Who Won the Debates? 49% Say Romney, 41% Obama - Rasmussen Reports™

◼ Most voters consider the three presidential debates at least somewhat important to how they will vote, and a plurality of those that watched thinks Mitt Romney was the overall debate winner. - Rasmussen

Obama kept talking about the debate and making jokes about his performance in it. This is a defensive posture and is uncharacteristic of past Obama campaigns.

◼ IS OBAMA RUNNING OUT OF AMMUNITION AGAINST ROMNEY? - Mike Flynn/Breitbart

Presidents running for reelection have 3 basic strategic options on which to base their campaign. They can:

◼ Argue that the policies are working and we need to "stay the course" to maintain the clear signs of improvement
◼ Admit that things haven't completely worked, but present a new plan for a second term to make things right, or
◼ Disqualify your opponent as unfit or too extreme for the job

It is clear which of these three paths Obama chose. Throughout the summer months, Obama unleashed a massive ad war against Romney, painting him as a "vulture capitalist" who only cares about the rich. They tried to make him into an almost other-worldly figure who could related to average Americans.

They hit him for his tenure at Bain Capital, his tax returns and even hidden video and audio when he talked about the "47%" at fundraiser. The attacks weren't doing anything really to improve Obama's numbers, but they seemed to be keeping Romney from getting traction.

And, then, the debate happened.

The figure onstage at the first debate didn't at all match the caricature painted by the Obama campaign. He was calm and reasonable, moderate in temperament, and had a solid command of the issues and at least an outline of what to do about the challenges we face. In contrast, Obama had, well...nothing we haven't heard for 4 years.

That single 90 minutes in Denver wiped out large chunks of the Obama campaign's foundation. 70 million people tuned in and saw a totally different person than the one portrayed by Obama. Given Obama's legion vulnerabilities, its no wonder that the electorate is starting to move in Romney's direction....

The Obama game plan was to knock Romney out early. It didn't happen. If they don't have another play, and I don't think they do, the Obama Administration is soon for the history books.

Princeton Economist: Obama Campaign Is Misrepresenting My Study on Romney's Tax Plan

◼ get the details - John McCormack/Weekly Standard

Last night, the Obama campaign blasted out another email claiming that Mitt Romney's tax plan would either require raising taxes on the middle class or blowing a hole in the deficit. "Even the studies that Romney has cited to claim his plan adds up still show he would need to raise middle-class taxes," said the Obama campaign press release. "In fact, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein and Princeton economist Harvey Rosen both concede that paying for Romney’s tax cuts would require large tax increases on families making between $100,000 and $200,000."

But that's not true. Princeton professor Harvey Rosen tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD in an email that the Obama campaign is misrepresenting his paper on Romney's tax plan

POLLS: R 49% O 45% - and more!

◼ Romney’s Strong Debate Performance Erases Obama’s Lead, GOP Challenger Viewed as Candidate with New Ideas - Pew Research Center via Drudge

Mitt Romney no longer trails Barack Obama in the Pew Research Center’s presidential election polling. By about three-to-one, voters say Romney did a better job than Obama in the Oct. 3 debate, and the Republican is now better regarded on most personal dimensions and on most issues than he was in September. Romney is seen as the candidate who has new ideas and is viewed as better able than Obama to improve the jobs situation and reduce the budget deficit.

Fully 66% of registered voters say Romney did the better job in last Wednesday’s debate, compared with just 20% who say Obama did better. A majority (64%) of voters who watched the debate describe it as mostly informative; just 26% say it was mostly confusing....

