Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Romney vs. Obama - Round Two
Who won?
In the performance sense it was a draw - at least that's my feeling.
When Romney was strong he was very strong.
Obama? He was cool, collected, "reasonable and persuasive" in a 2008 redux sort of way... the problem for Obama being... it's no longer 2008 - it's 2012.
(*SHRUG*)
Folks... that's the bottom line. We've had four years to see Obama's policies in action. And... well... we've seen them. We've lived the results.
The answer to the question "have Obama's policies worked" is obviously "no."
But here's the flip side. The question concerning Romney is "do Romney's policies have a chance of working any better?" To this... I believe most "independents" and "undecided voters" will be more inclined to take a chance that the answer to that question is "yes" rather than to simply count on eight years of an Obama presidency leading to better results than four years of an Obama presidency.
Romney could have done better. Particularly with the Libya question I found myself literally screaming at Romney to dramatically point out that President Obama had not answered Kerry's question!
The gun control question? While Gov. Romney did note that fully automatic weapons - AK-47's among others - are and have been illegal for anyone without a specific (and very, very, very difficult to get) federal license since... oh... sometime in the 1930's... he didn't really stick to the point and thus didn't stick to the logic of his position.
China? Romney won.
Energy? Romney won big!
Back to Libya... both the President and his... (er... "the")... moderator will no doubt regret trying to provide cover for Obama re: Libya. Romney got him! Tomorrow the media will have little choice but to acknowledge this - and point out that the moderator mislead viewers while attempting to "defend" the President's misrepresentation of his immediate post-9/11/12 public declarations.
Remember my reaction to the VP debate? To paraphrase myself, I wrote "Biden won by not losing."
My initial reaction to tonight's debate? Well... as I wrote above... in a performance sense it was basically a draw. But in terms of what the President needed to accomplish vs. what Romney needed to do... I've gotta give the "decision" to Romney.
President Obama had to kicki butt and he didn't.
Governor Romney simply had to do a creditable job. He did.
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http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/10/obama-gots-more-time-138699.html
President Obama ultimately got more than three extra minutes of speaking time than Mitt Romney during Tuesday's debate.
* FUNNY... I'VE JUST SPENT FIVE MINUTES TRYING TO FIND OUT HOW MUCH EXTRA TIME OBAMA GOT IN THE FIRST DEBATE (I THINK IT WAS TWO OR THREE MINUTES) BUT I CAN'T SEEM TO FIND A CITATION DEALING WITH THE QUESTION.
Yo Bill,
I would tend to agree with you here and would add to the Libya point that Romney possibly lost. Why? Because he went down the "is it terrorism" path when the whole point was that it was coordinated and premeditated by radicals trained by al qaeda, which took the administration two weeks to admit. He should have delivered a knockout punch with this question. And Crowley came to Obama's aid about the Fast and Furious.
Yes, Moose, that's what I was saying when I wrote that I was LITERALLY screaming at the TV last night when Romney failed to deliver the knock-out punch.
I haven't yet scanned the news this morning... hopefully I was right last night when I predicted that enough of the media will do their job this morning (and point out what Romney SHOULD have pointed out) that last night's opportunity will be revisited today.
As always... thanks for reading and responding.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/10/17/michelle_obama_broke_agreed_upon_rules_clapped_at_debate.html
At the second presidential debate on Tuesday night, a camera caught first lady Michelle Obama clapping after moderator Candy Crowley told Republican presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney that President Obama called the Benghazi attack an "act of terror" soon after the attack on the U.S. consulate.
Nearly all of the audible applause came from those sitting away from the actual debate, but when FOX News' camera shot moved to a bird's-eye view it became apparent that the only applause from the participating debate audience came from first lady Michelle Obama. Mitt Romney's wife Ann was also sitting with the debate participants.
According to the rules both campaigns agreed to, or the memorandum of understanding (MOA), there is to be no clapping from members of the debate audience.
