The consensus on both sides seems pretty clear: in terms of debating points, Romney won the night. The snap polls say so, left-leaning pundits say so, even kos of Daily Kos says so. I couldn’t watch most of it, but I don’t see much difference of opinion on the question of who brought their “A” game and who didn’t.
That said, a couple of themes are emerging. First – and this is quite important – the same snap poll that shows that Romney won the night by a whopping 67-25 also showed that the favorable/unfavorable numbers did not move for either candidate. If that holds up, it is terrible news for Romney, because he desperately needs to turn those numbers around to have any realistic shot at winning. Romney’s unfavorable rating has consistently exceeded his favorable (while the reverse is true of Obama), and that is a deadly place to be in October. No candidate since at least 1980 has been upside-down in fav/unfav at this point in the race and come out a winner.
Second, part of how Romney did so well is by saying a lot of things that aren’t exactly, you know, true. For example, if you skim down PolitiFact’s twitter feed during the debate, you see an awful lot of instances in which things Romney said didn’t measure up. Here’s another one noting that Romney’s tax plan still doesn’t make any sense after tonight. Even Mr. Centrist, David Gergen, points out that part of what may have thrown Obama “off his game” is that Romney was “flat-out lying.” Whether this will penetrate is hard to say … not many people seem to care much about what the fact-checkers say, and sometimes there are good reasons for that. Nonetheless, Romney supplied Team Obama with some additional ammunition to call him out.
Finally – and this is just delightful – our old friend Eric Fehrnstrom seems to have planted his foot firmly in his mouth in the post-debate spin room. Basically, Fehrnstrom admitted that Romney’s health care plan doesn’t protect people with pre-existing conditions, and that if Romney repeals Obamacare, those folks would be out of luck.
Fehrnstrom said those who currently lack coverage because they have pre-existing conditions would need their states to implement their own laws — like Romney’s own Massachusetts health care law — that ban insurance company from discriminating against sick people.
“We’d like to see states do what Massachusetts did,” Fehrnstrom said. “In Massachusetts we have a ban on pre-existing conditions.”
Wow. So Fehrnstrom is basically saying to folks with pre-existing conditions who don’t live in MA that, once Obamacare is gone, you’re screwed unless your state happens to implement the law that is the basis for Obamacare. That is a big, bad admission by Fehrnstrom.
So, yeah, Romney won the debate. We’ll see how much good it does him. As kos points out, “[i]f debate victories led to electoral victories, we never would’ve had President George W. Bush. And we would’ve had a President Hillary Clinton.”
Which from the primaries to the present has been to say whatever he thought would sell best to a given audience, facts and previous inconsistent statements notwithstanding. The primaries suggested this approach can work quite well in contemporary politics if backed by massive funds for advertising etc. I think it will be less successful in the race for the swing states because (1) stakes are higher, so people pay more attention, (2) his financial advantage is not as overwhelming, and (3) given the larger scale, the media’s role is more important, and whatever their corporate biases they are not the equivalent of a 30-second spot cut by political professionals. That said, Obama has to call him out: a lie unanswered in politics can become truth in the short run, if not the long, and time is short between the election and the present.
ads in swing states pretty quickly calling Romney out on things he said tonight that don’t match what he said previously.
that don’t match reality!
there’s that!
Ask yourself: how long after Obamacare is repealed will I have coverage for pre-existing conditions under a state plan modeled after Massachusetts?
How long will it take for the State of Mississippi to enact a plan modeled after Massachusetts? How long’s the drive? Maybe just keep driving up to Canada?
because I happen to have just scribbled rather a long answer to it, which you might be interested if you will accept Senator Fehrnstrom as a stand-in for Mississippi.
In brief, Fabulous Fernie has explained that Mississippi has only to turn itself into Massachusetts, as it were, after which everything will be hunky-dory.
The bad news is that Mittius Coriolanus Pompo, Demander of Apologies, Master of Seamus, &c. &c. &c. does not propose (as POTUS) to help in the transformation at all.
Happy days.
into Massachusetts – one state at a time – which surely must piss off Wyoming.