◼ MILITARY TIMES POLL: R 66% O 26%... - Military Times
◼ GALLUP: 5-POINT ROMNEY BOUNCE... - Gallup
◼ PEW: 18-point shift among women... - Business Insider
◼ "Has any candidate lost 18 points among women voters in one night ever?" - Althouse
◼ BATTLEGROUND POLL: ROMNEY UP 16 WITH INDEPENDENTS, UP 13 IN ENTHUSIASM, Romney leads among independents 51-35... - John Nolte/Breitbart
◼ 'Enthusiasm' gap 13-point spread for Republican... - Politico
◼ Romney's strong debate helps him close gap with Obama in Michigan, poll shows - Detroit Free Press
◼ Romney's 52-point debate victory over Obama is the biggest in Gallup poll history - Toby Harnden/Daily Mail
The scale of Obama's humiliation revealed: Romney scores 52-point debate victory - the BIGGEST in Gallup poll history
• Romney also enjoyed a five-point national poll swing putting him level pegging with Obama at 47%
• Even among Democrats, 49 per cent thought Romney was the winner with only 39 per cent of his own supporters saying Obama had won the day
• Latest: Pew Research Center reported Romney taking a four-point lead among likely voters since the debate - 12-point swing from mid-September

Sunday Funnies

It's been quite a week. And Clint Eastwood's Chair took center stage.

And then, why it matters:

◼ From Townhall

Contrary to conventional wisdom that debates are rarely, if ever, game-changers, the first presidential debate was a demolition derby.

◼ And no amount of post-debate fact-checking, spinning or dances of one’s choice (Barack Obama has cited Mitt Romney’s tap-dancing and soft-shoe) is going to alter the impression of Romney’s winning-ness. - Kathleen Parker/Washington Post

It was quite simply a knockout performance by the Republican challenger. Or, as Notre Dame professor and political observer Robert Schmuhl put it, “Romney gets a gold medal, and Obama wasn’t even in the same competition.”

Schmuhl, a professor of American studies and the author of “Statecraft and Stagecraft: American Political Life in the Age of Personality,” told me that, on optics alone, the victor was clear:

“All one had to do on Wednesday night is turn down the volume and study the body language of the two figures. After a short period of time, there was no comparison in terms of performance.”

◼ The Real Debate: The Good Father vs. The Abandoned Son - Roger L Simon/PJM

What we have before us in these debates is an almost archetypal confrontation – between a man who was and is an exceptionally good father and a man who was deserted by his.

Good fathering is the story of Mitt Romney’s life. He has five sons who are, by all accounts, devoted to him and vice-versa. These boys grew up with a father who, although wealthy and successful, worked like a demon, doted on them, and apparently devoted an extraordinary amount of time to charitable work, in which he also involved them. Indeed, I’ve never heard of a politician who did anything quite like it.

Almost the polar opposite, Barack Obama’s father abandoned him twice and then ended up an irresponsible drunken victim of multiple car crashes. This sad behavior precipitated a search by Obama that brought him in contact with several father surrogates, notably Frank Marshall Davis and Jeremiah Wright, that it would be hard to brand as anywhere near satisfactory. (Davis was a pornographer and about Wright the less said the better.) No Mitt Romneys there.

JACK WELCH: Obama Is Manipulating The Jobs Numbers Because His Debate Performance Was Awful

◼ Former G.E. CHAIRMAN Jack Welch and many others, say the Obama White House "cooked the books" on the latest unemployment numbers to make the President look....successful? In today's BUSINESS INSIDER.JACK WELCH: Obama Is Manipulating The Jobs Numbers Because His Debate Performance Was Awful - Kate Linebaugh/Wall St. Journal

◼ Jack Welch: ‘I Wasn’t Kidding’

After setting off a minor social media firestorm with a tweet suggesting the Obama administration had manipulated the September jobs report, Jack Welch wants to get one thing straight: He meant it.

“I wasn’t kidding,” the pugnacious former CEO of General Electric said in an interview.

The 76-year-old retiree riled up the Twitterverse this morning with a tweet that said, “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers.”

◼ EDITORIAL: Obama’s fudged unemployment numbers - Washington Times.

It says a lot when a government jobs report is so out of line with reality that no thoughtful person can take it seriously. At best the new unemployment number is a fluke; at worst it is the product of partisan hacks.

