Posted on 10/22/2012 10:41:15 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
So, the debates are FINALLY over and done. The media is calling it a 3 to 1 win for Obama/Biden although in all reality it is the other way around or a tie with the loss going to Mitt Romney tonight.
Judging from friends and a large number of politico's I associate with...most had turned the debate off after the first 30 minutes or were watching the NLCS Game 7 on Fox.
The reason?
Enough is enough.
My most hardcore of Conservative friends and relatives saw Romney for what he truly is deep down inside...a moderate Republican who is a gentleman, good husband, good father, good grandfather, and good businessman.
Tonight after the first softball was tossed Romney's way by the moderator, Romney opted to settle for a quick bunt to move a runner over to steal 3rd base in the bottom of the 9th inning in a tie game instead of swinging for the fences.
This was perfectly set up like Albert Pujols staring down a rookie pitcher who has thrown 120 pitches and is trying for a complete game.
Instead Mitt Romney came in to the debate and played like A-Rod. Stared at easy pitches, took strikes, and at the end of the game felt good about himself because his team was at least in the World Series and why try hard now since he has Team Tea Party, Team Coal, Team Wall Street, and Team Sick of Obama playing their hearts out.
Yes, Obama showed us what a weak lying sack of crap he is, but Conservatives already knew that. The fact checking won't mean squat when you see the headlines, post-debate polls, and missed opportunities that Romney and his entire campaign team have whiffed on day in and day out.
"This was all executed to be exactly this way by Romney himself."
These horrific words were uttered by Rob Portman. Really? You call waiting the clock out and letting Obama get punch after punch in while you land the occasional punch to the gut and upper cut when the other guy is re-adjusting his hands a winning formula?
The bottom line is Mitt Romney looked presidential and that counts for style points.
But.
The reason Romney is even in this thing right now is based off of his Game 1 performance when he was on fire and throwing bombs at Obama all night long. THAT is the Mitt Romney that SHOULD have shown up tonight.
I have heard and read countless Conservatives gloat tonight that Romney was great by getting Obama on the record as a liar and will be fact checked etc...WHO CARES?
The guy has been getting fact checked by Conservatives for years and nothing happens. Zero happens to a zero.
Do I think Romney lost the election tonight? No. Do I think the momentum has been stopped as of tonight? Yes. Do I think he helped his case? No. He is losing every post-debate poll...you know..the polls that everyone was gloating about after Game 1? Look at the Drudge Report? Remember Game 1? He had about 12 links up of polls and people calling Obama out.
Tonight? Nothing.
Don't fool yourselves with the "Romney did what he had to do" crap because he didn't. His job was to go sit at that table for 90 minutes and call Obama out on every single lie about Libya and every association with the Muslim Brotherhood and tie radical links back to his White House.
Instead we got treated to more talk about things already discussed in previous debates.
Blown opportunity. He could have put him away tonight. Now we have to wait this freaking mess out because Captain Indecision couldn't make up his mind to be a friend or fight.
You let a Chicago street punk jive talk you into a corner and make you look OLD.
Unfortunately for us...most Americans today only care about style and very little about the substance and tonight Obama of 2008 came back to that table with fire in his belly and arrogance in his throat and told Mitt Romney where to shove it...that this was HIS job...get out of the way.
So now we are left with the Super PAC's, Tea Party, and Grassroots Conservatives to clean up this mess and cross our fingers that "The Donald" wasn't bluffing and has something explosive to knock Obama down for a week or so because tonight needs to be washed out of the 40 million or so memories that watched this wasted opportunity tonight.
Good grief....this is why Newt Gingrich would have been an epic choice to run against this thug. He wouldn't have stood a chance on any single night.
Thanks GOP Elite. We get to wait out another nail biter election due to "YOUR" candidate.
The very last thing you want to do when you are ahead and running away is to do something stupid in your last debate.
Romney played it coy, and came off looking presidential. I do not care one bit if Obastard might have won on points made. Romney won on style. Obastard looked and sounded nasty, arrogant, and snippy.
