Reply With Quote
Interesting take on how the Brit's saw it...
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ti...-bidens-smile/
If just judging the "debate" then Obama got in a couple more zingers than Romney did. Only partisan hacks think either one lost badly. Whether the zingers actually translate into votes remains to be seen, which is the true measure of won/lost.
Interesting take on how the Brit's saw it...
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ti...-bidens-smile/
if both of them could lose, that'd be ideal. "none of the above" could have a real chance in this election were it an option.
Romney used the debate in a more surgical approach. He did what he did to increase his status with undecided female voters. Most male voters have made up their minds and are not going to change as a result of a debate. Whether it was good strategy or not, history will tell.
If Romney wins the election, then this debate will be talked about how Romney baited Obama, which caused hime to fail to appeal to female voters in the final analysis, and how he turned the foreign policy debate into an issue about the economy.
If Obama wins, then Romney will be seen as a person who had momentum, but in the end played it too safe, and never could catch up enough as he fell to far behind early in the race. The strategy aspect of it all is really interesting stuff.
Good luck picking your poison
"undecided female voters"
The gender gap is polling bigger than ever, women for Barry, men for Gecko.
People, any typle of genitals, are undecided at this point?
Anne Coulter said Dem president would never be elected without women, so Coulter proposes taking the vote away from women, repealing the suffrage amendment.
Blacks and Latinos would be next
http://katewillmorelawblog.com/2012/...dest-proposal/
While woman voters are obviously important, just as important for Romney are the white working class men in northern Ohio who, hertherto have sided with the president for using federal funds to bail out the auto industry. Those men will not be impressed with Romney's passivity IMO.
How the does "appealing to women voters" have anything to do with foreign policy? I mean, I strongly doubt that mad hot s were watching this debate and getting turned on by Willard's drones and geographical ignorance, tbh....
Mitt Romney could get caught ing farm animals during the debate and dbestpro would still say he won the debate by a wide margin.
Besides, Romney already has lost women with his rigid pro-life stance, his attacks on contraception and Planned Parenthood, and his "binders full of women" and "get them home to pick up the kids" gaffes.
If Romney was truly trying to use a debate on foreign policy to go after the female vote, he's an even bigger moron than I thought, and that's really saying something.
Debate: Romney Told 24 Myths In 41 Minutes
1) “Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea.” Romney has his geography wrong [2]. Syria doesn’t share a border with Iran and Iran has 1,500 miles of coastline leading to the Arabian Sea. It is also able to reach the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal.
2) “And what I’m afraid of is we’ve watched over the past year or so [in Syria], first the president saying, well we’ll let the U.N. deal with it…. Then it went to the Russians and said, let’s see if you can do something.” While Russia and China have vetoed multiple resolutions at the U.N. Security Council on Syria, the United States has also been working [3] through the Friends of Syria group and other allies in the region. Obama’s approach “would essentially give U.S. nods of approval [4] to arms transfers from Arab nations to some Syrian opposition fighters.”
3) “Former chief of the — Joint Chiefs of Staff said that — Admiral Mullen said that our debt is the biggest national security threat we face. This — we have weakened our economy. We need a strong economy. We need to have as well a strong military.” If Romney is worried about the national debt, why does he want to increase military spending from 3.5 percent of GDP to 4 percent? This amounts to a $2.1 trillion increase over a ten year period that the military says it does not need and Romney has no plan [5] to pay for it.
4) “[W]hen — when the students took to the streets in Tehran and the people there protested, the Green Revolution occurred, for the president to be silent I thought was an enormous mistake.” Obama spoke out [6] about the Revolution on June 15, 2009, just two days after post-election demonstrations began in Iran, condemning the Iranian government’s hard-handed crackdown on Iranian activists. He then reiterated [7] his comments a day later in another press conference. Iranian activists have agreed [8] with Obama’s approach.
5) “And when it comes to our economy here at home, I know what it takes to create 12 million new jobs and rising take-home pay.” The Washington Post’s in-house fact checker tore Romney’s claim [9] that he will create 12 million jobs to shreds. The Post wrote that the “‘new math’” in Romney’s plan “doesn’t add up.” In awarding the claim four Pinocchios — the most untrue possible rating, the Post expressed incredulity at the fact Romney would personally stand behind such a flawed, baseless claim.
