Posted on 10/07/2008 9:42:16 PM PDT by andrew roman
Two words kept popping in and out of my head during the second Presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain – disappointing and tedious. Setting aside the fact that the proceedings seemed to drag and on at an agonizingly tortuous pace with little more than eye-watering yawns from my end to disrupt the monotony, this debate had the personality of a lima bean can. Add to it the fact that there seemed to be more passion exuded by Tom Brokaw, the moderator, when asking the candidates to step aside from blocking his view of the teleprompter than anything either of them said on stage, and you’ve got a first-class, bona-fide dud.
Specifically – and perhaps most important – tonight’s “non-debate” debate was not, to quote a phrase, a “game changer” from Senator McCain – and frankly, I was hoping it would be. While I certainly don’t think Senator Obama as the next President of the United States is a foregone conclusion yet, he clearly took another step closer to the Oval Office on Tuesday. If the poll numbers are to be believed, neither candidate will do much in the way of movement as a result of this debate. In short, it was not a great night for the Republicans – and it really needed to be.
There was one moment, I would have to assume, meant to serve as that “game changer” for Senator McCain early in the debate – a grenade lobbed in from left field that, honestly, stunned me and fell well short of its intended target (at least for now). McCain, seemingly from whole cloth, said that when he is President, the federal government would help stabilize the housing market by buying up bad mortgages and refinancing them for home owners at market value – to the tune of $300 billion.
What?
I’ll need more information on that one before I blow a bazooka through it.
My frustration with this particular presentation was that I found myself disenchanted on two fronts. First, early in the debate, I found myself screaming at the television even more so than I had during their first debate, probably because I was yelling at both Obama and McCain, and often for the same things. It seemed to me, primarily, that they were differing on the finer points of similarly held positions.
Despite an all-too-quick and truncated attack by McCain on the Democratic involvement in the current financial crisis – which, by the way, started off promisingly enough and had me thinking this was going to be a feisty performance by him - there was yet again more McCain pandering with fuzzy-middle non-speak about corruption on Wall Street, blah, blah, blah …
Huge mistake.
Entirely too much time was spent on selling bi-partisanship and extending arms across the aisle. It came across as weak and contrived and surely did nothing to endear McCain to anyone.
Second, the number of missed opportunities by McCain to slap back hard at Senator Obama was staggering. My slowly building disgust was fuelled not only by the lack of substance coming from the lips of Senator Obama – which is a given - but in the fact that Senator McCain was profoundly ineffective in countering him as I wanted him to be – and as I felt he needed to be to turn the tide.
Perhaps I’m in a minority here, but I am sick of listening to Senator Obama and the Democratic Party demonize those who provide jobs to a large portion of the American public. I am also annoyed that no one – especially Senator McCain – calls out Senator Obama and his ridiculous assertion that 95% of Americans will get a tax cut under his “save the middle class” tax plan. How on earth is it possible to get a tax cut when you don’t pay income taxes? A little more than 45% of Americans do not – repeat, do not – pay income tax. That means Senator Obama’s “tax breaks” will amount to a welfare payment to those who don’t deserve it.
Senator McCain, are you home?
Can someone also inform Senator Obama that to raise taxes on corporations, as he wants to do and says is somehow “fair,” results in customers and workers bearing the ultimate burden?
I know you’re in there, Senator McCain! Can someone (figuratively only) just slap Senator Obama across the kisser – or anyone else for that matter – who has the utter audacity to call the attacks of 9/11 a "tragedy?" They were an act of war. Period.
This must anger you, Senator McCain! Show it!
Is there anyone with even a remedial knowledge of how budgets work willing to spare an afternoon (or perhaps a weekend) with Senator Obama to explain to him that the ten billion dollars a month being spent on funding the war in Iraq is not – repeat not – being taken away from anyone or anything domestically? It is not being diverted from, say, emergency food and clothing needed for naked, emaciated children in our inner cities. That’s not how it works, Senator Obama.
Answer the door, Senator McCain! The bottom line is … John McCain wasn’t horrifically bad. True, he had me biting my bottom lip when he went on about the conspicuousness of global warming; He had me shaking my head when he once again hoisted his arrows at the “greed” of Wall Street; He induced stomach gurgles when he kept reminding us how much of a maverick he is, pulling names like Feingold and Kennedy out of his hat. (I kept a bottle of Tums next to my cream soda as I watched).
However, let me say, without reservation, that substantively, Senator McCain was the clear winner of this debate. The problem was … he just wasn’t as good as he should have been … and frankly, could have been.
It’s not over by any means … I just wanted more of a “Hell yeah!” taste in my mouth at the end of that day.
I walked away with an “Uh, okay.”
The debate was a missed opportunity for McCain.
I truly believe that I (or most Freepers) could have *decisively* defeated Obama in the debate last night.
When 0 called out the fake “95% of America will get a tax cut”, Slam him with “Senator, I know you haven’t been at this very long, but it is a fact that 40% of Americans don’t pay income tax, so they cannot get a tax cut. You could redistribute someone else’s wealth to them, but that’s Marxism and I hope you are not advocating that.”
When 0 brought up Delaware, low interest, credit cards, etc. Slam him for his VP choice and ties to banks and Wall Street.
