Who knows if it was intentional, but not mentioning the 47% was in hindsight a smart move on Obama’s part, because Romney had an apology all ready to go. Instead of trotting it out in front of a debate audience, he did it on Hannity’s show last night.
The DC media is in day two of shiny new object mode, but I see even the liberal Washington Post showing a wee bit of skepticism about handsome, commanding, manly Mitt:
BruinKid
Unemployment just dropped to 7.8%!! Lowest since January 2009!
debbie
When does Romney acknowledge that his statement about half of the green companies going bankrupt was an even bigger lie?
Someguy
Sorry, that’s the stupidest headline in the world. Perhaps POTUS ought to be required to prove that the seemingly lost, hemming and hawing individual we saw is actually Obama?
Who is writing these headlines – Andy “Amelia Earhart’s Plane is Hidden in Sarah Palin’s Uterus” Sullivan?
debbie
@Bruinkid:
All those pundits saying that Obama wouldn’t stand a chance if unemployment didn’t go under 8%? Wonder what they’ll be saying now?
eric
@debbie: he wont stand a chance if unemployment does not go below 7.7%…duh
over_educated
The ball spiking and overconfidence by Republicans on Mitt’s debate performance has been pretty amusing. I got calls from three relatives yesterday I haven’t heard from all campaign season all crowing that Romney was now a certainty for the Presidency. I have a cousin who always wants to make 1000$ bets (proceeds go to charity) on big elections and likes to lord it over me when I defer (I always do because I am a pretty cautious and circumspect guy). So I hadn’t heard a peep from him all year but yesterday I got the 1000$ bet email. I immediately accepted. (If obama wins he gives 1k to planned parenthood, if Romney wins I give 1k to wounded warriors).
Higgs Boson's Mate
Has any candidate in the history of American politics refudiated so many of his former positions and then refudiated the refudiations?
Not even Mitt Romney knows who the real Mitt Romney is.
Laura
@over_educated: Wounded Warriors isn’t a “conservative” charity though….
If he wins you should be giving 1K to the Family Research Council or something.
eric
@over_educated: wow, that is some real overconfidence. Sure Mitt did “well” at the debate, but you have to ignore a whole host of bad fundamentals to think that today Mitt went from a heavy underdog to a sure thing.
over_educated
@Laura: Is planned parenthood really the equivalent of the FRC? PP is not a lobbying organization, they provide health services to indigent women.
amk
@Someguy: you’re gonna vote for mittbot, aren’t ya ? man up and say it.
over_educated
@eric: The text of said email, for the lulz:
mai naem
Unemployment rate goes down to 7.8 percent. Joe Scarbo has a major sad. Jack”Turtleman” Welch says Obama’s making up the number(projection much Jack???)
Dickheads at MSNBC can’t spend five minutes reading the info and figure out numbers were upped from previous numbers and a jump in part time workers(I;m assuming new part time workers not full timers going part time.)
Napoleon
Anouther reason it was a smart move is that it appears most newscasters brought it up on their own when discussing the debate just to point out that Obama did not bring it up.
Chyron HR
@over_educated:
I hate to break it to you, but your cousin sounds brain damaged.
Quincy
I never had a problem with Obama avoiding Bain and the 47 percent comments. I don’t think a debate is the right place for those kind of attacks. Having a coherent narrative about his record, plans for a second term and pointed easy-to-follow critiques of his opponent’s proposals would’ve been nice though.
over_educated
@Chyron HR: He owns a quite successful construction business. But I am not arguing with you.
Napoleon
@mai naem:
Seriously? He said that?
danielx
Who is the real Mitt Romney? Inquiring minds want to know.
You know, if Al Gore had spent his college years in France under a student deferment (no doubt conjugating extremely irregular French verbs with French girls), the 2000 election wouldn’t even have been close.
rikyrah
7.8 percent bitches…
hee hee hee
Anya
@BruinKid: YAY! Good for the country, good for the campaign. I am so glad, republicans won’t be able to gloat and yell about how we’re all doomed under Obama. Well, at least about the unemployment numbers
Lurking Canadian
@over_educated: Your cousin is tapped into the same bile duct as the new troll. I recognize some of the phrasing.
patrick
I’m personally waiting for Fox & Redstate to go apepoop over this damming video of a young Barack Obama in college….
http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/b4hsbd/key-and-peele-obama—the-college-years
btw, the civil war reenactment skit in that episode where they show up at slaves was hilarious….
JKormac
Romney’s debate performance was entirely in keeping with his fundamental character trait – his willingness to say whatever the audience he’s talking to wants to hear.
He could write a how-to book on business success about that.
patrick
sounds like a heads you win, tails he loses kind of bet….
japa21
I was one of those who felt that Obama didn’t bring up the 47% foer specifically this reason. It would have given Romney an opportunity to come up with some explanation that those in the middle may have accepted. The 47% remarks have already done a lot of damage and didn’t need to be brought up. Same with Bain.
28 Percent
A week from now, what pundits are going to be saying about that debate will be that Romney dug his own grave in it. The numbers are coming back that give him the “win” but they also gave Obama the win on likeability, so unless Romney can follow up by convincing the country that the guy who gave the go order on Bin Laden is too much of a wimp to give a second term, nobody’s going to care. As a matter of fact, the really big long term takeaway people are going to have is going to be Big Bird, and what an idiot Romney was to put that face on it. If he’d said “We can’t afford it and I’m sure that other cable networks will be lining up to show Ken Burns documentaries” then it would have been up to Democrats to explain how valuable everything else that PBS does is and how it’s really affordable… (imagine the possibilities in an “a vote for Romney is a vote to cancel Downton Abbey” campaign). Romney focused it for Democrats on Sesame Street, which offers a huge bang for the buck in early childhood education. The ROI on it is enormous. So what that comes down to is, Romney doesn’t care if something the government does is successful and beneficial and beloved cultural icons and pays out. It’s government, so he’s against it. Gonna sink him.
patrick
one other thought this morning….
next week at the VP debate…do you think Joe’s going to come out swinging, and basically be President Obama’s Luther?
