about Libya — with Crowley covering for him (despite her most recent suggestion that she was not) — will come out quickly. And Romney can hit him on that and Fast and Furious at the final debate, when it will be clear to every last American that, a fair look at the timeline of both blunders, shows complicity on the part of the President. Who will never, ever take responsibility — except in the showy rhetorical sense of “because it happened on my watch, I’m ultimately responsible.” Followed by the “but” and then the host of underlings he’ll ask to fall on their swords for the Greater Good of Him. People see through that, as well. At least, I hope they do.
Forget what the polls tell you. Forget any Obama “bounce” from his “win”. He was laid bare as a naked emperor last evening. Many of us already knew that’s what he was — a phony, a Marxist hustler, a pretend pragmatist and a completely manufactured and New Left packaged-and-sold Good Man. But now nearly everyone either knows or should know.
They can pretend otherwise. But when they get into that voting booth in early November, they are going to turn on this fraud.
That’s the lesson of last night’s debate. In my opinion. And for what it’s worth.
The end.
My guess is the dickless wonders are afraid the mean girls will be even meaner if they don’t go along with it.
I thought she was pretty good in The Practice but since then she’s just been playing the same character over and over
I hope that Obama’s hiding behind Hillary and Candy in the same week will cement his image as “Mama’s Boy” in everybody’s minds. Or “Typical White Grandmama’s Boy,” if you will. A few talking heads and political cartoons to that end couldn’t hurt.
And yes, I understand that my use of a descriptor usually applied to young males who have not yet reached maturity is intrinsically and explicitly rAAAAAcist! I can live with that.
Obama can’t get ahead without a little affirmative action.
You must be really smart, because I was thinking the same thing. I think you could replace those focus groups with just about any random sample of voters; they had their poor impressions of Dear Leader reinforced. Not a single defence of his craptacular record; well, it is indefensible.
The classics often speak to me…
You mention focus groups. Granted this number of participants is hardly “scientific” but they are from two different sponsors: The Nevada group overwhelmingly for Romney, but the Ohio MSNBC group definitely split and slightly for Romney too?
Please tell me that you and Carlos did a South Park-worthy rendition of Come Sail Away. And that somebody got it on video.
Did you say “boy”, Squid? Boy?
Why, I never. . .
Jeff, I think it was Pat Buchanan last night who said that Obama looked like he drank a lot of Red Bull.
I have to agree with your assessment. Barry looked like the same spluttering, stuttering, lying POS that we all know and hate.
Tangentially: I always wonder about the multitudes who say that Obama is likeable. Where do they get that? What characteristic, what mannerism, what action of Obama’s can anybody point to as an exemplar of likeability?
It’s yet another one of the myths surrounding this man: his alleged dazzling intellect, his alleged soaring rhetoric, his alleged debate skills . . .
I’ve wondered that for years, rjacobse.
The man is not likeable.
Don’t forget his beer brewing skilz.
Jeff, as I mentioned on another thread, this debate, for Obama, was not about winning the undecideds, it was about bringing the base back into the fold.
Consider the 4 of the questions that were asked are only important to left wing fanatics: “failed policies of the Bush admin,” “women’s health care,” “equal pay,” and “gun control.”
Oh, and I the “undecided” woman who mentioned “failed policies of the Bush admin” has to be some sort of DNC plant. I cannot wait for her to be smoked out.
So, what you’re saying is that Long Island is not a swing state?
Blake —
The point is, Romney beat him back on every single one of those points. And viewers could sense the fix was in.
But yeah, let’s find that woman. Who seems to have missed that the Democratic Congress during the later Bush years contained, among their number, Barack Obama.
Funny, that.
Now now. Those people were I’m sure legitimately undecided as to whether they were voting against Romney of voting for Obama. ‘Tis quite the dilemna.
Nowadays in America there’s an inbuilt affirmative action kneejerk even crept into judgment. It’s not as fundamental an element as hydrogen, but it could well be akin to it in smallness and the capacity to insinuate itself through well nigh all barriers.
The bias is compounded, because you get the pool of “undecided” voters from of all places Long Island, and then Mr. Crowley gets to pick and choose which questions get to be asked.