When 0 brings up foreign policy, literally *laugh* at him and say “It seems to me the Obama doctrine is to fight everyone we are currently at peace with, and to retreat from everywhere we are currently engaged. That’s not a strategy my friends...”
And when 0 brought up Kenya, slam him directly for going over to Kenya to stump for a radical socialist like Odinga whose supporters turned to machetes when the vote didn’t go thier way, while McCain was back here trying to get the Democratic Congress to see the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac train wreck that was coming.
Etc.
I actually had these thoughts (and maybe a couple others) in real time last night during the debate, and it was a missed opportunity not to use some of the openings 0 opened up with his own words.
McCain's only shot is/was to show that Obama cannot be trusted with the presidency. If Obama is plausible, McCain loses. And McCain, unfailingly, treats Obama as if he is totally plausible. Ballgame.
There is only one way to stabilize house prices and that is to allow them to fall to a price were buyers step in. There is no other way.
Read Thomas Sowell Basic Economics before you construct a reply.
What a coincidence. I thought the same thing when they interviewed Romney last night.
I was a Romney supporter by the way.
Too bad that he was problem the victim of Mormon bigots and was drowned out because of the Huckabee vote.
We simply have a philosophical disagreement about the moral responsibility of a voter in America so your statistics don't matter to me.
If Hillary Clinton switched parties and ran against Obama in 2012 as slightly more moderate candidate (both of them being extreme liberals), are you telling me you would vote for Hillary? If not, where do you draw the line? I draw the line at McCain..
What about liberals like McCain...and Bush?
I wish people would stop repeating this classist Hannity nonsense. It is false and demeans and alienates lower income group people who have paid taxes all their lives: http://www.factcheck.org/kerrys_tax_ad_literally_accurate_but_misleading.html
Is there ny way we can wire McCain so that Newt Gingrich answers the questions? He has a way of communicating actual concrete substance on how to solve national problems. These two candidates just spin round and round. McCain does it punctuated by "my friends" and "but the point is."
First your scenario is ridiculous. Hillary is not going to switch parties, and if she did she would not get the Republican nomination.
Now with that said, your "moral responsibility" philosophy seems contrived to me. As a conservative, you think it's "moral" to allow Obama to become President with a clear left wing majority in the House and near fillibuster proof majority in the Senate? You well know there would be virtually nothing stopping Obama/Reid/Pelosi from enacting huge new government programs that would make the "bailout" look like trick-or-treat sized candy bars. The damage will be so deep and wide that not even a new GOP majority in 2010 could undo the new government programs that some voters will then take for granted. This is what Dems since FDR have done to ensure power. They now will have the power and the excuse for the New Deal, part II. Maybe Part III if you count the Great Society as New Deal II.
Then we get to the courts. Not just the S.Ct., but the lower courts as well. Obama would be free to fill vacancies up with lawyers that deeply admire the 9th Circuit Court, and maybe some that don't think that court goes far enough. We are talking about judges that will willingly undo any law they deem "conservative," even if that law is constitutional.
And you'll allow this to preserve your personal "moral responsibility." Maybe that's how it works in an academic dissertation. In the practical world that is called enabling.
So yes, I will vote for McCain because there are only two people that have a possibility of being elected and he is the more conservative of the two. He may go-along-to-get-along with Congress on a lot of stuff I won't like. But when it comes to the important stuff like protecting the country and fighting overt socialist power grabs and appointing decent judges I think he'll be on the right side. I know Obama will never be. Bottomline: even Ronald Reagan knew that politics mean there was a time to be practical and strike a deal with Tip O'neil. This is a time also to be practical.
Not liberal?
1. last night's $300 billion proposal (socialist)
2. foreign policy: McCain has proposed a kind of international police response force
3. the amnesty bill
4. campaign-finance 'reform'
5. global-warming
6. the Gang of 14
From things I’ve read it isn’t even safe to muse on the subject online... the Secret Service is likely to come calling if you do.
We would all do well to stop looking back and look to the future. The future contains two choices. I hope everyone chooses wisely..
We all do ourselves, this election and our country a big favor right now by being positively proactive and helping win this thing.
In addition, the way the Fed is planning the taxpayers would take it in the shorts, with McCain's $300 billion plan when a homeowner sold the feds would recoup from profits what they did to help the homeowner. I liken this somewhat to how reverse mortgages for the elderly works...
Fact is: the key to turning around this economy is getting housing back on it's feet. The trickle-down effect of this bust is going to have a whole lot of people on welfare if we don't and THAT will cost a whole lot more than $300 billion dollars....
Stop and think for a moment... how many jobs in this country is tied to housing... it's huge!!!
I was responding to a poster who was frustrated with the current state of conservatism as an intellectual movement. My purpose was to pose a larger question for consideration. How do we prevent or counter the ruin of conservatives by the MSM for simply being conservative?
If John McCain and Sarah Palin do not make it to the Whitehouse (God forbid), I expect them to go after Sarah for the next four years to undermine her popularity. She will not have access to the public as she does now, and we saw how the media kept attacking to make her appear unprepared and not up to the task. They will gnaw at her popularity.
We would all do well to stop looking back and look to the future.
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I respectfully disagree. I passionately wish more people would look to the past, then the Constitution and the founding fathers might have more power to prevent the future onslaught of tyranny.
~LOL~ No, I’m not a PUMA. I just find it very interesting they are more passionatly supporting the GOP candidate than many so called Republicans.
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