Romney Obama Debate - Round One

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Romney Obama Debate - Round One

Romney did it. He won the debate.

No knockout.

But he did it.

(whew!)

Now he's got to keep it up.

I admit, I did love Romney's phrase, trickle-down government.

Michael

[Matt Faherty]

I agree that Romney did extremely well and won the debate. He had a fire and passion in him that we have not seen in either of his presidential runs. Even though I think its a pretty stupid attribute, I think his aggression and willingness to run over the moderator will give him a more "real" feel to undecideds.

[GALTGULCH8]

Notice that on the topic of the role of government he referred only to the Declaration of Independence and the meaning of the iconic phrase to him. He emphasized the word Creator and had a collectivist/statist interpretation of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the Altruistic notion that it meant that we care for the old and the weak and that we take care of them.

That phrase never meant anything to me other than a purely individualistic meaning.

He clearly did not refer to the Constitution itself nor its explicit grants of limited powers to the Congress enshrined in Article 1 Section 8. I don't think Romney has read it recently if ever. I think he is intimidated by the document and feels its over his head. I think he relies on lawyers to explain it to him and doesn't appear to ever ask them for an explanation.

He has no Constitutional objection to the federal government being involved in education, health, welfare, business or insurance or retirement. He just thinks that in general the feds are less efficient, haven't ever lowered the cost of anything and prefers to leave things to the states.

Still he clearly nailed Obama who evidently decided deliberately to leave out the 47% attack which floods his attack ads because he believes he was ahead in the polls. Wait until the next debate.

http://youtu.be/QDQsIKbQLFY

Gary Johnson who meets the original debate criteria of the League of Woman Voters in that he is eligible and on enough ballots to theoretically could win the Electoral College should have been included to fulfill the debate commissions mission of enlightening the voters. Instead the Presidential Debate Commission added the irrational criteria of 15% showing in five national polls which can only be met by a billionaire who can afford the advertising necessary to accomplish that.

Naturally the major parties collude to keep the game between them as they persist in viciously fighting to keep third party candidates, like Gary Johnson, off state ballots and out of contention at their national conventions as was the case for Ron Paul who met criteria to be nominated and to speak from the convention floor until they changed the rules mid-game. Despite their smiles and hugs these people are thugs,killers and thieves with no respect for the Founders and their oath of office. Oh and they are counterfeiters as well.

[BaalChatzaf]

What do you know? Romney is a Statist! I am shocked! shocked!

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Yep ...there is gambling in the Rick's Cafe!!

[Selene]

This will be remembered as the deciding image of this election...

[Peter]

I also thought Romney did well, and at times President Obama seemed depressed and distressed. Was Obama frequently reading from a computer tablet teleprompter? It seemed so and I have noticed a lot of guests on Fox doing the same thing, even Sean Hannity. However, I thought, Obama still did quite well. Some of POTUS’s biggest debate critics during and after the debate were his very own tweeting, ultra lefties Bill Maher and Chris Mathews.

I looked on RealClear this morning and nothing new was trending. How long before “a debate effect” is seen? Maybe by tomorrow morning after some new polling tonight, Thursday.

Peter

[blackhorse]

Romney, RINO and all, delivered a smack down to Obama in last nights debate. It's over for the bg "O". In fact, if Obama was smart (which he isn't) he would try to get out of the last two debates to avoid further humiliation.

[9thdoctor]

Recall that Lyndon Johnson never debated Barry Goldwater. Obama should have stuck to the 1964 strategy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63h_v6uf0Ao

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

My favorite blooper of the evening was in Obama's closing statement.

He said that everything he's tried to do and is proposing to do over the next four years is designed to make sure that the American people "have an opportunity to succeed. And everybody's getting a fair shot. And everybody's getting a fair share."

(Of course, he then corrected himself to "everybody's doing a fair share.")

Michael

[PDS]

This will be remembered as the deciding image of this election...

Very, very doubtful, my friend.

[jts]

Whoever wins the election, the voters lose.

Romney is a flip flopper. Whatever he says now, he probably will say or do the opposite later.

Obama is a liar. He promised change and he didn't change anything.

It is time for the ants to figure out that they outnumber the grasshoppers a hundred to one.

[blackhorse]

Obama, like the narcissis he is, kept looking down when Romney was addressing him. it's not just bad form, but a cardinal no-no in a debate.

[jts]

I listened to one third of the debate between Obama and Romney and I was too disgusted to listen to the rest of it. That should be a warning to everyone else here. When I get disgusted by a video, it's very bad. They were talking about how government should create jobs and fix the economy. Wrong question. The right question is should government create jobs and fix the economy and the answer is NO. If Ron Paul was in that debate, he would kick both their asses.

