ROMNEY WINS HANDS DOWN


REAL CLEAR POLITICS WEDNESDAY

Romney, on Offense, Forces Obama to Defend Record – Jerry Markon, WP
Mitt Charges Out of Gate in First Debate – Scott Conroy, RealClearPolitics
Why Romney Succeeded – William Galston, Huffington Post
Obama Exposed in Debate – Victor Davis Hanson, National Review Online
Not as One-Sided as Everybody Says – Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
It Wasn’t a TKO, It Was a Knockout – John Hinderaker, PowerLine
Where Was Obama Tonight? – Chris Matthews, MSNBC
A Historic Defeat for a Sitting President – Hugh Hewitt, Townhall
Mitt Did Little to Fix His Problems With Voters – Eleanor Clift, Daily Beast

DRUDGE

Lost, bewildered without teleprompter…

ROUND WON: Romney Seized Offense in Debate…
You Were Fighting For Obamacare, Not Jobs…
‘The Path We?re Taking Is Not Working’…
FOURNIER: Cursed Obama Falls… 
MSNBC MATTHEWS: ‘What Was He Doing!’
Cutter takes swipe at Lehrer…
Andrew Sullivan: ‘This was a disaster’…

October 4, 2012 | 11 Comments »

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  1. (I posted the comment shown below to Dean’s World, a US-based blogsite run by Dean Esmay.)

    It seems to many observers, and increasingly to me as well, that the first Obama-Romney presidential debate has actually and most dramatically turned this election around. Latest polls from swing states such as Ohio, Virginia and Florida show Romney either solidly in the lead, among the general voting population, or leading among those voters who told poll-takers they definitely will vote. Middle class voters seem solidly backing Romney and Ryan, with the various liberal-oriented voting segments beginning to be ridden with self-doubt about this campaign in particular and, among some, a mood that this is becoming an election they may well lose.

    Can the Republicans maintain this great momentum boost that Romney won for them in a single extraordinary 90 minute performance against an incumbent US president? This question becomes much more significant as the truth sinks in across America that Mr Obama is all but totally dependent on teleprompters when taking part in public campaigning. Moreover, he who becomes withdrawn and seemingly inarticulate when stripped of such a wireless device by agreed-upon presidential debate rules. All these considerations were overlooked in the 2008 debates, because Senator McCain was nowhere near as well prepared for debating his opponent as is Governor Romney.

    I think that Romney’s new momentum, with only 30 days to go before the election, can be sustained; at least to the extent that these head-to-head debates without teleprompters or staff aides whispering into the ears of the debaters. can make or break the outcome of any such presidential campaign.

    The next debate, that of the vice presidential candidates, will pit the frequently humorous but otherwise gaffe-prone Joseph Biden against one of the sharpest and most articulate conservatives who has served in the US House of Representatives in recent years. The Obama-Biden campaign is most likely to take hit number two from that debate,

    Then comes the debate over US foreign policy, on the heels of all-but certain administration cover-ups of how a US ambassador was purposely murdered by the usual Arab Muslim terrorist gang in Libya under pretext of their feeling insulted by a ridiculous U-Tube video arranged by an Egyptian Copt residing in the USA. That, plus efforts by this administration to pour yet more taxpayer dollars into appeasing the identical Arab Muslim street mobs in Tahrir Square in Cairo.

    Next, a growing number of Americans will be wondering why Obama is all but trying to wish away the growing nuclear weapons menace in Iran while obviously attempting to put a crimp in the rights of the State of Israel — the only dependable western-type democracy in the Middle East –to defend themselves by military preemption of Iran’s present Hitlerite Ayatollist regime that for 33 years has sworn to destroy the Jewish state. The Israelis would be the most foolish Jews in history if they seriously listened to Obama, irrespective of his high office.

    Moreover, there is the question of what the conservative Sun’a Muslim Arab monarchies such as Saudi Arabia think of the possibility of Shi’a Iran conquering or becoming the overlord of the vast majority of Muslims in the Middle East who have fought off the claims to Islamic primacy of the sectarians of Ali and the martyred Hussein. Few Americans take the trouble to think out such considerations or even are aware of their historical development. But they have been seemingly ignored by this particular president.

    So I think debate number three could prove as difficult for Obama as we have seen with the first such debate. That will leave only one final debate for the president’s campaign handlers to pull off some sort of Hail-Mary pass to try for a last minute touchdown. But unless some skillful brain surgeons can contrive to implant a micro-size teleprompter into the president’s skull, I think that Hail-Mary pass will be intercepted by the other team.