The Department of Labor reported Friday that total nonfarm payroll employment increased by a net 114,000 in September. This poor showing — it reflects a 28,000 drop from the previous month — should have resulted in unemployment increasing by a tenth of a percent. Instead, it dropped by 0.3 percent to 7.8 percent. Call that Chicago-style math.

The official jobless rate is now down to around where it was when Mr. Obama took office, though still higher than what the White House promised it would be after blowing more than a trillion on stimulus programs. Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch was among the first to call shenanigans on the dramatically favorable unemployment figure, echoing a general skepticism from all but the most credulous of Mr. Obama’s defenders.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said she was “insulted” by charges that there was something fishy going on. She then betrayed her own ignorance of the facts by saying the 86,000 jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) discovered in the last two months were private-sector jobs. They were actually government hires. Private-sector employment fell last month by a net of 5,000. Manufacturing jobs were down 16,000. Mrs. Solis threw her underlings under the bus, saying “the information that I received is given to me by our professional, civil service staff in the BLS.” Perhaps these are the same BLS economists whom the Washington Free Beacon reports have contributed thousands to the Obama campaign.... ◼ MORE at the link.

◼ UPDATE: Jack Welch: I Was Right About That Strange Jobs Report - The economy would need to be growing at breakneck speed for unemployment to drop to 7.8% from 8.3% in the course of two months. - Jack Welch/Wall St. Journal

The blame game

◼ Lamest Excuse for Obama's Performance: Because He's Black - ReaganCoalition

In case you want to spare yourself from watching this (second) video, this is what Toure said in a nutshell: Obama couldn't defend himself because doing so would make him look like an angry black man.

The Democrats are throwing out all sorts of excuses! Earth to Toure. Obama is not the great intellectual you thought he was. Obama got his butt handed to him by facts and figures.

◼ Obama said he lost because he wasn't debating the real Romney.
◼ Al Gore said Obama lost because of the altitude.
◼ Zennie says Obama was passive on purpose.

◼ Dems claim Obama lost the debate because of Mitt’s hanky panky - Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion
◼ Inconceivable: ‘Unfair’ That Obama Couldn’t Use Teleprompter in Debate - ConservativeByte
◼ "Does Barack Obama really want to be president?" - Althouse

The best news for Romney is this: He rose to the most difficult moment. When the need was greatest, and the stage was largest, he was exceptional. It is one of the things that presidents do.

◼ Romney was exceptional when it counted

...For the first time in the general election, Romney seemed to realize that the presidency will not be awarded by default — that defeating Obama will require exceptional skills, strategy and ambition. And all were there when Romney needed them.

Romney was on the offensive from first to last, dominating the tone, content and flow of the debate. This seemed more than aggressiveness; something approaching authority. Romney’s attacks were genially relentless. Instead of merely criticizing Obamacare or the Dodd-Frank financial legislation, he dissected them. He fired statistics like shotgun pellets — 23 million unemployed, 1 in 6 in poverty, 50 percent of college graduates can’t find jobs. His critique was organized by a memorable theme — “trickle-down government.” (Obama’s apparent theme — a “new economic patriotism” — went entirely unexplained.)

Romney’s effective indictment of Obama’s record managed something difficult and important. It simultaneously steadied the confidence of Republicans in their own candidate while allowing Romney to adopt a more moderate, bipartisan tone on taxes, education and entitlements. This is politics successfully conducted at a high degree of difficulty....

Obama had not debated in years, and that also showed. He is a political orchid, thriving best in a hot, wet atmosphere of praise. Presented with serious, sustained criticism, he first seemed puzzled that his idiom wasn’t working properly. Then came the avalanche of tweeted adjectives: annoyed, grim, unhappy, disengaged, glaring, defensive. For me, the low point came when he protested, “I’m going to make an important point here, Jim.” Show, as they say, don’t tell. Obama’s words were instantly forgettable. But his performance will be remembered, studied and mocked for its body language. He looked down. He looked away. It was the surrender of the averted gaze.

