Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Debate Analysis: Short-Term Romney Boost, Until The Ads Begin

Mitt Romney was energetic and well-prepared in Wednesday's debate with President Obama, and it may move the polling needle Romney's way in the next few days.

Give him credit for a good performance, and grade Obama down for thinking that appearing Presidential was enough to cut it.

But Romney said some things that will bounce back hard against him in the ads to come, too, such as:

* Repealing Wall Street regulations, known as Dodd-Frank.

* Denying he supports his signature $5 trillion tax cut.

* Repealing ObamaCare.

* Voucherizing Medicare.

* Not listing loopholes, or individuals' deductions he says he will eliminate, but talking vaguely about a bucket-list a taxpayer might claim as a bottom-line...'make up a number, $25,000, $50,000...'

I assume the second debate will be different.

Cross-posted at Purple Wisconsin.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The American people have now seen our president bewildered and confused. They now look around them and understand why the country is in the shape it is in.

You Madison liberals can continue to believe in fairy tales rather than face reality, but the rest of us will see what is there before our eyes; Obama has failed.

Max B said...

@ Anonymous:

You are the one confused: you mistake a single mediocre debate performance for an election 'decider', and Mitt Romney for a viable candidate. If the President looked bewildered, it reflected the bewilderment we all felt at hearing Mittens lie his mittens off and suddenly be for everything he'd previously been against, and against the things he'd been for. (Major provisions of Obamacare, tax hikes, the middle class is HURTING, education as a means of moving up, shipping jobs overseas.) The President was probably wondering who is this guy and how did he get in here?

The Mittens and Marathon Man team has a budget/tax plan that doesn't add up, reduce the deficit or even make sense. Time after time, it has been proven by nonpartisan analysis that it is a fantasy budget: It will add to the deficit. It will raise taxes on the middle class. It will lower taxes for the top 2%. And its base assumption that jobs and wealth will "trickle down" (aka supply side economics and "voodoo economics") has proved not to work each time it's been tried. So who continues to believe in fairy tales?

PS: You don't get to get away with making gross generalizations and geopolitical redlining: Not all Madisonians are liberal. Not all liberals live in Madison. Not everyone who supports President Obama is a liberal. Just as not every conservative's yard sports a Romney/Ryan yard sign, not every Obama supporter has a yard sign, either. But we're everywhere--President Obama supporters--your neighbors (every yard without a sign is a possible Obama supporter), your mother-in-law, your child's bus driver, the guy in the SUV alongside you on the freeway, the woman in the corner office, your banker, the person who cuts your hair, your bartender. .. feeling surrounded yet?