6) “[W]e are going to have North American energy independence. We’re going to do it by taking full advantage of oil, coal, gas, nuclear and our renewables.”Romney would actually eliminate [10] the fuel efficiency standards that are moving the United States towards energy independence, even though his campaign plan relies on these rules to meet his goals.
7) “[W]e’re going to have to have training programs that work for our workers.”Paul Ryan’s budget, which Romney has fully endorsed, calls for spending 33 percent less on [11] “Education, training, employment, and social services” than Obama’s budget.
8) “And I’ll get us on track to a balanced budget.” Romney’s $5 trillion tax cut plan [12] and his increases to military spending [13] could explode the deficit.
9) “Well, Republicans and Democrats came together on a bipartisan basis to put in place education principles that focused on having great teachers in the classroom.” Education experts have faint praise [14] for his proposals while he was governor. “His impact was inconsequential [14],” said Glen er, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. “People viewed his proposals as political talking points, and no one took Romney seriously.”
10) “So I’d get rid of [Obamacare] from day one. To the extent humanly possible, we get that out.” Romney cannot unilaterally eliminate [15] a bill passed by Congress and his plan to grant states waivers may also be a non-starter [16].
11) “Number two, we take some programs that we are doing to keep, like Medicaid, which is a program for the poor.” Medicaid isn’t just a program for the poor. While it provides health coverage for “millions of low-income children and families who lack access to the private health insurance system,” it also offers “insurance to millions of people with chronic illnesses or disabilities” and is “the nation’s largest source [17] of coverage for long-term care, covering more than two-thirds of all nursing home residents.” Medicaid is also a key source of coverage for pregnant women.
12) “[W]e’ll take [Medicaid] for the poor and we give it to the states to run because states run these programs more efficiently.” A Congressional Budget Office analysis of Paul Ryan’s proposal to block grant Medicaid found that if federal spending for Medicaid decreased, “states would face significant challenges [18] in achieving sufficient cost savings through efficiencies to mitigate the loss of federal funding.” As a result, enrollees could “face more limited access to care,” higher out-of-pocket costs, and “providers could face more uncompensated care as beneficiaries lost coverage for certain benefits or lost coverage altogether.”
13) “Our Navy is old — excuse me, our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917…That, in my view, is making — is making our future less certain and less secure. The U.S. Navy is smaller than it was in 1917, but it is not making America less secure. The navy has actually grown in the sheer number of ships under Obama and Romney’s plans to increase shipbuilding is unrealistic [19]. As one historian told PolitiFact [20], counting the number of ships or aircraft “is not a good measurement of defense strength because their capabilities have increased dramatically in recent decades.” Romney’s comparison “doesn’t pass ‘the giggle test,’” he said.
14) “And then the president began what I have called an apology tour, of going to various nations in the Middle East and criticizing America. I think they looked at that and saw weakness.” Obama never embarked [21] on an “apology tour.”
15) “And I think that when the president said he was going to create daylight between ourselves and Israel, that they noticed that as well.” They haven’t noticed because it’s not true. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak told [22] CNN, “President Obama is doing . . . more than anything that I can remember in the past [in regard to our security].” “When I look at the record of President Obama concerning the major issues, security, I think it’s a highly satisfactory record, from an Israeli point of view,” said [23] Israeli President Shimon Peres.
16) “And — and — we should not have wasted these four years to the extent they — they continue to be able to spin these centrifuges and get that much closer.” Obama hasn’t wasted time on Iran. In July 2012, Obama signed into law the most effective sanctions ever put into place against Iran, targeting [24] the country’s oil and financial sectors. These sanctions were imposed unilaterally by the U.S. and come in addition to the four rounds of sanctions the UN has enacted since 2006. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called [25] the sanctions “very effective,” and Romney has said he would continue them [26] if elected.
17) “I would tighten those sanctions. I would say that ships that carry Iranian oil, can’t come into our ports. I imagine the E.U. would agree with us as well.”Iranian oil has not come into the United States since Ronald Reagan signed an executive order [27] in 1987 banning all U.S. imports from Iran.