This did not play well with anyone other than his demented base.
I do not give it to Romney because of his coy play, but give it to him on his demeanor. There is two weeks to go, and a lot can happen yet.
To stop Islamic terrorists, I want a “meanie”, not a pussy which is the way Romney was tonight. He said nothing to show he could be a strong Commander in Chief. I’ll take Donald Rumsfield or Dick Cheney any day. Romney can sit in the corner and drink wine while the real men take care of business.
They don't know enough to listen to the rather complex set of facts and lies about Benghazi or Fast & Furious. Way too easy for Obama to lie his way out of it because these people would have no assumed set of facts against which to compare what he said, or from which to draw contradictions - so it would have been a playground name calling contest - "did too" "did not" "did too."
We saw it last debate. At the moment Romney had Obama on Benghazi, Candy jumps in, turns the issue into a loss for Romney (as far as low info voters know) ... even SNL only quoted Candy's 'it's right here in the transcript' without the 'but you're right Mr. Romney they then lied for 2 weeks.'
The election is over, Romney was speaking to people who weren't even watching the debate - he's speaking to a small percentage who don't know anything, but will vote, and maybe, half by mistake, will read a headline written by a pundit, which will not read "Romney Trapped In Lie."
Meanwhile he actively convinced women again that he's not HItler. Remember - Ohio has been drinking Romney's-Evil Kool Aid Kommercials for 6 months at high doses. An on-stage shouting contest of issues their undecideds know nothing about would not have played well at the booth.
Obama learned in debate two that he could counter Romney by childishly saying into the microphone 'not true Governor' every 7 seconds. And the moderators and media proved they would pitch in if Obama would do his part.
Smart play by Romney Campaign. If the election were tied - that would be a different story, but it's not tied. Tonight's debate is proof RR internals show them comfortably ahead of 270 EVs - or Romney would have gone for some points. He didn't even try. He just looked relaxed and presidential to solidify the switch many have made recently.
Right or wrong, he didn't miss any opportunities, he consciously stepped over them. One, because he had nothing to gain in terms of actual votes, two, because he's in foreign, hostile, enemy territory during these debates - the crowds, the moderators, the media - and the enemy has had a month to figure out how to counter Mitt's style of presenting the truth - how to force him into a single little semantics mistake that would have captured headlines.
Contrary to popular belief, there IS a time for a prevent defense. If you're a soccer team, up 3 to 1 with 5 minutes left, and 3 or your players have been red carded and hence kicked out of the game - that's what you do, and you're dumb if you don't.
Mitt's outnumbered by the audience (who has twice proven they will laugh and clap after agreeing not to,) moderators, and media. In other words, the other team has a 3 man advantage with 5 minutes go, and has had a month to plot the final 5 minutes.
Not a time to send your forwards and half backs up the field.
In a tied match with even sides, a prevent defense is usually fatal. I don't think RR went into this thing thinking it was anywhere near tied, and they definitely went in outnumbered, against a well prepared enemy, 2 goals ahead. Mitt only had to show he knew what he was talking about.
In the meantime - he did touch on the real problem in the Middle East - no long term planning, and no respect for or fear of the US - no projection.
I too would have liked to see him tear apart Obama's lying, but it wasn't necessary, and it was high risk - a calculated RR decision.
This debate is entirely about optics and again tonight the pResident yet again drove down the one single area where he has had an advantage, and that is on the subject of likability. He was even more unlikable tonight than he was in debate #2, and dumbass rejoinders about horses and bayonets only helped his cause with the same idjits who believe that Biden "won" with his Superior Clown routine.
No, he didn't.
0bama's team tried to create a picture of Romney as an aloof rich boy who doesn't care about other people. That image -- which cost them $200 million to create has been destroyed. All that they had left was an attempt in the closing days to portray Romney as Bush III. Tonight, Romney gave them no chance to even start that portrait. Romney did fine. He looked good, he wasn't a kook or a warmonger, he made himself look more "presidential" than the sitting pResident, and he made 0bama look petulant and snarky.