ROMNEY'S BIG NIGHT

◼ A Complete Victory. - Tom Del Beccaro/Political Vanguard

◼ BOOM goes Sununu! “The Obama you saw last night is the same Obama that’s been in the WH for 4 years” - The Right Scoop

You need to watch this clip all the way to the very end because Sununu completely drops the bomb on Obama and it’s awesome.



◼ Krauthammer: Romney dissolved $150 million in negative ads and turned them to dust last night - The Right Scoop

Chicago won't go quietly. Be ready for trouble and able of rapid response.

◼ Romney Deflates the President: The first debate was a surprise. Now the challenger has to prepare for more surprises. - Peggy Noonan/Wall St. Journal
◼ Palin Warns: Obama Camp Will Not Go Down Without Swinging; Will Pull Something - Real Clear Politics

◼ After debate failure, Obama consults most trusted adviser... Himself!

Because isolation and insularity have worked out so well for him thus far, right? ◼ Politico quotes an unnamed Obama confidant on President Eye-candy's post-debate demeanor. Having that famous first-rate temperament, he was just the right level of angry:

Nobody had to tell President Barack Obama he had whiffed when he walked off the stage in Denver Wednesday night — nor was he in the mood for a lot of advice. “You could tell he was pissed,” said a person close to the president.

We can't afford four more years

NYT: 'President Xanax'...

Mitt Romney: "...what we're seeing right now is, in my view, a trickle-down government approach which has government thinking it can do a better job than free people pursuing their dreams. And it's not working. And the proof of that is 23 million people out of work. The proof of that is one out of six people in poverty. The proof of that is we've gone from 32 million on food stamps to 47 million on food stamps. The proof of that is that 50 percent of college graduates this year can't find work. The path we’re taking is not working. It is time for a new path....”

◼ Team Obama struggles as Romney wins big - Byron York/Washington Examiner

"I just think he has a terrible record to defend," top Romney adviser Stuart Stevens said of the president "They've hidden behind almost a billion dollars in campaign expenditures. Now, you can't hide behind ads, you can't hide behind surrogates, you can't have Bill Clinton step in for you on that stage."

"I don't think he had a particularly bad debate," Stevens concluded. "He's had a bad four years."

◼ Yesterday was National Empty Podium Day - Michelle Malkin
◼ GORE BLAMES THE ALTITUDE! - Daniel Halper/Weekly Standard
◼ There are two more chances for the president to change tactics, or at least to show up to the debates energized and nimble: President Xanax just doesn’t cut it. - Charles M. Blow/New York Times
◼ Obama's face said it all - Hillbuzz

In case you missed it: Here's the debate

1:31:51

◼ October 3, 2012 Debate Transcript - COMMISSION ON PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES

ROUND WON:

◼ Romney goes on offense, forcing Obama to defend record - Jerry Markon/Washington Post

Romney painted Obama’s first term as a time of rising poverty, slowing economic growth and struggle for millions of Americans. He pushed his own plans to lower taxes and bring down the federal deficit, saying his approach would revive the sputtering economy.

◼ You Were Fighting For Obamacare, Not Jobs - Breitbart
◼ Romney: 'The Path We’re Taking Is Not Working' - Daniel Halper/Weekly Standard

... what we're seeing right now is, in my view, a trickle-down government approach which has government thinking it can do a better job than free people pursuing their dreams. And it's not working. And the proof of that is 23 million people out of work. The proof of that is one out of six people in poverty. The proof of that is we've gone from 32 million on food stamps to 47 million on food stamps. The proof of that is that 50 percent of college graduates this year can't find work. The path we’re taking is not working. It is time for a new path....”