The rule: Article 9, Section A, Subsection 7: "All members of the debate audience will be instructed by the moderator before the debate goes on the air and by the moderator after the debate goes on the air not to applaud, speak, or otherwise participate in the debate by any means other than by silent observation, except as provided by the agreed upon rules of the October 16 town hall debate."
* HMM... FRANKLY... MY IMMEDIATE REACTION IS TO CUT "THE WIFE" SOME SLACK. BUT ON THE OTHER HAND... THE APPLAUSE WAS QUITE AUDIBLE AND ABSENT THIS REPORT I WOULDN'T NOW KNOW THAT WHAT I "THOUGHT" I HEARD (AUDIENCE REACTION) REALLY WASN'T.
The part that had me yelling at the tv was that Obama never answered the guy's original question of who made the decision to not provide the security that was requested.
Neither Romney nor Crowley called him out on that to answer the original question. The reason I throw the moderator in there is that she took Romney to task on the AK-47 question when he brought up F&F.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/oct/17/reporters-applaud-obamas-slam-romneys-wealth/
The room set aside for reporters to watch Tuesday night's debate erupted into applause after President Obama ridiculed the size of Mitt Romney's personal wealth.
Mr. Obama has made Mr. Romney's personal wealth a major issue in the campaign, arguing that he is out of touch with average voters who pay a higher income tax rate even though they earn far less than Mr. Romney, who founded and ran Bain Capital, an investment firm.
Mr. Romney was trying to make the point that both his and Mr. Obama's investment funds probably include investments in China — something the president has attacked Mr. Romney for.
"Mr. President, have you looked at your pension?" Mr. Romney said.
"You know, I don't look at my pension. It's not as big as yours, so it — it doesn't take as long," Mr. Obama retorted. His reply prompted laughter in the debate hall where the two men were squaring off — but across the way in the separate room where the press was stationed, a brief round of applause broke out.
* SURPRISING? NO. THOROUGHLY UNPROFESSIONAL? YES. BEYOND THE PALE? NO... OF COURSE NOT. BUT, FOLKS... COM'ON... I WAS HAVING THIS CONVERSATION WITH A BUDDY OF MINE JUST THE OTHER DAY. THIS BUDDY - TO THIS DAY - "FAILS TO SEE" WHAT I SEE CONCERNING THE MSM.
(*SNORT*)
* IT IS WHAT IT IS.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/10/17/Crowley-interrupts-28-times-Romney
In the first presidential debate, Jim Lehrer, no slouch at shilling for the Democratic Party, interrupted Mitt Romney 15 times and Barack Obama only five.
Cindy Crowley made Lehrer look like an amateur.
She interrupted Obama nine times, (although four of those were when he wouldn’t respect the time limit when discussing assault weapons; he went over his time limit all night long), but when it came to Mitt Romney, she was utterly beyond the pale.
Crowley interrupted Romney 28 times.
Twenty-eight times[!]
Her desperation to keep Romney from scoring points was so patently obvious that it wasn’t really a surprise when she had her infamous moment: the moment when she interrupted and falsely claimed Romney was incorrect in accusing Obama of refusing to call the Benghazi attack an act of terror.
And even beyond the interruptions, there were numerous instances where Crowley’s obvious partisanship prompted her to treat Romney with great disrespect:
1. She wouldn’t let Romney respond when Obama lied about the auto industry. First she called him Mr. Romney instead of governor, then protested, “there'll be plenty of chances here to go on, but I want to... We have all these folks. I will let you absolutely... OK. Will - will - you certainly will have lots of time here coming up.”
Romney never did get the chance to respond.
2. After the question asking whether gas prices as they stand now are the new normal, Obama got two chances to respond. When Romney asked for his second chance, Crowley shut him off by saying, “ … in the follow up, it doesn't quite work like that. But I'm going to give you a chance here. I promise you, I'm going to.”