Here is a debate more like it ought to be. It is between Badnarik of the Libertarian Party and Cobb of the Green Party. It goes back to 2004.

Skip the first 33 minutes to get to the good stuff. Don't say I didn't warn you about the first 33 minutes.

2:16:40

[Robert Campbell]

We already knew that Mitt Romney is a man of few convictions, at least in the realm of political philosophy.

But Romney gave every indication of having worked his rear end off to prepare for this event. He wasn't all that aggressive rhetorically—neither his personality nor the advice of his K Street Republican handlers is conducive to that (hence, for instance, his failure to challenge the presidential citation of AARP support for ObamaCare). Still, he got in a couple of zingers at Barack Obama. "You pick the losers."

Meanwhile, Obama gave the impression of believing his pet media outlets proclamations that Romney had already been crushed and not thinking he needed to prepare. I watched the first 30 minutes of the event with periodic annoyance at Obama's n^th repetition of some customary bit of BS. Most of what Obama said in the latter exchanges I can't remember with precision, because I become increasingly aware of tuning him out. In the end, our supposedly silver-tongued president was ... boring.

Both participants showed disrespect for the moderator, Obama more blatantly. After a while, both just ran Jim Lehrer over. Not that his plan for the evening or his questions were particularly good.

Robert Campbell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I'm not particularly worried about Romney's lack of libertarianism at this moment. There's a job to be done. It's urgent. And it can be done without ideological purity.

There used to be a metaphor in the media that is highly accurate here. You can't turn an aircraft carrier around on a dime. It needs a wide berth and it takes time.

The simple fact is that the American public, at this moment in history, will not elect a person with predominantly libertarian--or even constitutionalist--views.

So the choice before us is an aircraft carrier's captain who is heading straight toward an iceberg like the Titanic, and one who seeks to go around it, but is still heading into the waters where icebergs are all over the place.

My focus right now is to replace the current captain so we don't ram the iceberg in front of us. Once we do that, then we can yell at the new captain to get the hell out of those waters.

There is a saying that the lesser of two evils is still evil. But I happen to be on this ship and that saying sounds like a moral equivalency in this context. I don't see how avoiding the iceberg instead of ramming it is "still evil." That urgency part seems to be left out of the saying. The "still evil" part is the treacherous waters, but that's for later. And if later is meant, I agree with "still evil." It comes down to this. What do you prefer? To sink the ship today, or take your chances in treacherous waters when you can still do something about it?

I say let's elect Romney now, then when he takes office, jump all over him to keep to a course that goes to a better place than, maybe, he wants to go. And if we can do that, we can elect members of Congress and even other people later who are closer to the small-government ideal. (And if we relax over time, well... we know what happens.)

I realize that once in office, Romney won't change course on a dime, but I believe he is open to rational persuasion. And, this may sound odd, but I don't believe he is corruptible by the normal trappings of Washington. His whole adult life is goody-goody two-shoes. He's a technocrat, not a visionary. All he wants to do is keep the ship running well and afloat. In that matter, I don't think he is, or will be, corruptible at all.

Romney is surrounding himself by some very good people.

In compensation, look who is hanging around Obama...

Michael

[jts]

The simple fact is that the American public, at this moment in history, will not elect a person with predominantly libertarian--or even constitutionalist--views.

Perhaps this is because of a phenomenon known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe people would vote for Ron Paul but they don't because they think Ron Paul has no chance of getting elected. What if the phenomenon of the self-fulfilling prophecy could be eliminated by a different kind of election, such as the run-off election?

[Robert Campbell]

So the choice before us is an aircraft carrier's captain who is heading straight toward an iceberg like the Titanic, and one who seeks to go around it, but is still heading into the waters where icebergs are all over the place.

My focus right now is to replace the current captain so we don't ram the iceberg in front of us. Once we do that, then we can yell at the new captain to get the hell out of those waters.

Michael,

Exactly. I expect nothing more from Mitt Romney. And nothing less.

And if elected, Romney is actually much less likely than the present President to make decisions on the basis of who among his cronies is clamoring loudest for taxpayers' money.

Robert Campbell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Perhaps this is because of a phenomenon known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe people would vote for Ron Paul but they don't because they think Ron Paul has no chance of getting elected.

Jerry,

I don't believe people avoided voting for Ron Paul because of self-fulfilling prophecy thinking. Maybe some, but certainly not many.

I see the glass half-full, not half empty. I believe libertarian ideas have been growing in the mainstream and the success Ron Paul did achieve reflects that growth. It's how intellectual battles are won and it's, by nature, a slow process.