Shalimar
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Has any candidate in the history of American politics refudiated so many of his former positions and then refudiated the refudiations?
McCain was pretty close with the flip-flops, though he didn’t do triple flips nearly as often. I think part of what we’re seeing is that Romney doesn’t really have any core political beliefs.
The rest is that any older Republican is going to have at least some minor history of moderation and cooperating with Democrats because that is how politics worked in the US pre-9/11 (and pre-Limbaugh domination of the party).
Repudiating those moderate statements is the only way they can win the GOP primaries in the current environment. 2016 candidates like Ryan and Rubio shouldn’t have as much of a problem with this, since their whole careers have been during the extremist period.
PeakVT
@JKormac: Only if he can figure out the book’s audience.
Rafer Janders
@over_educated:
Wait, so if Obama wins he give $1,000 to a cause that Republicans hate, but if Romney wins you give $1,000 to a cause that both Republicans and Democrats support?
He’s not that bright, your cousin, is he? Or does he somehow assume that Democrats oppose decent health care and family services for combat casualties?
KXB
I have the impression that Obama likes to compartmentalize things. There is the Presidency – an institution that rests upon not just the letter of the law, but the character and conduct of the man in the office. No renting out the Lincoln Bedroom or signing orders to authorize torture.
Then there is public campaigning – making stump speeches trying to get people fired up. You have to combine enthusiasm with seriousness of purpose.
Then there is the debates. Perhaps it is his Ivy League background coupled with his University of Chicago Law School teaching memories – but there are rules to debating that you do not toss overboard just to look good on camera. You do not cut off the moderator. You defend your positions. You do not expect your opponent to simply abandon everything her stood for and argue a completely different case. It is not a place for zingers. Debates are the only time in a long campaign that should be geared towards policy, not personality.
For these reasons, I admire Obama. Unlike almost everyone in my Dem-leaning family, I did not freak out on Wednesday night. Surprised, sure. But there is still a fucking month left, and you don’t throw everything at once, hoping something will stick.
over_educated
@Rafer Janders: He thinks that democrats don’t care about the troops. I know it’s idiotic. So the worst thing that happens to me is i donate money to cause I support!
Mnemosyne
@JKormac:
I kept expecting Romney to sell me a Sham-WOW! in his closing remarks.
SBJules
All Mitt proved is that he is a bully. I don’t vote for bullies.
Brachiator
@over_educated:
Enthusiasm matters. Republican voters who were beginning to face the grim possibility of Romney’s defeat now have new hope. Evangelicals and others who were never too high on Mittens to begin with, and who might even have stayed home, now instead might think that they won’t be throwing their votes away if they come out for him.
Romney’s core supporters are elated and pumped up enough to man phone banks, send money, you know, all that campaigning stuff.
Will this be enough to pull Romney up? Who knows?
But Romney had dug himself into a hole in the past few months, and Obama could have kicked Mittens into that hole and poured dirt over on top of him. Instead he let the opportunity slip away.
It’s not the end of the world. But it is unwise to minimize what the first debate means to Republicans.
@KXB:
There is now such thing as “should” or “ought” in politics. And presidential debates are part of politics.
Obama could have observed all the sterile and artificial niceties of the debate format and still come up with a pair of brass knuckles inside a velvet glove.
That’s the Chicago way.
owlbear1
@over_educated:
That’s what America needs more of:
Liberals allowing Conservatives to shoot themselves in the foot.
Good for you!
patrick
well…in his closing remarks, he did state he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with a system modeled after Romneycare in MA….
hey, wait, isn’t that OBAMACARE?
Soonergrunt
@Rafer Janders:
That would fit with the winger narrative.
JustRuss
@Someguy: Agreed that headline is idiotic, but it’s nice to see the Republicans sailing into that headwind for a change. I’d rather just have a media that didn’t play these stupid games, but you go to war with the Villagers you have. And these Villagers don’t seem very fond or Romney, couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Another Halocene Human
@patrick: I love it!
FWIW, I think it was funnier than the Obama cursing remixes. Keegan’s Obama impression just gets better and better.
Betsy
Romney sounded like a fast-talking salesman, which is, of course, exactly what he is.
He said what he thought that audience at that moment wanted to hear, which is, of course, exactly what he does.
He had no thought for the future consequences of such glibness, which is, of course, his primary trait as a (rather lousy) politician.
He came across as a fast-talking, breathless automaton, which is, of course, how he has come across to most people throughout the last eighteen months.
He dominated the debate, and “won” it as the more “alpha” male, which is, of course, what has so turned the electorate off from him.
He uttered lots of words in fast-moving flip-flops from prior held positions, which is, of course, what everyone has come to expect from him.
In short, he changed nothing (but his words, which is itself a “plus ca change” kind of non-change) in this debate …
… and will consequently gain nothing, and quite probably lose support, in the event.
And I would add … we now are confirmed that his only skill — his only skill — is as a fast-talking pitch artist.
He is a salesman, first, foremost, and only.
Rafer Janders
@over_educated:
Can I get in on this action with your cousin? Tell him I’ll bet $10,000.
Jamie
is there a real Mitt Romney? the conservative that won the primaries or the liberal from the debates?\