Category: Debates

Benghazi Breakdown: Team Obama, Liberals Now in Full Freak-Out Mode

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First, the headline:

Mother of Slain State Dept. Official Tired of Being
Lied To and Stonewalled by Obama Administration

Next, the video, which got the AOSHQ Flaming Skull Alert:

Now, we point out that Stephanie Cutter has doubled down on her outrageous claim that the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi is only the subject of controvery because — wait for it — Republicans “politicized” the issue. This is the kind of harmonic convergence of self-serving bullshit unprecedented since the days when LBJ lied America into a shooting war in Southeast Asia.

And it reminds me of something else:

Let anyone who watched the moonbat brigades in action during that era testify to their own memories, but I recall it this way: It started with the 2002 mid-terms. Democrats had been expecting to make the usual congressional gains that the party out of power makes in the next election after losing the White House and, instead, the Republicans actually gained seats. This completely demoralized the Left and within a few months, we invaded Iraq.

OK, so the Left then mounted its typical anti-war movement, with the Netroots latching onto Howard Dean as their Gene McCarthy/George McGovern peacenik presidential candidate. Dean melted down in Iowa, and instead the nomination went to Vietnam-era peacenik hero John Kerry who got “Swiftboated” (a term that means “unfairly telling the truth about a Democrat”) and Bush got re-elected in 2004.

The absolute nadir for the Left was when the exit polls showed that Bush had won Ohio because of so-called “values voters” who had turned out in droves to vote for a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. This was a horrid shock to the Left to learn that their two favorite issues — treason and sodomy — had been rejected by the American people, and so they vowed revenge against those damned flag-waving homophobic heartland Republicans.

As I say, this was the Golden Age, with the Left so completely discredited, disempowered and disconsolate that their pitiful crusades — “Indict Karl Rove!” — were fodder for endless mockery by conservative bloggers, who could laugh at the madcap antics of the Kossacks back then.

That era ended when Democrats won the 2006 mid-terms (thank you, Jack Abramoff, and thank you, Mark Foley) and the painful shoe of despair was on the other foot after Obama got elected in 2008. But it seems the karmic wheel is now beginning to turn.

Notice Nate Silver’s slo-mo walkback, his Forecasting Model™ now giving Romney a 32.1% chance of victory, and Nate compelled to pretend there are “a couple of rays of hope” for Democrats.

Whistling past the graveyard much, Nate?

They’re trying to stave off complete panic, and if Paul Ryan does well in tonight’s debate with Joe Biden — my prediction is that Ryan will stomp Joe the way Godzilla stomped Tokyo — we’re likely to see one of the most memorable freak-outs in the history of liberal freak-outs.

Sully’s liable to be on suicide watch if the polls keep trending this way another week, and if analysts ever start moving states like Pennsylvania and Michigan into the “toss-up” category . . .

Oh, it will be epic.

UPDATE: Top thread at Memeorandum, with reaction by Gateway Pundit, Phil Klein, Da Tech Guy, The Lonely Conservative and this memorable response by Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom:

Good lord. It’s long past time to vote these scumbags out: it’s time to tar and feather them and put them in stocks so that we can all take turns throwing rotten vegetables at their ugly treasonous faces.

Once these things start going sideways — with mainstream outfits like CNN sniffing the scent of Fear and Loathing — it’s gonna be hard for the White House to put Humpty-Dumpty together again. Yet we must maintain momentum to maximize the impact.

 


Will Ryan Hold Biden Accountable?

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Michelle Malkin reminds us of something:

Remember when President Obama bragged about Joe Biden’s fiscal discipline cred in 2009? “To you, he’s Mr. Vice President, but around the White House, we call him the Sheriff,” Obama warned government employees. “Because if you’re misusing taxpayer money, you’ll have to answer to him.”
Fast-forward to 2012. Call in the search teams. Since being appointed the nation’s stimulus spending cop, Sheriff Joe has taken a permanent donut break. He’s AWOL on oversight. In fact, he’s been bubble-wrapped, boxed and kept completely out of sight. The garrulous gaffe machine hasn’t sat down for a national media interview in five months.
The Democrats’ trillion-dollar “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” however, keeps piling up waste, failure, fraud and debt. Who benefited most? Big government cronies. . . .

