Chris Matthews – I hate to bring his “Progressive” stink into this blog, but his reaction to Obama’s performance in the debate last night was priceless.
http://youtu.be/-wgJoepQmS4
Now, two things happened last night…Romney won AND Obama lost. Sometimes the outcome is based on only one of these things happening, but last night’s outcome was most definitely a combination of the two.
Now, I’m not a big fan of Romney but kudos to him for eye contact, taking no orders from the moderator, giving props to Big Bird while declaring his intent to de-fund PBS, and mentioning both the Constitution and the 10th Amendment (I feel compelled, however, to point out that he mentions the 10th Amendment mainly to deflect Obama’s “You built Obamacare too!” argument – but I’ll still give him a little credit). The looks on the faces of Matthews, Rachael Mad-Cow, and the rest of the MSNBC crew, along with their “what was Obama doing?!” comments, are worthy payment for my rare praise of Mitt.
Romney could have gone one way or another in this first, critical debate: First, he could have gone the “compassionate conservative” route, trying to ingratiate himself to the squishy middle, consisting of not-too-few disgruntled and disillusioned Obama supporters, sitting on the fence waiting for an outreached hand. The logic behind this tact would have been to avoid alienating this crowd and to speak softly to the “soccer mom” community (which, unfortunately, is no longer just made up of moms). The other approach would have been to put Obama in the corner, exploit the lack of a teleprompter, give him a wedgie AND a swirly, and speak to the truly conservative soul of this country, wanting to break free; fortunately, he, and his advisers, took the latter approach…and it worked. I’m guessing that Obama and his team were totally unprepared for that.
So, for the next 12 hours or so, I will bask in the glow of last night’s debate, happy that Obama was not able to steam-roll himself into an easy November victory after only one debate, and looked more like Al Gore 2000 than Barack Obama 2008. He could still pull this out (it is still very close), but for now, he has to listen to the shrills and shrieks of his wretched wife, who is likely also asking him “what were you doing??”
Certainly not “Winning”!