Anyway, lots of people rejected Ron Paul because they perceived his foreign policy stance as dangerous and--to some--right down icky. That, I believe, is a far more plausible reason for him not being elected than anything else.

Technically, I suppose you could say you eat because of self-fulfilling prophecy thinking, meaning you believe you will not starve to death if you eat, so you eat and make a self-fulfilling prophecy. (After all, how do you know for certain you will not eventually starve to death if you don't eat?)

But eating involves a little bit more than believing in a vacuum, so that's not what I mean my self-fulfilling prophecy thinking. And I don't think that's what you mean, either.

It's more like postulating a major cause for a decision among several plausible ones. And on that score, I find far more plausible reasons at this moment in history.

You are framing Ron Paul's exclusion from the finals as a defeat and a rejection. I see his exposure as a battle won in a highly visible march toward small-government.

Michael

[jts]

The reason why I thought maybe people didn't vote for Ron Paul was the self-fulfilling prophecy is that he seemed to get lots of approval but not the votes. He kicked ass in all the debates he was in, as judged by people voting for who did best in the debates. He drew the crowds. He had the most signs. He had more financial support from the troops than all the other candidates put together. He raised lots of money. But he didn't get the votes in the polls.

[blackhorse]

The primary reason Ron Paul didn't do better than he did in the GOP primaries was his foreign policy.-it's naive and dangerous.

[blackhorse]

Also, Obama shot himself in the foot (one of many times in the debate) when in his closing comments he mentioned Americans paying their "faire share".

[Dglgmut]

You know a lot of democrats like Ron Paul too, right? And they love his foreign policy. They think his economic policies are insane...

Anyway, I agree that the situation is bad enough that Romney winning would be a miracle. He's more of the same, but Obama is worse.

[Peter]

JTS wrote:

What if the phenomenon of the self-fulfilling prophecy could be eliminated by a different kind of election, such as the run-off election?

end quote

From Electoral College.com:

If there is an Electoral College tie, the House of Representatives will elect the President . . . . Each State will get ONE VOTE in the House of Representatives. The House members from each State must agree on who to give their vote to from the 3 candidates who received the most electoral votes.

end quote

So that is as close as we will ever get to a runoff. I wrote down what I was observing as it happened and that is much different from what I felt the day after the debate. Just after the end of the debate I wrote that I did not think POTUS was doing so poorly as I watched but I was annoyed by his “I wish I wasn’t here attitude,” and the fact that Obama was constantly reading an IPAD teleprompter on his lectern, but no one has mentioned that was happening, so maybe he wasn’t. Did he memorize zingers and could only remember them by pretending to be reading them? Anyway it was annoying.

The next day, I was amazed at the flak he was getting from his buddies on MSNBC, CNN, etc., or as I call them, the State Run Media. How dare they actually do factual journalism? What irony. What dishonest scoundrels. And I was wowed by the praise he got from Charles Krauthammer, and Robert Tracinski.

Is Romney’s good performance a game changer with the voters? The first indication, other than in the media, should manifest itself today, Friday. Unofficial, instant phone polls say it was Romney winning the debate at 70 percent to 15 percent for Obama or something close to that. A commentator on Fox said Rasmussen Polling and Real Clear Politics polling averages won’t be out until Sunday.

Michael wrote:

Romney is surrounding himself by some very good people. In compensation, look who is hanging around Obama . . .

end quote

My trust in him was cinched with his pick of Paul Ryan. I think he will work to stop deficit spending his first year and decrease the debt by the forth year of his presidency. Will Mitt flinch as Robert Campbell suggests when he wrote, “Exactly. I expect nothing more from Mitt Romney. And nothing less.”?

Mitt’s convictions are his bedrock, founded in Mormonism, but also in

a love of country, the constitution and pragmatic Capitalism. Perhaps his love of less-fettered Capitalism is more idealism and less pragmatism. Got to go to let the Sears repairman in.

Peter

[9thdoctor]

I say let's elect Romney now, then when he takes office, jump all over him to keep to a course that goes to a better place than, maybe, he wants to go.

Now wait a minute, are you actually planning to vote for Romney? You're in Illinois, which is a solid Obama state, right?

http://www.realclear...ollege_map.html

I'm in Florida, which is a key battleground state. But I have a long unbroken record of voting Libertarian. So how about we make a deal, I'll cast your vote for Romney here where it counts, and you cast my vote for Johnson in Illinois. It'll be like a cancelling out of Karmic energies. I'll be able to continue with my streak, albeit with an asterisk next to 2012. Of course we'll have to do this on the honor system. What do you say?