The President is right: the real Mitt Romney wasn’t on stage in Denver.
Too bad the real Barack Obama also decided to give the event a miss. If the guy in the video above had shown up for the debate, Romney couldn’t have gotten away with so many lies.
Any statement of Mr Romney’s principles ought to include a “sell by” date.
If Obama had tried a different tactic, the wingnutosphere would be rending their garments and staunching the down-ticket bleeding. Instead they have a second wind. Why? Why give these clowns a second wind? Why give this third-rate, gaffe-filled campaign a good feeling? Why?
I don’t know how Obama could have effectively “debated” someone whose goal appeared to be to set a record for number of lies told per minute in a presidential debate-a record Romney now clearly holds.
How should Obama have proceeded? Should he have called Romney out on each of the 27 major lies that he used to pummel Obama non-stop? In the format of the so-called debate; that would have been futile.
It was as if Obama was called upon to debate someone in the throes of delusion-how is communication even possible? Debates are not the forum in which to debate facts; they are supposed to be for the discussion of ideas and the presentation of evidence in support of those ideas. There cannot be a fruitful debate when one party just makes up their own “facts” and “evidence” as they go along.
Lehrer the moderator could have helped get things back on track, but for whatever reason,he chose not to; perhaps he too became stunned at the deluge of nonsense, having no idea where even to start. So instead, he let Romney blather deceitfully on, sounding like someone from an alternate universe. Any attempt to debate in such conditions inevitably results in the participants speaking at cross-purposes, and is a complete waste of time. Personally I’m surprised Obama didn’t just start laughing uncontrollably; THAT is all that Romney’s performance deserved.
Romney demonstrated that the only thing that matters to him is winning, and that he will do whatever it takes to win. If truth is the first casualty, well so be it. It’s of no consequence to him; nothing is of any consequence to him, except him.