Debate #2 will, no doubt, be hailed by liberals as Obama’s comeback.
Indeed, Barack Hussein Obama attacked Mitt Romney with every word and every space between words. And I’m sure that his base is delighted and will declare him the winner of last night’s debate.
But Obama’s base is, well, Obama’s base. They are doctrinaire liberal/progressives who will vote for Obama no matter what.
But the undecided are the voters who count at this point in the race, and what they saw last night is a President who is angry, quarrelsome, thin-skinned, and unable to defend his disastrous policies.
I want to highlight one exchange about the economy between Mitt Romney and Barack Hussein Obama.
Romney: The proof of whether a strategy is working or not is what the price is that you’re paying at the pump. If you’re paying less than you paid a year or two ago, why, then, the strategy is working. But you’re paying more. When the president took office, the price of gasoline here in Nassau County was about $1.86 a gallon. Now, it’s $4.00 a gallon.
Romney is at his best when he talks about free enterprise. This is the sea in which he swims. His argument is lucid, factual, and makes sense. So, How does Obama respond?
Obama: Well, think about what the governor — think about what the governor just said. He said when I took office, the price of gasoline was $1.80, $1.86. Why is that? Because the economy was on the verge of collapse, because we were about to go through the worst recession since the Great Depression, as a consequence of some of the same policies that Governor Romney’s now promoting. So, it’s conceivable that Governor Romney could bring down gas prices because with his policies, we might be back in that same mess.
Barack Hussein Obama argues that low gas prices were responsible for the bad economy. Obama goes even further, charging that if Mitt Romney brings down gas prices the economy will be made worse.
Is your head spinning?
This is economic ignorance on a massive scale. This is intellectual collapse. And it demonstrates why the American economy is in full decline. Does anyone really believe that low gas prices cause economic decline? Gas prices are an economic indicator.
Barack Hussein Obama is clueless.
Mitt Romney then delivered the most cogent two-minute refutation on the Obama economy I have ever heard. As he gave this elegant and factual summary, the screenwriter in me smiled.
I turned to Karen and said: “This is a beautiful monologue, very effective.”
Romney: I think you know that these last four years haven’t been so good as the president just described and that you don’t feel like you’re confident that the next four years are going to be much better either. I can tell you that if you were to elect President Obama, you know what you’re going to get. You’re going to get a repeat of the last four years. We just can’t afford four more years like the last four years.
He said that by now we’d have unemployment at 5.4 percent. The difference between where it is and 5.4 percent is 9 million Americans without work. I wasn’t the one that said 5.4 percent. This was the president’s plan. Didn’t get there.
He said he would have by now put forward a plan to reform Medicare and Social Security, because he pointed out they’re on the road to bankruptcy. He would reform them. He’d get that done. He hasn’t even made a proposal on either one.
He said in his first year he’d put out an immigration plan that would deal with our immigration challenges. Didn’t even file it.
This is a president who has not been able to do what he said he’d do. He said that he’d cut in half the deficit. He hasn’t done that either. In fact, he doubled it. He said that by now middle-income families would have a reduction in their health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year. It’s gone up by $2,500 a year. And if Obamacare is passed, or implemented — it’s already been passed — if it’s implemented fully, it’ll be another $2,500 on top.
The middle class is getting crushed under the policies of a president who has not understood what it takes to get the economy working again. He keeps saying, “Look, I’ve created 5 million jobs.” That’s after losing 5 million jobs. The entire record is such that the unemployment has not been reduced in this country. The unemployment, the number of people who are still looking for work, is still 23 million Americans. There are more people in poverty, one out of six people in poverty.
How about food stamps? When he took office, 32 million people were on food stamps. Today, 47 million people are on food stamps. How about the growth of the economy? It’s growing more slowly this year than last year, and more slowly last year than the year before.
The president wants to do well. I understand. But the policies he’s put in place from Obamacare to Dodd-Frank to his tax policies to his regulatory policies, these policies combined have not let this economy take off and grow like it could have.
You might say, “Well, you got an example of one that worked better?” Yeah, in the Reagan recession where unemployment hit 10.8 percent, between that period — the end of that recession and the equivalent of time to today, Ronald Reagan’s recovery created twice as many jobs as this president’s recovery. Five million jobs doesn’t even keep up with our population growth. And the only reason the unemployment rate seems a little lower today is because of all the people that have dropped out of the workforce.
The president has tried, but his policies haven’t worked. He’s great as a — as a — as a speaker and describing his plans and his vision. That’s wonderful, except we have a record to look at. And that record shows he just hasn’t been able to cut the deficit, to put in place reforms for Medicare and Social Security to preserve them, to get us the rising incomes we need. Median income is down $4,300 a family and 23 million Americans out of work. That’s what this election is about. It’s about who can get the middle class in this country a bright and prosperous future and assure our kids the kind of hope and optimism they deserve.
I am not a pollster. I’m a veteran Hollywood screenwriter with a pretty well developed sense of optics. And though I have no proof, I am fairly certain that last night moved former Obama supporters into the Romney camp, and further, convinced a fair number of independents that four more years of Obamanomics will only perpetuate the horror show.
Finally, Romney mentioned the fact that Obama’s figures on unemployment are incorrect. For example, my husband and I lost our full-time jobs two years ago. We had worked these jobs for many years. We tried to find work but gave up and retired this year. We are not counted in BO’s unemployed. I guess we just fell off the face of the earth 🙂
Among the buzz I have heard today with Candy Crowley is that everyone is talking about that now – anyone want to lay odds it won’t be a topic for next week?
Something that has always amazed me about Obama – if you are put into something that you know you are in over your head wouldn’t you do your best to get people around you to help you?
To be arrogant and good at what you do is one thing – i would point to Gen MacArthur – but to be arrogant and ignorant – and convinced you are right – that is something else.
Interestingly, those of us who have searched for Romney’s high point in the debate seem to have uniformly and independently settled on the same two minutes of the speech. Looking to the focus groups after the debate, both for Fox and MSNBC, it is crystal clear that Romney crushed Obama on the economy – and for the mass of Americans who aren’t single issue voters, that will likely be the deciding factor. While the media was in the press room cheering when Obama made a snarky comment about Romney’s wealth, and when they high-fived over Obama’s mention of the 47%, it would seem that most are just blind to the fact that, in two minutes of speech, Romney may well have sealed the election.