Obama should have been ready for the lies. Romney had leaked this strategy claiming he was going to fact-check Obama during the debate. Team Romney gave the impression it would be Obama playing fast and loose. Classic Rovian politics- blame the other side for what you do or are going to do. Romney’s closing statement was a laundry list of lies. Obama had better ideas and policies poorly articulated. Even Obama’s closing statement was awful. And so many missed opportunities to hit Romney where he is vulnerable. Obama needs index cards (yes like Palin) but instead of fact cards Obama needs phrase cards to make his points crisply and cleanly.
The bipartisan point should be a home run for Obama. The prefix “bi” means two and I opened that door one day one. On the same day GOP leader McConnell stated a goal to make me a one term President. Ask him about bipartisanship. We have republicans in the House calling Democrats members of the communist party. Ask Congressman West about bipartisanship. GOP Members of Congress signed a pledge to an anti government group preventing them from raising revenue. Ask Eric Cantor bipartisanship. I’ve adopted GOP ideas only to have them abandoned by the GOP. Ask Speaker Boehner about bipartisanship. The GOP leaders advocating SB ran away from it when I signed on. Ask those sponsors about bipartisanship. The GOP have filibustered historic numbers of attempts to solve problems (not even an up or down vote) including a bill to help veterans and my jobs bill. Ask Mitch McConnell about bipartisanship. I’ve even had to defend my citizenship and been called a liar during a state of the union address. Ask congressman Wilson and the Tea Party about bipartisanship. I’ve come to the table ready to play ball and I’ll continue to do so. But if you want to talk bipartisanship- ask the GOP. Governor Romney had willing partners in Mass Dems- folks who wanted to solve problems. I came to Washington faced with mountains of problems left by 8 years of Republican policy. We’d have better results if the GOP picked up a shovel instead of a club.
Whoever prepped Obama should be reassigned this morning.
As I let this settle in after a night of sleep (and I did sleep pretty well, so I’m certainly not panicking), I think what hurt the President is that he played on Romney’s turf all night – i.e., he argued within Romney’s frames. Imagine these two points if they had happened in the debate.
1) After Romney says his tax plan doesn’t do what Obama says: “Well, there you go again, Governor Romney. The message changes for whatever audience the governor is speaking to. The plan I am talking about is the one he has been presenting across the country. Now he says that isn’t his plan. What will he say on the stump tomorrow? What will he say at the next debate? And what will he say at the next big dollar fundraiser when he thinks that 47% of the country isn’t listening?”
That would have planted the already-existing frame of Romney the flip-flopper in the listeners’ minds and would have affected everything he said from then on.
2) When Romney was touting his bipartisan bonafides in MA: “Governor Romney, that sounds awful nice to have an opposition party that is willing to both sit down with you every week and then actually work at the job of governing. Suppose on day one you instead had leaders of that party saying that their job was not to govern, but to make sure your stay in office was a short one. Along with the economic mess I was handed, that is what I had to work with. Now I have to say, I’m pretty proud of what we were able to do despite all of the Republican obstructionism, but imagine if my opposition put their job ahead of partisanship as yours did.”
Hopefully this is a lesson learned.
though lightly (which may have been the right way to handle that).
No. 1 would have been a telling blow.
I highly doubt the president simply forgot to mention it.
I bet Team Obama focus-group tested that line of attack, and it didn’t work well, might have even been counter-productive. Perhaps it actually appeals to the average sentient human being (i.e., most taxpayers.)
The other side of the coin was how devastating Romney’s pointing out of the massive increase in food stamps/welfare payments/SSDI was. The “welfare nation” theme is pretty strong.
“…instead of fact cards Obama needs phrase cards to make his points crisply and cleanly.” Exactly, and this holds true no matter what the underlying strategy might be.
The single best line I heard coming out of the debate was, alas, after it, when Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley likened Romney’s tax plan to “we can all eat cake and lose weight.” Why couldn’t Obama have said that?