18) “I see jihadists continuing to spread, whether they’re rising or just about the same level, hard to precisely measure, but it’s clear they’re there. They’re very strong.” Obama’s policies appear to have gravely weakened [28] al Qaeda Central, the lead arm of the organization in Pakistan and Afghanistan principally responsible for 9/11.
19) “It’s not government investments that makes businesses grow and hire people.” The Romney campaign routinely touts [29] government military spending as a way to create jobs and boost businesses.
20) “My plan to get the [auto] industry on its feet when it was in real trouble was not to start writing checks. It was President Bush that wrote the first checks. I disagree with that. I said they need — these [auto] companies need to go through a managed bankruptcy.” Romney’s plan for the auto bailout would have ensured the collapse of the auto industry. In his editorial led “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt [30],” Romney advocated for letting the private sector finance the bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler. Auto insiders, however, have said that plan was “reckless [31]” and “pure fantasy.”
21) “Research is great. Providing funding to universities and think tanks is great. But investing in companies? Absolutely not.” Ryan’s plan, which Romney has endorsed, “could cut spending on non-defence-related research [32] and development by 5%, or $3.2 billion, below the fiscal-year 2012 budget, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Over the long term, Ryan’s small-government approach would shrink funding for research and development to historically small sizes.”
22) “One is a path represented by the president, which at the end of four years would mean we’d have $20 trillion in debt heading towards Greece.” The U.S. is not headed down a path like that of Greece. Greece, contrary to popular belief, had a revenue problem rather than a spending problem. While its spending was high compared to US standards — 50.4 percent of GDP compared to 38 percent of GDP in the US — its spending was average among European nations. As CAP’s Michael Linden and Sabina Dewan note [33], “Over the past 10 years, Greece has consistently spent less, as a share of GDP, than the European Union as a whole.” However, it generated less that 40 percent of GDP from revenue — one of the lowest rates in the EU.
23) “I was in a state where my legislature was 87 percent Democrat. I learned how to get along on the other side of the aisle.” Given Romney’s 844 vetoes as governor, Massachusetts legislators dispute this claim [34]. As the New York Times has noted, “The big-ticket items that Mr. Romney proposed when he entered office in January 2003 went largely unrealized, and some that were achieved turned out to have a comparatively minor impact.”
24) “We should key our foreign aid, our direct foreign investment, and that of our friends, we should coordinate it to make sure that we — we push back and give them more economic development.” Romney’s website promises to “Reduce Foreign Aid — Savings: $100 Million [35].” “Stop borrowing money from countries that oppose America’s interests in order to give it back to them in the form of foreign aid,” it says. In November of 2011, Romney said he would start foreign aid for every country “at zero [36]” and call on them to make their case for U.S. financial assistance.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...ths-41-minutes
and "they both lied" is 100% pure false equivalence.
Gecko's con job couldn't hide, for serious observers, how badly his cram job failed.
Maybe not most Republicans, but most right wing partisan hacks like dbestpro, Yoni, DarrinS, etc.
Romney trolled the out of Obama...was waiting for him to tell Obama, "you mad bro?". trolololo
Oh yea?
"syria is iran's route to the sea" isn't all that wrong, dude just said it in a less accurate expression than was expected on such a formal debate imho. iran has a long coast along the arab sea but it'd be a very long voyage, iran doesn't share a border with syria but they're still very close in geography, and it should be easier to get across the turkey-iraq intersection than travel thousands of miles on the sea
Obama Vanquishes Romney With 5 Brutal Quips
1. Horses and bayonets. The progressive blogosphere was set snarkily and gleefully a-Twitter [10] with Obama’s response to Romney’s claim that Obama seeks to gut the military. As proof, Romney offered the factoid that the Navy now has few ships than at any time since 1916. Obama replied:
Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.
As he described planes landing on aircraft carriers, Obama made a gesture with his hands illustrating the landing, in case Romney required a visual aid. Romney’s color began to rise, and his skin began to look dewey.
With the horses and bayonets line, Obama also tied Romney to the imagery of the Tea Party movement, for whose members the sound of the fife and drum is music to their ears.
The Obama campaign purchased the URL, cavalrymenforromney.com [11].
And a Tumblr was born [12].