I’d like to see all of the questions from which Mr. Crowley picked.
Oh my Jesus.
Talking heads are back to “worrying” about the election being soooooooo close as to be a tie.
It was a dim day for liberty and democracy when we stopped looking for operational fidelity to structural principles and started gaming entire elections based on manipulation. That may not be what you meant but this may be a goot point to interject the thought anyway.
It’s since made us a nation of neurotic co-dependents, playing one another through our institutions not in order to regain any such fidelity but to seek the profoundly dysfunctional sensation of having our various postmodern projections cottoned to.
In that regard the leftist base — looking at you, Sullivan — will play those emotions and wind that eternal spin up to the highest RPM, all in order to disavow who they are and what they’ve done, and more importantly to them, to stick knitting needles into their various hated rag dolls.
The good news is that this cycle it’s not working anywhere but among that base…which consists of the ringmasters and their Dependent Nation. The 53% non-urban functionals are going elsewhere — a look under the hood shows just how broken the entire enterprise is, should the core components ever again interest the other 47%.
There’s a tale in there about 200 year cycles and lemmings.
It’s good the Taiwan animators have tons of material to work with. I wonder if they’ll even be able to get to the BDSM toolage of Mistress Candy.
And I think that any “points” Obama may have scored
Would somebody tell me where I can download this mysterious scorecard that awards points for whatever it awards points for?
If Obama scored any rhetorical points at all, he did so with lies
That’s what kills me—it’s one thing for a candidate to be selective about his record, or to exaggerate, or to spin events, but Obama flat-out lied more than he didn’t, in the hopes that his magic rhetoric would Make It So, at least in the minds of those he hopes to gull.
Obama was forced to lie about Libya — with Crowley covering for him
Look, if on 9/12, Obama HAD flat-out declared that the Libya assassination was an act of terror, the administration STILL spent the next two weeks insisting that it was a YouTube video. So that would only prove that they knowingly lied about the murders. No need to parse the speech: go ahead and take him and Crowly at their words.
One of the good things Romney did was mention all those things Obama had promised to do in his 2008 campaign but didn’t even propose, during the time he had supermajorities in congress.
So. “Lorelei”? “Boat on the River”? “Lady”? “Sing for the Day”?
You had to do “Sing for the Day.” That song positively lends itself to the singalong format.
I’ve said it before but, I will say it again: Barrack Obama is Warren G. Harding in blackface. Of course, Teapot Dome was mainly a payola scandal and no one died except Harding.
Dicentra, Obama’s promises and platitudes remind of the Hitler Youth in “Cabaret” singing “Tomrrow Belongs to Me”.
Yeah, I went there.
That’t a really unfair comparison to make leigh.
Harding wasn’t complicit.
The Hitler youth were crazy loving of their nation “above all others”, whereas the Obama drones are in love with unicorns, butterflies, Fanon and hate their nation. There’s a big difference
Ah, Cabaret. Makes me want to put brats on the menu for tonight. Good call, leigh.
Crowley tried to walk back last night’s walkback. Unfortunately for her, the Internet is forever. Busted.
The picture on Drudge right now is classic. If I were the President, I’d be embarrassed and ashamed. Of course, if I were this President, I would be incapable of being embarrassed or ashamed.
I think if Obama scaled his promises to actual performance, there would be “First Black President”, “Teh Healthcare Bill”, and for his second term: “First Two-term Black President”.
And then he can build a presidential library in Hyde Park, and co-author a book on Inside Chicago Politics with Rod Blagojevitch.
Harding wasn’t complicit.
True. I was speaking more to character issues. Harding loved hookers, boozing and paying cards. Obama loves booze, golf and parties.
*playing*
Obama loves Dreaming about Imaginings from his invented father. And since all the Thinking Deep Thoughts is hard work, he needs his recreating.
Either that or he’s alternating between keeping Michele happy and keeping the hell away from her.
Obama runs a magical world of imagination and the press reports on it. The rest of us get to live in the smoldering debris cause by their delusional flailing and the worst of crimes is to not remain tactfully silent about it.
Obama is like a malevolent Willy Wonka that way.
Former Media Coordinator of CodePink Long Island Was One of the “Undecided” Questioners
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