Unraveling the second Presidential debate

Okay, let’s see if I can’t quickly break down debate two.

Well, it’s clear the Obamanation himself showed up to play this time. No grimacing and glancing down this time. He knew he needed to come out and be energetic, and he did it. But Mitt Romney didn’t exactly roll over and play dead. He gave as good as he got — better, even, in many cases.

I think we can safely call this debate a tie. I didn’t see any knockout punches; I didn’t see any huge difference between the two candidate’s performances — as I did in the first. I did, however, see a moderator who interrupted Romney 28 times and Obama 8 times, who gave Obama 9% more speaking time, and who, instead of being an impartial moderator, acted more like a football referee at one point, throwing a yellow flag on Romney’s statement about Obama’s denial of Benghazi as a terrorist attack in his Rose Garden speech.

It’s just too bad that Romney didn’t have a red challenge flag, because it turned out he was right. Although “Candy” (if there ever was a more misleading name in the universe, I have not seen it) Crowley backed up President Obama’s assertion that he had called the attack on the Libyan consulate an act of terror in that speech, she was completely wrong. She has even admitted it, although not for the right reason. What happened in that speech? Obama glossed over the attack on Benghazi in that speech, and went on to say, later in the speech, as he moved on to speaking in a broad sense, the vanilla phrase: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation.”

Ah. Really? So if I go out tomorrow and make a speech and mention a leader in some country, gloss past him, and then later say, “Of course, the United States will never let another crazed leader like Josef Stalin to rise to power!” — I was calling that earlier leader Stalin? Really? Okay, I’ll keep that in mind — President Obama. Of course, America would never elect a leader as horrible as Hugo Chavez…

Anyway, back to the debate. The point about Crowley’s incorrect Libya “intervention”: It threw Mitt Romney off-step and disrupted what could have been an powerful chance to really nail The Obamanation in what is quite clearly a coverup (of debatable proportions) on the Libya front. Period. End paragraph.

But let’s move away from that. What did Mitt Romney do to face down the “new” Obama? Nothing new. He continued to show up, be reasonable, look Presidential, and make his case. Which is where I’m going to come in and call the debate. The debate was basically a tie, as I said, but that means it was a win for Romney. Why? Because Romney continues to get a chance to appear to the American people without the filter of the media and without the almost equally distorting lens of the Obama campaign. Again. And my bet is by doing that, he’s going to win over some more undecideds.

In fact, to the consternation of MSNBC, their very own focus group of undecided voters had Romney winning the debate by one vote. Fox had a strong Romney win with their undecided voters. CNN mimicked MSNBC; their undecideds broke for Romney by 1 vote. So we’ll see what happens in the polls, but while I say the debate was a tie, I say a tie means: advantage Romney.

Ah, well, now I’m tired, and all politcked out, and I’ve said my piece. We’ll see what happens in the last debate; we’ll see if Bob Schaeffer can keep himself from becoming the story — as “Candy” (it’s not short for anything, either, what the hell?) Crowley couldn’t.

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