She didn’t.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
3. When discussing how he would deal with deductions, just as Romney was about to destroy Obama with statistics, Crowley jumped in to save her man not only by denying the value of statistics, but changing the narrative to say Romney’s numbers couldn’t possibly add up...
* AND YOU KNOW WHAT...? SHE MIGHT BE RIGHT. BUT THEN AGAIN SHE MIGHT BE WRONG. EITHER WAY, THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE AN OBAMA vs. ROMNEY DEBATE - NOT A CINDY CROWLEY vs. ROMNEY DEBATE. THERE'S SIMPLY NO AVOIDING THE FACT THAT CROWLEY WAS CLEARLY ACTING AS A PARTISAN THROUGHOUT MUCH OF THE DEBATE.
4. When Romney was trying to make a point of Obama’s pension investing in China, Crowley cut him off by insinuating people were tired of him talking: “Governor Romney, you can make it short. See all these people? They've been waiting for you. Make it short.”
* YEP. THIS ONE WAS BEYOND THE PALE. (*SHRUG*)
Then she really tried to humiliate him with this: “If I could have you sit down, Governor Romney. Thank you.” She never asked Obama to sit down.
* AGAIN... COM'ON... IT WAS FRIGGIN' BLATANT!
5. The infamous incident when she interrupted Romney’s claim about Obama’s refusal to call the Benghazi murders a terror attack:
“It - it - it - he did in fact, sir. So let me - let me call it an act of terror...
Prompted by Obama to say it a little louder, Crowley obliged:
“He - he did call it an act of terror. It did as well take - it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that.”
* YEP. CROWLEY "CAUGHT HERSELF." BUT ONLY AFTER MUDDYING THE WATERS. (I'M GUESSING DELIBERATELY; I KNOW THAT OBAMA WAS DELIBERATELY TRYING TO SELL A FALSE NARRATIVE.)
6. Just as egregiously, when the question was about assault weapons and Romney naturally started to discuss fast and furious, Crowley quickly shifted him away from that and turned it into an attack on Romney’s assault ban position: “Governor, Governor, if I could, the question was about these assault weapons that once were once banned and are no longer banned. I know that you signed an assault weapons ban when you were in Massachusetts, obviously, with this question, you no longer do support that. Why is that, given the kind of violence that we see sometimes with these mass killings? Why is it that you have changed your mind?"
(*SMIRK*)
* FOLKS... COM'ON... AS I NOTED LAST NIGHT IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE DEBATE, ROMNEY "FUMBLED" THE GUN QUESTION TO AN EXTENT, BUT NOT BY LYING OR TRYING TO EXCUSE HIPOCRISY. NO! ROMNEY'S ERROR WAS HIS FAILURE TO CLEARLY DISTINGUISH BETWEEN "ASSAULT WEAPONS" AS IN ALREADY ILLEGAL FULLY AUTOMATIC WEAPONS (LIKE THE AK-47) AND "ASSAULT WEAPONS" AS IN SINGLE SHOT WEAPONS MADE TO LOOK LIKE "REAL" ASSAULT WEAPONS!
* FOLKS... IF CROWLEY HAD WANTED TO ACTUALLY SERVE THE PUBLIC INTEREST, SHE HERSELF WOULD HAVE CLARIFIED THE ISSUE OF "REAL" vs. "LOOKS LIKE" ASSAULT WEAPONS. INSTEAD SHE BOUGHT INTO THE FALSE PREMISE OF THE QUESTION ITSELF.
@ Moose
Yeah.
That's what I was talking about - Romney FAILING to start out by simply saying, "Uh... folks... the President just filibustered for more than two minutes and totally FAILED to address the actual question asked!"
That's what I meant by "failed to make the dramatic statement."
Hopefully most folks saw what we saw.
In fact... maybe I'll post the question "Kerry" asked along with Obama's NON-answer in a stand-alone post.
(*WINK*)
BILL
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