Read the whole thing. Malkin makes an excellent point: If Biden was supposed to have been the enforcers of fiscal discipline, he’s been an abject failure and the scandals surrounding, for example, “nearly 4,000 stimulus recipients who received $24 billion in Recovery Act funds — while owing more than $750 million in unpaid corporate, payroll and other taxes.”

Maybe Paul Ryan will bring this up Thursday night.

UPDATE: Speaking of “big government cronies,” did you know that Barack Obama was a guest at the wedding of ABC’s Martha Raddatz, who will moderate Thursday’s debate. No bias there!

Another Republican Lie!

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In a ludicrously shameless attempt to lower expectations for Thursday’s vice-presidential debate beatdown, RNC chairman Reince Priebus calls Joe Biden “a gifted orator”:

“I think people realize that Joe Biden is a gifted orator. He’s very good at rhetoric. And I think he’s very relatable,” Priebus said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Reince — and everybody else on the planet — knows that Biden is a gaffe-prone dimwit who is likely to be humiliated by Paul Ryan.

Reince’s poor-mouthing of Ryan and risible praise of Biden reminds me of how University of Georgia coach Vince Dooley used to talk about upcoming games against lightly-regarded opponents: “Gosh, Larry, Vanderbilt has a really strong special teams unit and we can’t afford to take anything for granted against them.”

Then the Bulldogs would go out on Saturday and whomp Vandy 49-3, with Georgia’s third string playing the entire fourth quarter.

Same deal here: Reince is obligated, as a matter of professional courtesy, to pretend that Thursday’s debate is going to be competitive, but nobody believes it for a minute.

‘STATE OF THE UNION’ TRANSCRIPT (VIA CNN):

