So, About That Debate Thing Tonight...

Self/Vanity | 10/23/2012 | my favorite headache

[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.

[dforest]

If Romney would have focused on Libya last night, it would have hurt him. The reason is obvious, there isn’t enough time to lay out timelines and get into specifics. Also, the Libya debacle is still in the process of being peeled back.

We all want to see Obama “get what is coming to him”. But in these debates with lefty moderators, a candidate runs the risk of getting cut off at the wrong moments.

Getting into the Libya issue, the way it needs to be debated, would have needed another entire debate.

Romney did a fine job of showing Obama as a petty little ankle biter. Yesterday, all the dems were wanting so much to paint Romney as a Bushlike warmonger and drag him into a Libya discussion where they could argue the facts by parsing words. I could tell this tact Romney took pissed Obama off. He didn’t get what he wanted.

The focus groups after were not really interested in the foreign polcy. They perked up when Romney got to China and the economy.

[Rebelbase]

Did anyone catch Zero’s statement last night where he mentioned Biden as “my current Vice President”?

As if he’s already contemplated that if he wins there’s going to be a replacement?

[Puddleglum]

No “Great Pumpkin” moment = win.

[KevinB]

The idea of who “wins” these debates is a joke. The only relevance of debate performance is how many votes are changed. And there is no doubt that R/R’s performances have attracted more votes to their team than O/B’s.

[tomkat]

             

Aside from an ego massage, it serves no constructive purpose 'tween now and 06Nov.

Put a blowtorch to R's feet after January, but for now let's get that communist muslim TRAITØR OUT of our White House.

/.02

[dforest]

LOL, Chrissy always gets crazy when he doesn’t get what he wanted. They wanted to draw Romney into the weeds and sabotage him. It didn’t happen.

[tomkat]

He is suicidal and needs to be watched closely  encouraged !

[better ;-]

[libh8er]

The GOP deciding who they want means didley squat; it’s the people that go out and vote and Romney won their vote. Fact is Romney out-debated everyone in the primaries. Romney has it in him to crush any opponent in a debate- Democrat or Republican, especially when he is losing, but tonight he chose to remain tepid because he calculated appearing calm and presidential was more important than winning on points. Was I disappointed ? Yes. But I would rather see Romney win in the end rather than be entertained by his performance in a debate.

[teflon9]

"Chicago street punk jive talk"? Dog-whistle alert! Seriously, most Americans aren't buying Romney's foreign policy cred because they've become inward-looking, and rightly so. We've long forgotten that the US is a republic, not an empire. That's what the Framers wanted, and they'd be aghast at the aggressive, internventionist Romney, and the people like John Bolton (and who the hell told Romney to have that wackadoo on his team) who are advising him. We have pressing problems here at home, and the last thing we need is yet another round of Team America-World Police.

[trebb]

I think you missed the point. Everything was stacked in Zero’s favor and he failed to close the deal and made some huge gaffes that will come back to haunt him in the next two weeks. Any President who liken’s the Navy to horses and bayonets is so lacking in understanding that he automatically disqualifies himself. Mitt walked through a well-laid-out minefield and came out unscathed.

[Windflier]

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.

BINGO!

Naturally, Freepers wanted red meat, but our night was in the first debate. We've already been served. Last night was for the low information, just-now-tuning-in voters. For them, Romney needed to project an image of calm, confidence, knowledge, steadiness, safety, and courage. He did that in spades, and therefore won the night, as far as I'm concerned. He looked, sounded, and acted like a president, which is what the remaining undecideds needed to see.

[Windflier]

I wonder exactly how many watched this debate tonight. With two games on, who the hell cared other than the hard core?

Well, we watched it didn't we? LOL

Every hard core partisan who isn't all that into sports, watched the debate last night. Also a smattering of still undecided, low information voters, who are still trying to figure out if they should give someone else a chance to fix the mess we're in.

All Romney had to do was project a credible presidential image to them, to gain a lot of their votes. The topics and minutiae of foreign policy were actually of secondary importance in last night's debate. Team Romney correctly read that image and appearance were the goal, and they nailed it. Team Obama, as usual, completely misread the game, and Obama came off as petulant, mean, emotional, argumentative, etc. In short - less than presidential.

Now watch the whole left wing punditry miss these key underlying factors in their commentary today. They're going to insist that Obama won because of points he made in the debate. They couldn't be more wrong. When image and appearance finally mattered, the Hollywood president completely blew it.

[Shery]

Romney’s team said that Romney chose how he wanted to come across to the public. Not contentious and looking presidential. I don’t understand why everybody gives the president so much when all he does is bluster his way through a debate with out and out lies. The debates are more than bluster. IF they are not based on truth then anybody could win by being the last man standing. Romney decided that he did not want to come across in the last debate as someone who had to have the last word...unlike Obama, who could not let anything stand, had to have the last word. PETTY! And, he looked it. He was angry much of the time. You could see him look to Scheiffer for help. This is a win for Obama? I know the left thinks a win is when their side overtakes the conversation and truth or not beats their opponent over the head. A win in a presidential contest is whoever is in touch with solid facts based in truth and holds the higher moral ground. Romney every time. Paul Ryan against Biden. Who wants fools who can sling falsehoods around with slingshots to be their president? The president is not in touch with truth, nor will he ever be. He rejects the truth because it is not what he wants to deal with or be responsible for. I want someone who has a command of the situation, and although Romney could have been more persistent, he has been before, so I know he can be. He let Obama show the public that he is always contentious and never takes the blame or responsibility for anything. THAT came through last night very well. Obama cannot get by with falsehoods all the time as even on the left they were fact-checking his remarks.

[presently no screen name]

I agree! It is that we detest obama so much we want to see more ‘kicking him in the butt’ - ‘the boy’ is 4 years overdue on a major spanking. Romney did it earlier and we loved it and did it, also, at AlSmith’s charity event. So anything less than that is a disappointment.

NY? If you are in the 17th district, vote for Frank Morganthale - the GOP put RINO Carvin to oppose Nita Lowey - http://frankmorganthaler.com/ is the real deal, the TeaParty choice.

[presently no screen name]

IF they are not based on truth then anybody could win by being the last man standing

Exactly. And this debate was really for the undecideds/the lack of knowledge voter. They are clueless on whether 'the boy' is lying - all the boy has to do is speak and they declare him a winner. So basically 'the undecided voter' are all liberal and/or not a serious voter who, somewhat, keeps up with the issues. How clueless is one who says 'when I get in the booth, I'll make up my mind'!