◼ Incumbent Debate Curse: Barack Obama Falls to Mitt Romney - Ron Fournier/National Journal

If Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney didn’t win the first of three presidential debates outright, he more than covered the spread. He was personable, funny, and relentlessly on the attack against a heavily favored Obama.

The president looked peeved and flat as he carried a conversation, for the first time in four years, with somebody telling him he’s wrong.

◼ Chris Matthews Freaks Out At Obama After Debate: Romney Was "Winning" - Real Clear Politics (video in post below)

Matthews then demanded that President Obama start watching cable news, specifically his program.

"Where was Obama tonight? He should watch -- well, not just Hardball, Rachel, he should watch you, he should watch the Reverend Al [Sharpton], he should watch Lawrence. He would learn something about this debate. There's a hot debate going on in this country. You know where it's been held? Here on this network is where we're having the debate," Matthews said.

"We have our knives out," Matthews said, admitting his network is trying their best to defend Obama and his policies. "We go after the people and the facts. What was he doing tonight? He went in their disarmed."

◼ Obama spokesperson Stephanie Cutter took a swipe at moderator Jim Lehrer's largely passive debate performance tonight, saying the PBS anchor had allowed Mitt Romney to act as the moderator. - Dylan Byers/Politico
◼ Andrew Sullivan: 'This was a disaster' - Live-Blogging The First Presidential Debate 2012 - The Daily Beast
◼ Bewildered and lost without his teleprompter, President Obama flailed all around the debate stage last night. He was stuttering, nervous and petulant. It was like he had been called in front of the principal after goofing around for four years and blowing off all his homework. - Charles Hurt/Washington Times

Not since Jimmy Carter faced Ronald Reagan has the U.S. presidency been so embarrassingly represented in public. Actually, that’s an insult to Jimmy Carter.

The split screen was most devastating. Mitt Romney spoke forthrightly, with carefully studied facts and details at the ready. He looked right at the president and accused him of being miles out of his depth.

Mr. Obama? His eyes were glued to his lectern, looking guilty and angry and impatient with all the vagaries of Democracy. This debate was seriously chaffing him.

What exactly was Mr. Obama’s strategy here? Did he figure with so many people unemployed in this abomination of an economy he should go for the sympathy vote? Like voters could relate to a guy who is just scared pantsless that he is about to lose his job?...

◼ The Early Read: Romney Won, and He Will Gain - White House Dossier
◼ MSNBC’s Matthews gives epic smackdown of Obama - Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion
◼ Who won? (POLL) - Althouse
◼ According to a CNN/ORC International survey conducted right after the debate, 67% of debate watchers questioned said that the Republican nominee won the faceoff - CNN

More than six in ten said that president did worse than expected, with one in five saying that Obama performed better than expected. Compare that to the 82% who said that Romney performed better than expected. Only one in ten felt that the former Massachusetts governor performed worse than expected.

◼ Best Debate Performance By a GOP Presidential Candidate in More than Two Decades - Bill Kristol/Weekly Standard
◼ Two kinds of shock - neoneocon

It occurs to me that last night’s debate was a shock to both left and right.

The left was shocked because they had really believed Obama’s hype, and he fell so far below their expectations—although perhaps it would be more accurate to say he failed so abysmally to live up to their beliefs.

The right was shocked because they really believed the negative media spin about Romney and he rose so far above their expectations—although perhaps it would be more accurate to say he succeeded beyond their wildest dreams....



◼ The Luntz focus group - neoneocon

Chris Matthews loses it, after poor performance by President Obama

◼ "I don't know what he was doing there." Chris Matthews exclaimed. "He had his head down. He was enduring rather than fighting."

"What was Romney doing?" asked Matthews. "He was winning." - Charlie Spiering/Washington Examiner @CharlieSpiering
◼ Obama under the gun: ‘Jim, you may wanna move on to another topic’ - Twitchy
◼ Michael Moore: 'This is what happens when u pick John Kerry as your debate coach' - Kerry Picket/The Washington Times