    I’m not a gambler, but after a long lifetime of observing political campaigns, I think I know something about calculating odds. And what I think I see does not bode well for this particular incumbent president.

    Arnold Harris
    Mount Horeb WI

  2. I didn’t watch the debate either. (Btw, there is a report that Obama administration has sent a radical Islamist — as U.S. reprentative to a Conference in Warsaw. Some are calling for a congressional investigation. It’s al-Marayati. ) (yes, that smirk is worrying.)

  3. @ Laura:
    He was terrified without his teleprompter. You could tell from the way he looked on those first few seconds on stage. Also the Daily Caller had just hours earlier released that video I posted above. It completely upset weeks of preparation. Maybe he was thinking: How will I explain that?

    Now even Michelle Obama will vote for Romney! 🙂

    But seriously, this setback makes his desperate campaigners even more dangerous.

  4. There’s something about Obama’s smirk in that picture that makes me believe there is some diabolical plan in the works for the next debates. I didn’t even watch the debate, I watched baseball. But I knew that if the liberal media was claiming a Romney victory, Obama must have been so awful even they couldn’t spin it.

  5. Did Obama throw the debate? Is this some sort of calculated plan? The next debate he would only have to just exceed his performance in this one in order for the liberal media to declare him the victor.

  6. (I posted the comment shown below to Dean’s World, a US-based blogsite run by Dean Esmay, an old friend of mine who lives in the outer fringes of greater Detroit MI.)

    Dean, I agree with the last paragraph of your post about the first 2012 presidential debate. Both candidates are moderates, and Obamacare largely will remain in place.

    However, Romney debates far better than Obama. He appears to have a strong grasp of all the details needed to argue points about the rapidly expanding US national debt, our balance of trade, the faulty and loop-hole laden federal tax structure, and the continuing disappearance of American jobs. The president just does not do well without a teleprompter.

    Most observers are certain that Representative Ryan will make mincemeat of Vice President Joe Biden, who handles himself in freehand discussions with far less panache than President Obama. I am inclined to agree with that assessment, with the reservation that Biden seems to have a sense of humor that makes him likeable or at least tolerable. I have no idea what Ryan sounds like in a real debate.

    The presidential debate covering US foreign policy will be the most troublesome one for President Obama, because almost everything his policy has touched in the Middle East has warped into miserable failure at the hands of the Arab street mobs and Islamic Brotherhood conspiracies that the president has long attempted to win over. With all due respect to the Arab-Americans and other Muslims who are trying to make democracy work in this country — and there may well be large numbers of them, I do not think democracy can be permanently implanted in the civilization of the Arab and other Muslim cultures. Democracy as we know it here flies in the face of the cultural traditions of the Semitic religious faiths and their adherents. As a strong supporter of Jewish nationalism, I nevertheless admit that Israel presently is a democracy of the western European and North American fashion; but that the religious Jews ultimately will win the war of the cradles in Israeli demography, and that country one day will be a society that will seem more normatively Middle Eastern and more closely resembling the neighboring societies in which it is growing to national maturity. That, of course, does not mean there will be peace among them, any more than Shi’a Arabs will ever make true peace with Sun’a Arabs, or either of them with non-Arab but Muslim nations such as the Kurds, or for that matter, with the Turks.

    As for the third presidential debate; who knows, other than to say that Obama truly does not debate strongly. He comes across as cool, reserved and as withdrawn. He may physically remind all of us of Abraham Lincoln, but he is nowhere nearly as articulate as his Springfield, Illinois presidential predecessor, who pulled Stephen Douglas apart in their debates in the late 1850s.

    Arnold Harris
    Mount Horeb WI

  7. Judging by this debate and by the president’s decreased popularity, the only way Obama can win is by an aggressive plan of vote fraud. My advice to Romney supporters is to watch those polls, and to watch military access to votes.

    Military absentee voting requests are down as much as 70% from 2008 in key swing states. The Pentagon and the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) failed to comply with the MOVE Act by providing registration offices on every military base to make it easier for military members to vote. The Department of Defense’s Inspector General confirmed these findings in a report. The military is strongly pro-Romney.

    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/02/Military-Absentee-Voting-Requests-Down-By-As-Much-As-70-From-2008-In-Key-Swing-States

    By the way, yesterday’s release of this stunning 2007 Obama video got drowned by the debate. Watch it.

    http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/02/obama-speech-jeremiah-wright-new-orleans