(PS: does anyone know off-hand how the percentage of Bain Venture’s stable that went bankrupt compares with the percentage of Obama-supported green-energy ventures that failed? That could make an effective rebuttal AND allow Obama to pivot from what Romney wants to talk about to Obama’s message.)
that 3 of the 58 or so green-energy ventures failed, nowhere near the “half” cited by Romney. That’s about 5%. If that’s true, I”m sure the percentage of Bain-ified companies that went out of business is higher.
your paragraph on bipartisanship and use it the next time he’s challenged on his “lack of bipartisanship” at a future debate. Never was there a President who tried harder to engage with the other party, and be so utterly rebuffed at every turn.
Every significant piece of legislation Obama pursued was either originally a Republican plan or so thoroughly watered down to attract GOP votes (that would almost never come) that you couldn’t tell the difference.
The electorate is certainly not buying THIS line. Most everything Obama has “accomplished” has been utterly partisan like, oh, say, ObamaCare. And the Senate votes 99-0 against the presidents budget.
That’s as bipartisan as it gets.
If, say, the claim that the GOP refuses to work with Obama is true, than isn’t it *by definition* that everything he has accomplished has been only with the helps of Dems?
Tautology, no?
I agree! That would be John Kerry. To where should he be reassigned?
The media pundits are, as expected, treating this as a prize fight. But it’s not, and while Romney may have landed the most punches, the snap polls seem to indicate he didn’t do what he really had to do, which was to increase his likeability.
I thought a little discussed, but telling, moment during the debate was when Romney said to Jim Lehrer something like, “I like you, Jim, but I’m going to eliminate NPR anyway.” That’s Romney’s problem — he’s the guy who calls you into his office to tell you that it’s nothing personal, he really likes you, but he’s decided to lay you off. That’s exactly how that remark in the debate came off to me.
Among other things, I heard the pundits criticizing Obama for not mentioning the 47 percent issue. What that criticism overlooks is that Romney’s 47-percent remark was the subtext for everything Obama was saying. No need to hammer on the obvious. But that, of course, is what the pundits do.
This was a chilling moment and I’m glad you pointed it out. This is Romney through and through – he might just as well be saying: “I like you, but you have a pre-existing condition, so you’re screwed”
As for Obama’s performance: How could he possibly be surprised that Romney lied all night? He should have been prepared for that.
business is business
he was right to treat that as a nonissue. If he wins, it’s going to be because he’s able to convince people he’s a tiger. We need to convince the world he’s really a goofy quarter billioniare who doesn’t pay his fair share of taxes, yet wants to raise yours.
In my field (software development), some over-eager contributors need to be reminded from time to time that ANYBODY can write code fast if it doesn’t need to work.
Similarly, any candidate can look and sound great if they don’t bother to tell the truth. Mr. Romney danced from one big lie to another all evening. His “economic plan” — that spends $7T. His “health plan” — that destroys medicare/medicaid. His “defense plan” — that squanders enormous amounts of money on things the Pentagon says it doesn’t need. His claims of “bipartisanship” — that fly in the face of everything he and his GOP peers have done for the past four years.
I agree that Mr. Romney nailed his performance last night. If he could do so while telling the truth, he would be a significantly more formidable candidate.
I do think that the media has been following its “Romney is a dipshit loser” story ever since the convention, and now needs something new! and fresh!
So I would get ready for a lot of “Romney Surging” stories. They came in 2008 as well, though if you were actually paying attention you could see that it wasn’t close.
None of us know at this point. Maybe the press and the Dem pundits will rip Romney’s words apart and feed them back down his throat. Maybe Obama will pull a judo move and use the strong words/message from Romney against him and put him down. Or maybe the energy level of Republicans will surge for the next 5-6 weeks, donations will pour in, Romney will keep hammering Obama on our horrible economy, 23 million people unemployed with little to no hope in site, energy costs, inflation… and people may embrace Romney’s vision and he’ll win in November…
If Romney wins we may point back to this first debate and say this was the turning point and all the dismissive remarks by Obama supporters will be filed away with those who mistakenly predicted the housing market will never burst… OR… Romney loses and we may point back at it and say the relevance of Presidential debates continues to be almost zero and they have no effect whatsoever on the voters.
