Au contraire, Jimbo. When faced with an opponent who has a greater command of Economics 101, who is running on a record of one business success after another (unlike Obama, who seems to want to run on Bill Clinton's record since he can't run on his own failed one), and who isn't blowing him kisses a la the besotted and supine media, that was Obama's A game.
The punditocracy seems to want to describe the debate via sports metaphors, but I see it in more cinematic terms. What Romney did last night was to pull back the curtain on the Great and Powerful Ozbama, exposing the small, befuddled man--un-telepromptered, unwilling to make eye contact with his opponent, and down to his last flagon of rancid Hopenchange snake oil--hiding behind it.
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I heartily agree with Scaramouche's "compare and contrast" essay on last night's debate; I am definitely encouraged as to Mr. Romney's chances of victory now . . . however, before we, his partisans, become too triumphalist, we should remember that the MSM (otherwise known as the Democratic Party's Public Relations Department), will furiously spin the "narrative" over the coming days and weeks to convince as many people as possible that (a) Obama really won and (b) even if Romney did win on debaters' points, he is still an insensitive, cynophobic, sadistically carcinogenic one-percenter.
The paradigm here is the sequela to the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination confirmation hearings: you might recall that Anita Hill was brought in by the Dems to testify that Thomas was a lecherous sexual harasser; Thomas rebutted her charges quite effectively, to the extent that polls taken immediately post-hearing showed an overwhelming proportion of viewers felt that Thomas had "won" the exchange (much as with the initial post-Romney v. Obama debate last night); however, after a couple of weeks of media spin, the public perception had flipped, and the polls showed a clear majority of viewers thought Hill was the more credible of the two regarding the sexual harassment charges.
I'm under no illusions about Obama's ongoing appeal. In fact, I think Romney could well win all three debates and still lose on election day. (You can already see how the media is spinning this first win--as heartless Romney wanted to pull the plug on/pluck the feathers of Big Bird.)However, since Obama has to run on his record, and because his record is so crappy, I retain some hope that enough Americans will ignore media spin and decide on their own that Obama has nothing to offer the nation save his achievement of being The First Black President.
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