CROWLEY: I’m Candy Crowley. And this is State of the Union .
It was not unanimous, but there was overwhelming consensus among viewers and pundits that Mitt Romney shined in Denver ‘s debate season opener and the president did not. The New Yorker magazine summed it up with a cover cartoon of Romney debating an empty chair, the captain “Mitt Stands Alone.”
Campaigns are only as good as their last news cycle, so on to Danville , Kentucky , and Thursday night’s battle of the number twos.
Joining me now are Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter, a long-time friend of Joe Biden, and Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus, a confidant of Paul Ryan and a fellow cheese head. Mayor Nutter, stand by with me a minute, and I want to get to the party chairman, and we’ll be back with you.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for joining us. I want to talk about the great burden of great expectations. There was a CNN/ORC poll, and we said who is going to win the vice presidential debate? And the answer was Biden, 39 percent, Ryan, 55 percent. So in many ways this mirrors what happened to the presidential debate. Everyone thought President Obama would win. So there’s great expectations here for Ryan.
How much of a microscope do you think there will be on him?
PRIEBUS: Well, I’m not so sure about that. I mean, I don’t dispute your polling there, but I think most people understand that Joe Biden has been debating for a long time, I mean, since the early 1900s he has been debating.
CROWLEY: This is a smart young man that he is debating. And he knows his stuff.
PRIEBUS: Right. Right. I think what you see, though, in some of that polling is that some of the, you know, Joe Biden as of late put his foot in his mouth a few times in very public ways. I mean, he said that the middle class was crushed under, you know, the policies of Obama and Biden, and he said some things that were problematic.
However, Paul is a smart guy. He has committed his life to understanding the problems of our economy, presenting a plan for the American people, so I think that Paul is going to do – he’s going to do a great job, but I also think it’s very important for people to understand, and I think people realize that Joe Biden is a gifted or orator. He is very good at rhetoric, and I think is he very relatable. So I think they are very two different people. And I think it’s going to be a great night.
CROWLEY: Have you talked to Ryan at all about his debate performance, what he needs to do, that kind of thing?
PRIEBUS: Well, sure.
I mean, Paul is one of my very good friends. I talk to Paul all the time about a lot of different things, But, you know, I think he is taking it very seriously. He’s prepared. But…
CROWLEY: Nervous?
PRIEBUS: Well, sure. I think people — you know, I think both parties should be nervous. I mean, it’s a big night. It’s a big — it’s always going to be a big night.
CROWLEY: Do you think it makes a difference? I mean, there are a lot of people who say, look, VP debates, they’re just – they’re a side show. It’s all about these top guys. Do you think that Ryan has to keep the momentum going from what was widely seen as a Mitt Romney win in Denver?
PRIEBUS: We had a good week last week. There’s no doubt about it. We have to have a good week this week and the week after. So I think we take it one day at a time.
You know, I don’t know, I think that the VP debates are very important. You saw in our presidential primary season, Candy. I mean, we had, what, 22 debates. And at every one of these debates, whether it was on CNN or on Fox or whatever the station, we had broken records for a primary debate. People enjoy these debates. I would expect a lot of people to be watching. And I think Paul is going to do a great job, but I also think that Joe Biden is incredibly gifted when it comes to debating and understanding policy. And he is a good orator.
CROWLEY: Let me ask you about — there’s a Colorado poll that came out — University of Denver poll that came out right after the debates, and it shows that Colorado is certainly a swing state, kind of shrinking. The lead of Barack Obama 47 percent, Mitt Romney, 43 percent. I want you to focus on this, someone else 4 percent.
How worried are you about the fact that Gary Johnson, as you know is a libertarian candidate, is probably going to be on all 50 ballots, and the conventional wisdom is he is going to draw from Mitt Romney. It makes a difference in Colorado . It makes a difference in Virginia. It will make a difference in North Carolina. Does that worry you?
PRIEBUS: No, it doesn’t worry me.
CROWLEY: Really?
PRIEBUS: Because I think people understand that they’re not going to throw their vote away when we have an election here that’s about the future of America . So I don’t see that happening, Candy.
You know, this was a widely debated thing in 1980 with John Anderson, Gary Johnson is nowhere where…
CROWLEY: Sure, but Ross Perot made a difference.
PRIEBUS: Sure.
CROWLEY: I think if you talk to the Bush campaign, they think that Ross Perot is why they lost.
PRIEBUS: Right. But we don’t have a third party candidate anywhere near the name recognition or the popularity of Ross Perot or John Anderson. I just don’t see that happening. In fact, I see that it’s almost a nonfactor, so I’m not worried about it.
CROWLEY: Let me ask you about the new economic figures that came out. Unemployment dipped below 8 percent, something I’m sure Republicans celebrate as well. But does it not undercut what has been the central theme of the Republican campaign which was that he has made the economy worse because we are right down looking at an unemployment rate after a really horrible year which you can’t blame President Obama for in totality, his first year when he sort of did inherit this big mess, now it’s down to 7.8%. Doesn’t that show that he is on the right trajectory and kind of undermine the central argument for you?
PRIEBUS: Oh, I don’t think so. You know, it’s like this, Candy, if you are getting blown out in a football game but you are scoring field goals once a quarter, you can’t point to the three points every quarter and say at least we’re scoring some points, you’re still getting clobbered.
I mean, the fact of the matter is the president and Joe Biden are getting clobbered on the policies that they put in place. They promised we’d be a heck of a lot better off than we are today. We’re nowhere close.
I was in Wisconsin yesterday. I’ve been in Ohio practically every other day. I’ll tell you what, people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Lanman (ph), Ohio don’t feel better off today than they were four years ago, and they don’t think this president has been very good at following through on his promises. That’s what this is going to come down to. And I’ll tell you what, last week you saw the difference, an unfiltered Mitt Romney and an unfiltered Barack Obama. You saw inspiration, heart, preparedness from Mitt Romney, and you saw a president that came in unprepared, uninspiring.
You know what, maybe Clint Eastwood was right, and I think that’s what the American people saw last week.
CROWLEY: Let me ask you about the — we have some idea of the Democrat’s fundraising in September, the totality, the re-election campaign as well as the Democratic Committee, $181 million in September. That’s 1.8 million individual donors, 567,000, more than half a million first-time donors, average donation $53. That’s a pretty impressive number. Are you going to match it?
PRIEBUS: I don’t know if we’re going to match it, but it is an impressive number.
CROWLEY: Are you close?
PRIEBUS: I can’t tell you that right now. But I will say this I think we all understand that this race isn’t going to come down to money, because we’ve been very competitive. And by the way if you roll the tape, I have been calling — I have been saying that President Obama is going to raise $1 billion for a year and a half. Remember we called him the billion dollar president. Well — so it’s no surprise to us. And I think we’ve surprised them by how well we’ve done at fundraising.
But look this isn’t going to come down to money. This is going to come down to heart. This is going to come down to work on the ground, plans, and I think the fact that this president didn’t fulfill his promises, that will undo him. And we’ll beat them on the ground and we’ll have all the money we need to be competitive.
CROWLEY: Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus, thanks for joining us.
PRIEBUS: Thank you.