2. The 80s are calling... In an exchange over who would be tougher on al Qaeda, Obama reminded viewers that Romney recently cited a different foe as America’s Enemy Number One:Governor Romney, I'm glad that you recognize that al Qaeda is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not al Qaeda -- you said Russia...And the 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years.
In two quips, then, Obama placed Romney’s foreign policy in every era but the here and now. Summoning the 80s brought forth images of skinny ties and fiercely gelled hair -- and a time inextricably linked with an elderly president.
3. Wrong and reckless and all over the map. Both men, in a bid for the votes of women, sought to depict themselves as peacemakers. (While polls still show Obama winning among women, his percentages have dropped [13] over the past two weeks.)
As part of the volley over al Qaeda, Obama sought to paint Romney as a man who would embark on risky adventures, throwing Romney’s primary-season rhetoric back at him. Romney, for his part, has been blaming unrest in the Middle East and North Africa -- from Syria to Libya to Egypt to Iran -- on Obama, who hit back hard (emphasis added):
You said that we should still have troops in Iraq to this day. You indicated that we shouldn't be passing nuclear treaties with Russia despite the fact that 71 senators, Democrats and Republicans, voted for it. You said that, first, we should not have a timeline in Afghanistan. Then you said we should. Now you say maybe or it depends, which means not only were you wrong, but you were also confusing in sending mixed messages both to our troops and our allies. So, what we need to do with respect to the Middle East is strong, steady leadership, not wrong and reckless leadership that is all over the map.
4. Exploiting his opponent’s age and inexperience. Ronald Reagan, the oldest person ever to win the presidency, famously deflected a question about his age in the 1980 presidential debate by pledging not “to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” In October 2012, Obama offered a post-millennial mash-up on the theme. In addition to painting Romney as a relic of eras past, Obama offered this (emphasis added), which had the added punch of tying Romney to an unpopular war:
You say that you're not interested in duplicating what happened in Iraq. But just a few weeks ago, you said you think we should have more troops in Iraq right now. And the challenge we have -- I know you haven't been in a position to actually execute foreign policy -- but every time you've offered an opinion, you've been wrong. You said we should have gone into Iraq, despite that fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction.
5. Cheney as a font of wisdom. In a segment in which he laid out his domestic policy agenda in foreign policy terms, Obama emphasized his attempts to “rebuild America,” support clean coal technologies and balance the budget. In drawing a contrast with his opponent, Obama invoked the image of one of the most disliked figures in American politics, former Vice President Cheney, champion of the Iraq war, who left office in 2009 with an approval rating of 13 percent [14]. Here’s Obama (emphasis added):
Now, Governor Romney has taken a different approach throughout this campaign. Both at home and abroad, he has proposed wrong and reckless policies. He's praised George Bush as a good economic steward and Cheney as somebody who shows great wisdom and judgment. And taking us back to those kinds of strategies that got us into this mess are not the way that we are going to maintain leadership in the 21st century.
http://www.alternet.org/print/news-a...5-brutal-quips
right-wingers trying to bandage over their boy's multiple cuts.
lol no. It was just wrong. Iran has its own ports and I'm not sure how anyone could even think that going through two US allies territory to get to Syria is a pathway to the sea.
Lol spurs talk liberals continue to push new boundaries, yet another poll thats more extreme than even what liberal CNN puts out.
"You have to give Romney and his campaign credit. They said they were going to do it. They telegraphed the punch five months ago.
They told the entire nation that there would come a day in which everything Willard Romney had said about anything in his entire seven-year quest to be president would be rendered, in the memorable word of Nixon White House flack Ron Ziegler, "inoperative."
They told us quite honestly that their entire campaign was going to be based on an ongoing argument between the Willard Romney who ran for the Republican nomination and the Willard Romney who thereupon would run for president.
They told us he would renege on his previous positions, and he has.
They told us he would reverse his field over and over again, and he has. They told us that the only real principle to which the man will ever hold firm is that he will be utterly unprincipled."
http://www.esquire.com/archives/blog...g/debates/15;1
etch-a-sketch!
I don't think Romney won either of the last two debates, but it doesn't matter because he won the first so decisively and changed public opinion about him.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