I don’t see Obama or his team panicking but I do bet there are some very serious discussions happening today about how to proceed. Lots to think about…
Sadly, Mr. Romney did a marvelous job of exploiting a key weakness of President Obama — the reluctance of Mr. Obama to immediately nail a political opponent who flagrantly lies. We saw him try in the exchange about the $7T cost of Mr. Romney’s economic plan. Barack Obama was correct, Mr. Romney was simply ignoring what he’s said for the last 18 months — and the only conclusion is that Mr. Romney is an unprincipled liar. Barack Obama has ALWAYS been reticent to make such attacks, and that reticence hurt him last night.
Perhaps Mr. Obama’s advisers might encourage him to watch a few episodes of “House of Cards”, so that he can appreciate the devastating impact of Francis Urquhart’s signature line: “You might think so, but I couldn’t possibly comment”.
That’s the sort of dagger in the belly in that Mr. Obama avoided last night — to Mr. Romney’s gain.
I don’t think Obama has to change who is to ‘nail’ Obama on his lies. He simply needs to remind the audience — time and time again — that Mitt Romney says one thing in front of a national audience and another behind closed doors with billionaires and millionaires, and yet another thing at GOP base pow wows. So, he doesn’t have to call Mitt a liar, he just has to ask “which Mitt are we going to get today, folks?”
Then I’d go with some pithy line about how he loved progressives politics, before he was “severely conservative,” and was more pro-gay than Ted Kennedy, before he was going around laughing about how he didn’t want Massachusetts to become the Las Vegas of gay marriage (or use some other line like it — no doubt there’s plenty).
Sharp, biting and humorous lines like that is something the President is good at, so it’s more to his style than directly calling Mitt a liar (and probably more effective, too), and will leave audiences with the same conclusion.
In fact, I’d answer almost every question this way, from taxes to health care. Mitt was for Romney-Obamacare before he was against it. He was for the little guys paying more taxes in the rooms of millionaires and billionaires, but against paying his own fair share at tax time. Yada, yada, yada.
¡Ay, caramba!
Instead of lying about the Stafford Act post Katrina…was exempted 10 days earlier. But blame racist, white America for slowing or denying federal funds to flow. That’s what it sounded like to me.
nt
I felt ill after watching the debate. Romney was being Romney, saying whatever he had to say to whomever he was trying to persuade. A true sociopathic trait. Facts be damned. The President did not seem to care. If he was wearing a wristwatch he probably would have had a George H. W. Bush moment. Are we sure that an Obama impersonator or hologram wasn’t on stage last night portraying the President? I mean, for goodness sakes, all Obama did (as unfortunately shown in the many split screen shots) is look down and write while Romney was speaking. What was he writing, notes for a post-Presidential book he’s going to pen? The President did not even look at the camera for most of his rambling closing statement. Perhaps Senator Rob Portman can help him prepare for the next one, he obviously helped Mitt prepare for this one. I have had my jaw open in amazement for 11 hours now. I feel like we’ve been hit by a bus. Hopefully at this point debates don’t matter, but the President served not himself or any of us by that phone-it-in debate performance last night. All I can say is GO JOE next week. Take Ryan to the woodshed! I just don’t get it. There is no positive spin to put on this. Unless looking back after the next debate the President is back in form and uses all of Mitt’s meanderings and downright lies last night to hit back at him. We shall see. But last night reminded me of watching the last few minutes of the movie Titanic.
with all my heart, that Romney is 100% a sociopath or something close to it. He literally will lie or do or say anything to anyone to get what he wants. He has no moral scruples, whatsoever. Obama needs to understand that — and be ready for it.
as personified by Mitt Romney. They both engage in the pathological pursuit of a single goal. The pathological corporation pursues profits like a shark pursues it’s next meal. Romney, having already pursued profit for profit’s sake, now pursues power at any cost. He IS the next phase of Corporatism. They both consume social space without any social value.
The guy that beat Obama up yesterday was the guy who nearly beat Kennedy in 1994, and then did win a statewide race in Massachusetts in 2002.