UPDATE: Speaking of football, a certain UGA alumna had an excellent analogy for the Bulldogs’ 35-7 loss to South Carolina:

Meanwhile, Auburn lost 24-7 to Arkansas, which had previously lost 52-0 to Alabama, so I guess the Tide should be 69-point favorites in this year’s Iron Bowl.

It’s Morning in Vanuatu Again

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“How long, O Lord, how long? Where will it end?
“All I ever wanted out of this campaign was enough money to get out of the country and live for a year or two in peaceful squalor in a house with a big screen porch looking down on an empty white beach, with a good rich coral reef a few hundred yards out in the surf and no neighbors. . . .
“What worries me now . . . is the strong possibility that my involvement in politics has become so deep and twisted that I can no longer think rationally about that big screen porch above the beach except in terms of an appointment as Governor of American Samoa.”
– Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

Savor the moment. I’ve been up all night doing the Snoopy dance in the Gloat Zone. Ace says we should worry: The MSM’s already preparing the “Obama Comeback” narrative.

But I’m too grateful and happy to worry now. There is deliciousness everywhere this morning. Byron York serves it up:

Just seconds after the presidential debate ended here at the University of Denver Wednesday night, Mitt Romney’s advisers and surrogates rushed to the press room to take reporters’ questions and tout their man’s performance. They were eager, happy, and ready to talk because they believed their man scored a clear win in his first face-off with President Obama.
After a few minutes of interviews, and the arrival of still more Romney surrogates, some reporters looked around and asked: Are there any Democrats here? Where are the Obama advisers and surrogates eager to speak for the president?
It took a while for them to show up. And when they arrived, they were on the defensive from the get-go about the president’s performance. . . .

Read the whole thing. Last time I saw Byron was in Toledo, when the polls had Obama up 10 points in Ohio and everybody was on the verge of abandoning hope. This evening, I expect to see him in Fisherville, Virginia — 6 p.m., doors open at 4 p.m. — and imagine what a complete change in mood we’ll see! Imagine how everybody will be laughing about how Chris Matthews melted down:

Nobody — and I mean, nobody — expected such a one-sided ass-whupping. And let’s sober up enough to say, “Answered prayer”:

Really, when you see this kind of unanticipated miracle, it’s necessary to consider the possibility that this was not coincidental. With 33 days to go until Nov. 6, suddenly the sun is shining. My American Spectator column today:

How decisively did Mitt Romney win Wednesday night’s debate? All you had to do was watch the most pro-Obama network to see it. “I personally do not know who won this debate,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said as soon as the debate ended. She was obviously the only one who didn’t know.
When Maddow brought on her colleague Ed Schultz, he moaned that President Obama “created a problem for himself tonight on Social Security. He agreed with Mitt Romney.… I thought he was off his game.” Nor did the president’s performance send a thrill up the leg of Chris Matthews. “I don’t know what he was doing out there,” Matthews complained. “He had his head down. He was enduring the debate rather than fighting it.”
If ever there were a night when conservatives wanted to watch MSNBC, this was it — an all-you-can-eat buffet of schadenfreude, as one after another of the liberal network’s personalities tried to come to grips with what was perhaps the most one-sided presidential debate since JFK beat a shifty-looking Richard Nixon in 1960. “In terms of debate tactics, Romney was on the offense most of the night,” a glum Howard Fineman acknowledged, while a shell-shocked Chuck Todd admitted that the result “automatically elevates Romney as a credible alternative” and later added, in reference to the Obama camp’s post-debate mood: “They know they lost tonight.”
Everybody knew it. . . .

Please read the whole thing — and hit the freaking tip jar!

 





 

UPDATE: “Ride right through them, they’re demoralized as hell!”

 


MITT ROMNEY WINS FIRST DEBATE

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UPDATE 10:32 p.m. ET: Damn. Mitt won it straight-up. I’ve turned my TV to MSNBC to watch their reaction.

Rachel Maddow: “I personally do not know who won this debate.” This means . . . yeah, Mitt won. He beat the hell out of Obama.

Ed Schultz: “[Obama] created a problem for himself tonight on Social Security. He agreed with Mitt Romney. . . . I thought he was off his game.”

UPDATE 10:25 p.m. ET: Jim Lehrer babbling like an idiot about time running out. He wants Obama to get re-elected so ObamaCare will cover treatment for his senility.

