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Thursday, October 4, 2012

Politics So, How About That Debate Last Night?

Posted by David Mendez on Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 9:48 AM

As an apparent, dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying-communist member of this liberal rag, I've gotta say, Mitt Romney fared pretty well against Obama.

Okay, that's an undersell. Romney has come out looking like the victor, according to roughly the entire damn internet.

Simply, he was on point. He seemed comfortable, he was aggressive, and (instance where he basically said his kids had a habit of lying aside) didn't say anything monumentally stupid.

As for Obama...well, Charles P. Pierce put it perfectly in his post at Esquire's politics blog:

The thing is, if you're going to play rope-a-dope, sooner or later, you have to come off the ropes and throw a punch. You bounce off the ropes and land the left and then the right over the top, and then the other guy goes out of the ring in a blanket. Otherwise, it's just a way to get yourself punched in the stomach a lot. Along about the 48-minute mark of Wednesday night's debate, it became clear to me that the president simply was not going to do that.

The president was flat. He didn't seem willing to engage. He looked to be playing, as one commentator put it, "prevent" defense — and as football fans know, prevent defense occasionally has this nasty habit of backfiring on the team using it. Complacency kills.

So Obama has two weeks to get his things together, and attempt to rediscover the passionate politician who captured imaginations four years ago before the next debate. Because Romney, by all accounts seems to be back on track.

Tags: Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, presidential race 2012, election 2012, debate, romney wins debate