"Romney was solid again. Obama's aggressiveness won't change a thing. He cannot run from his record, which Romney pounded consistently." ~ Mark Levin
Though the Obama-infatuated media will celebrate the President's performance for merely showing up this time, in realville, not even Candy Crowley's moderating, allowing Obama a little more time or stepping in for some creative fact checking on Benghazi, could secure an outright victory for their guy. On the contrary...
PolicyMic: In the end, Obama fared much better than he did in his first debate performance. But, that was hardly a tall order. Romney presented a pretty scathing account of the Obama record in one 2 to 3 minute diatribe. He recounted the high unemployment, anemic growth, record deficits, etc. . . Obama in turn had virtually no defense. Why? Because there is none. Just the same old broken record, "I inherited" x, y and z. We've all heard it a million times over.
What really strikes me is Obama's complete lack of vision going forward. In 270 plus minutes, Obama and Biden have offered no real plan to improve economic growth, nor do they make any concrete proposals to address our coming debt tsunami. What have they told us? They're going to raise taxes on the wealthy. Everyone knows that's only going to hurt growth and cost jobs. He wants to hire more teachers, even if there's no clear indication we need more. He talks about investing in green jobs, yet just today we see another green manufacturer, A123, declare bankruptcy after getting $249 million in tax dollars.
The RNC quickly cut an ad of that decisive point-by-point takedown of Obama policies.
And in constrast to Obama's performance, Quin Hillyer adds some keen observations on Romney's demeanor:
Barack Obama was more aggressive and didn't come across as if in despair tonight, so he didn't get routed. But Mitt Romney still came across far better: a bit more likeable; more believable; less of a broken record; more substantive; more forward-looking; and, importantly, still more in control.
Just take this exchange on energy for instance...
Romney got off good shots on a number of fronts without sounding like he had rehearsed sound bites, but as part of the conversation that flowed naturally. He did so on gasoline prices doubling; he did so on Fast and Furious; he did so on Obama's arithmetic being less trustworthy than his own because Obama hadn't lived up to his own arithmetical promises while he, Romney, had spent his whole life making budgets balance.
Now, returning to Gary Patterson's piece at PolicyMic for the Benghazi LIE of the night...
...the most significant exchange in this debate surrounded the growing Benghazi cover up. The President disinenguously asserted that he described the embassy assault as an act of terrorism on 9/12/12. While he did use the words "acts of terror", he certainly wasn't saying the Benghazi raid was just such an act. To the contrary, he went on the View, Letterman and Univision telling the nation that the ambassador and three other Americans were killed by an unruly mob responding to a youtube video. They then sent their UN Ambassador to all five major networks to continue spreading the fairytale.
By the end of September and into October, this spin was pretty well documented in several places. One such article by Alana Goodman over at Commentary Magazine even documents Candy Crowley's involvement in this narrative (which she attempted to further Tuesday night, garnering some offscreen applause from...who? Watch it again...was this from college student onlookers or was this from MSM reporters too? Puzzling...).
Now that the Obama administration’s initial narrative that the Benghazi assault was a spontaneous response to an anti-Islam film has collapsed, the new spin from the White House is that President Obama has actually called it a terrorist attack all along.
“Well, first of all, Candy, as you know, the President called it an act of terror the day after it happened,” David Axelrod told CNN’s Candy Crowley this morning, referring to a speech Obama made in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12.
Axelrod’s claim has been pushed by journalists over the past few days...
Obama said during the speech that “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation” — but at no point was it clear that he was using that term to describe the attack in Benghazi. He’d also spent the previous two paragraphs discussing the 9/11 attacks and the aftermath. “Acts of terror” could have just as easily been a reference to that. Or maybe it wasn’t a direct reference to anything, just a generic, reassuring line he’d added into a speech which did take place, after all, the day after the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
And then before the Capitol Hill hearings, there's this special report with Bret Baier on the Benghazi timeline, which refreshes everyone's memory quite clearly on the misleading story and eventual admission by Obama and his cohorts...
Crowley later had to recant her claim that Obama had called the Benghazi attack 'an act of terror' in the Rose Garden on September 12th, and that Romney was actually correct in pointing out the inconsistency...of course, only AFTER the debate was over when no one was watching...
So while that might appear to save the President's backside in the public domain for the moment, Patterson reminds us, "Unfortunately for Obama, there's still another debate and its focus is foreign policy. He's going to pay for his blatant misrepresentation." Well...only if another liberal isn't allowed to spin it (which you can guarantee they'll try).
In the end, though Obama was actually conscious and spry for this debate, and the media assemblages had prepared to declare victory either way because of it, this didn't result in the profound game changer that they'd hoped for.
More folks are on to this guy. Or as one vet sprang on a Frank Luntz focus group afterwards, "He's been bullshitting the public with the media behind him!" Truth to power, sir.
Surely more have come to this realization.
ADDENDUM: Rush expands on that realization...