UPDATE 10:22 p.m. ET: “Mr. President, you’re entitled to your own house and your own plane, but not your own facts.” Zing!

UPDATE 10:06 p.m. ET: They’ve been going back and forth about ObamaCare for 10 minutes. If you believe what Obama says — as opposed to the actual facts — then you’ll probably think he won this part of the debate. But if you believe what Obama says, you’re probably too stupid to read this anyway.

UPDATE 9:55 p.m. ET: More Twitter:

Instapundit is blogging a bit of the debate, and also links to the classic Vodkapundit drunkblogging.

UPDATE 9:45 p.m. ET: Been watching and Tweeting, so let me stick some of the Tweets in here:

Mitt just hit Obama on the Medicare issue. Obama hit back. Score it a draw, I think.

UPDATE 9:31 p.m. ET: Now they’re talking debts and deficits, and Obama’s worst broken promise: He claimed he’d cut the deficit in half and, instead, has doubled it.

UPDATE 9:20 p.m. ET: Obama and Romney are going back and forth on taxes. This is getting so good, I’m going to stop the frequent updates for a few minutes and just watch a while.

UPDATE 9:16 p.m. ET: Damn it, Obama keeps claiming to have given a “tax cut” to the middle class, but there was no rate reduction. Instead, he’s put in a series of tax credits, which are not the same as tax cuts.

UPDATE 9:13 p.m. ET: Romney gets a chance to hit back at Obama. Does pretty good, but gets a bit too “into the weeds” for my tastes.

UPDATE 9:11 p.m. ET: Obama comes back talking a lot of details, claiming Romney’s plan will “cost” money and have to be “paid for.” The government-centric point of view.

UPDATE 9:09 p.m. ET: Mitt opens with humorous anniversary congratulations, then goes into his 5-Point Plan for economic recovery. Having followed Mitt on the trail, I’ve heard this a zillion times, but for many of the 50 million people watching, it’s new.

UPDATE 9:07 p.m. ET: Obama opens with anniversary shout-out to Michelle. Then gets all into class warfare, blaming Bush, etc. He sucks.

EXPECT FURTHER UPDATES . . .

* * * PREVIOUSLY (8 p.m. ET) * * *

This verdict may shock some readers, seeing as how I’m publishing it a full hour before the debate actually begins.

Everybody’s playing the “expectations game” (notice Nate Silver trying to raise the ante for Romney) which, like a lot of what goes on in politics, is transparent bulls–t. Once you realize they’re trying to manipulate your perceptions, you should not be deceived, e.g.:

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos is doing his part for team Obama to make sure that Mitt Romney’s performance at Wednesday evening’s debate is a disappointment, one that will surely lead to his losing the election in November.
On Tuesday morning’s Good Morning America, the former Clinton Administration staffer sternly warned that if Romney doesn’t exceed expectations in the debates, he’s finished.
Why? Because Romney is under “huge, huge” pressure, Stephanopoulos says. And “he’s behind right now,” so if he doesn’t overperform, he’ll be considered a failure.

Give that everyone else is at it, therefore, I’m getting out ahead of this psychological gamesmanship with the pre-emptive declaration of Romney’s unquestional triumph.

And so this is your official “Debate Thread.”

Bite me, Nate. And bite me, George.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE II: Linked by the Lonely Conservative — thanks!

How to Deal With Biased Media Liars (and Other Such Worthless Scalawags)

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“My God, Scarlett O’Hara! When I start out to cut somebody up, you don’t think I’d be satisfied with scratching him with the blunt side of my knife, do you? No, by God, I cut him to ribbons.”
— Tony Calvert, in Gone With the Wind

Well, that’s merely an analogy — a colorful literary allusion — and my concern for the First Amendment requires that I condemn anyone who might contemplate dealing with even the most dishonestly biased journalist in the manner by which hot-tempered young Calvert dispatched his villainous hellbound foe.

No, not even Chris Matthews.

“When I start out to cut somebody up,” therefore, I’m limited to such damage as can be done by words, but I’m pretty handy with a rhetorical knife. With that in mind — and thinking what might possibly pain the conscience of even the most shameless liberal hack — please read my latest column at The American Spectator.

And be sure to read it all the way to the end.

Is The DNC Raaaaacist for Saying That a Black Man Can’t Win a Debate?