I guess no-one saw the pivot coming as late as October, and no one was ready for it.
They just need to produce a stream of Mitt: 1994, Mitt, 2008-September 2012, and Mitt last week. Daily Show style. And maybe be ready with some of these to stick it up his arse at the next debate.
That’s an excellent insight.
How could we possibly see a Mitt Romney pivot coming? It’s like we would need a a 16-year long track record of Romney changing positions, complete with a video record of all flip-flops, and a senior campaign advisor saying that Romney was an etch-a-sketch or something! I mean c’mon, it’s not like we a psychic!
[D’oh!]
to try to understand where Romney is on any of the positions, and the flow chart certainly wouldn’t be based on his own ideology… maybe the ideology of most of the people in the room with him.
he has magic underwear, so no one can stick anything up his arse.
on all this stuff. Funny, forceful. Where was that guy last night?
In two weeks he’ll be able to face Romney again and I’m sure he’ll bring his A game. Hopefully he’ll be prepared instead of needing his staff to write his speech about what to say, how to spin the truth into lies…
Maybe he can agree with Romney about improving Dodd-Frank and correct his remarks about deductions companies get for sending jobs overseas…
The 10/3 LAT article by Lisa Mascaro refers to a TPC/Brookings report which claims it is impossible to determine the net effect on tax receipts without knowing specifics of which tax preferences are eliminated. There isn’t any mention in that report of a “net tax increase” for the “middle class.”
The 10/3 article also refers back to a 9/14 LA Times article which similarly does not mention a “net tax increase.” It refers to no linkable report either.
If I’m missing something, point it out, but I neither of these 2 articles is evidence that Romney is “flat-out lying,” despite Gergen’s accusation, or even obscuring the effects of base-broadening and preference-removing.
You drank the “flat-out lying’ Kool-Aid.
on Romney’s performance last night that it would take me all night to link them all for you. So here’s a great idea: look ’em up yourself! Your guy repeatedly lied last night; my guy didn’t handle it well. That’s kind of how it went.
is BS.
I read a lot, left and right, and what I view as policy disagreement and differing economic estimates the progressive left labels “lies.” This is total BS.
Case in point — lowering marginal rates while eliminating part of the 1,600 pages of tax preferences in the IRC…it’s not at all a debate of static OMB or CBO numbers. It’s a matter of moving in the right direction, a la Reagan after the TRA in 1987.
One can disagree philosophically with the policy, or econometrically with the numbers, but it’s not lying.
When Obama has only the excuse of “lies, damn lies” and cannot (or will not) defend his underlying political and economic principals, Romney mops the floor with him.
We have the John Sununununununu of BMG with us today folks!
all rates by 20%. He’s said that hundreds of times. That, taken alone, would reduce revenue by $4.8 trillion over 10 years. That’s the “five billion dollar tax cut” he now denies. There’s no question he lied about not wanting, as the baseline of his plan, to reduce revenue by about $5 trillion over a decade.
He also says the plan will be revenue-neutral — that reduction in rates will be offset by limiting deductions. Fine, which deductions? He won’t say (until this week when he floated the idea of perhaps keeping all of them but capping total deductions at some undetermined number).
But according to the Tax Policy Center and other experts there’s no way you can recoup all the revenue lost to the rate cuts without (a) eliminating deductions that benefit the middle class significantly, or (b)
capping the total amount one may deduct in a way that raises the overall burden on the middle class. You just can’t do it. There’s no way he’s not “obscuring the effects of base-broadening and preference-removing.”
Part II, which doesn’t go as much to his lying, is that he plans to increase defense spending but not increase overall revenue. So what is he cutting? He swears it’s not Medicare. Gosh, he’d put the $716 billion right back in. So what is it? PBS gets you 0.01% of the way there.
George W. Bush.
The 5-Point Plan:
1. Energy – Drill Baby Drill
2. Education – Test Baby Test
3. Taxes – Cut Baby Cut
4. China Trade – Bomb Baby Bomb
4. Debt – Punt Baby Punt
and how to implement these?
Lie Baby Lie