Low information/Poor Attention Span voters want a new President. But they also fear change. Romney showed them tonight that he is going to focus on Jobs, Jobs, and more Jobs -- that was the point of continually returning the debate to the point that America can't be a superpower if we aren't an economic superpower -- and he isn't going to get America into another war. They have nothing to fear. Now they can vote for change. That was the strategy, and with the remaining voters who can possibly be moved it will work.
tonight was about the undecided voters.
Undecided voters = uninformed lazy voters. Therefore, they don’t know when ‘the boy’ was lying.
BINGO !
If you are old enough to have followed Mitt's '94 senate race, you have seen this progression before. Romney comes out of the chute on fire, and voters see a genuine conservative choice. Romney actually led Kennedy early in the race. As the campaign rolled along, Romney ran like a scared bunny rabbit from the (completely unsurprising) Boston liberal media onslaught until, by the end, Romney essentially declared himself more liberal than Teddy.
Mittens, of course, lost in a landslide. And there he was again tonight talking about how he will "reach across the aisle".
/eyeroll
My thought was, "Here we go again."
I am with you. I wonder exactly how many watched this debate tonight. With two games on, who the hell cared other than the hard core?
Peoples minds are made up, and, there are not enough undecided people to change the game-no pun intended.
It shouldn't have been. The reason "undecided voters" are "undecided" is precisely because they are morons who have no interest or curiosity in this or any other campaign. I would guess very few watched any of the debates, and I also suspect that "undecided" people are the people most likely to "forget" to vote, or will have something more pressing to do than go to their polling place - - a favorite TV show, for example.
I think both parties have always way overestimated the value of the "undecideds". As far as I can tell from my 25+ years of studying politics, smart, experienced candidates who excite their base are more successful than those who try to talk out both sides of their mouth and pander to everybody. Yeah, the strategy worked for a few people during the time when the old media was dominant - - Arlen Specter, for example - - but it's a new world out there. Candidates can't get away with it anymore. Arlen sure couldn't.
[ My thought was, “Here we go again.” ]
True.. but Flavor Flav would be a better President than Zero..
The bar is not very high.. The only hope is a veto proof Congress.. to ride herd on him(Myth)..
Now surrogates like Sununu and Giuliani can really let loose on the administration's disarray, six months of prior incidents in Benghazi, gross negligence , skipped intelligence briefings, etc.
And we haven't heard the last of the civil servants who are being thrown under the bus. Leaks will be forthcoming and Obambi won't like them. Especially if from someone who watched the Benghazi drone surveillance vid. What was Panetta doing, and why didn't he order reinforcements? There were AC130s in Sicily, one hour away...
You can tell who won by Chris Matthews reaction. He is suicidal and needs to be watched closely.
Like it or not, the undecideds (yes, they are morons) are the only votes left on the board and Romney probably won with them tonight. He appeared calm, friendly, and competent. The President was too aggressive and that scowl did not play well.
I am more confident than I have been at any point in this election cycle that we are going to evict TOTUS and FLOTUS. Romney would have taken the easy points if the internals were anywhere close to the media polling numbers. He did’nt. That was the main point I took away from tonight.
I missed Matthews’ reaction tonight...what was it?
Romney played it coy, and came off looking presidential. I do not care one bit if Obastard might have won on points made. Romney won on style. Obastard looked and sounded nasty, arrogant, and snippy.That's the way it transmitted via three radios surrounding me as I would not be subjecting myself to the Islamo-Commie Crack-Smoking Closet-Queen Arab Springstein.
“Tonight was a final chance to reassure splinter-crotched wafflers that Romney is a safe choice”
Lol. Exactly right.
It is what it is. Mitt could have made you happy or won over some undecideds. I am very glad he didn’t make you happy.
Romney looked presidential; O looked like an disdainful punk who got angry and, actually, kind of creepy when his easy, inaccurate answers wouldn’t wash. When he saw the night wasn’t going his way he lost interest, steam, and his train of thought. He meandered and phoned in some rambling random lines from stump speeches. He wanted it over with. I mean his presidency, not just the debates.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.