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by Smitty

Bluegrass Pundit points to the NY Post quoting Brad Woodhouse engaging in a little soft bigotry of low expectations:

It’s a further lowering of expectations ahead of the first debate in Denver next week. Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse tells Fox News he thinks Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will win.
Woodhouse says the way the DNC sees it, challengers win the first debate when they are up against incumbents.
“Mitt Romney has had a lot more time to debate, the president has not debated in the past four years in terms, of a campaign debate. I think the president will hold his own, but he’s not known for sound bites. And these are 60 second, 90 second responses.”

Not known for a bites. Probably because he didn’t build that.

Seriously, Brad: get stuffed. The American people have had three and a half years of Barack “Spock” drivel crammed in an uncomfortable location. The guy can stand and deliver. If he’s so purportedly smart, let him dazzle us with brains.

This notion that a black man somehow ain’t packin’ the gear in a debate after 3.5 years on the job as President is the saddest sort of raaaaacism.

Do You Believe the Ohio Polls?

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McDonald’s sign in Galion, Ohio, offers congratulations to local
high school football players David Nay and Nathan Cass.

GALION, Ohio
A recent series of three polls — by the Washington Post, Quinnipiac and Fox News — show Mitt Romney getting blown out of the water in Ohio, and those of us who are skeptical about these numbers (c’mon, 10 points?) are being derided as “poll denialists.”

It is worth pointing out that these polls were all taken in the immediate aftermath of the “secret video” uproar, and all of them are now at least five days out of date. The Fox poll was taken Sept. 16-18, the WaPo poll was taken Sept. 19-23 and Quinnipiac’s poll was taken Sept. 18-24.

There has been no new public polling since Monday, which is significant in that Paul Ryan and Romney spent three days this week campaigning in Ohio — Lima, Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Cleveland and Toledo. We must ask: Do polls matter more than the campaigns themselves? Do the national media control the narrative to such an extent that 4,000 people turning out for Romney in Toledo can be dismissed as irrelevant? Is all the grassroots effort by Americans for Prosperity moot?

We’re still four days away from the first debate, Wednesday in Denver, and yet we are being told that Obama’s headed for a landslide victory in Ohio, and thus re-election Nov. 6.

Really? Reports of declining Democrat registrations don’t justify even a tiny smidgen of doubt about this allegedly foregone conclusion? Let’s consult another poll:

A new survey by Gallup asked Americans how much trust and confidence they have in the mass media — newspapers, television and radio — when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly: a great deal, a fair amount, not very much, or none at all. The result shows that “trust” disappeared long ago. Trust becomes disgust.
Gallup has been taking this measurement over the past decade or so, and the erosion of trust has been consistent and steady since at least 1998. Twelve years ago, 53 percent of Americans told Gallup that they had “a great deal” or at least “a fair amount” of trust in the media. By this year, only 40 percent of Americans put their trust in newspapers, television and radio to tell them what’s going on in the world. A remarkable 60 percent said they had “not very much” trust or “none at all.”

How do underdog candidates — and let’s admit Mitt is the underdog at this stage of the campaign — cut through the media filter? On Wednesday, for the first time, Americans are going to get a chance to see Romney and Obama on the same stage, head-to-head, and if you think that debate is going to be a walkover for Obama, you don’t remember the Jan. 26 debate in Jacksonville, Fla., where Mitt fatally lacerated Newt Gingrich.

Keep in mind that Romney doesn’t have to be declared hands-down winner of that debate in order to “win.” All he has to do is to “look presidential,” avoid gaffes and get in a couple of good zingers and everything that happened before will be forgotten.

Should that happen — if Mitt scores at least a draw in the first debate — the narrative changes and, by the time Paul Ryan meets Joe Biden in the Oct. 11 vice-presidential debate, we’ll be hearing about a race that is a neck-and-neck horse race.

Yet there are those Ohio polls, and there are those who are willing to take the polls as evidence that the campaign is all but over. Doug Ross lists some of the improbable beliefs necessary to buy into this argument:

[Y]ou have to believe that the Tea Party never organized or simply disappeared into thin air
[Y]ou have to believe that Obama’s act of adding $6 trillion — 60 percent — to the national debt, which has resulted in the country’s first credit downgrade, is wildly popular . . .
[Y]ou have to believe that the 2010 tidal wave election never happened

You don’t believe that, do you? No, of course not.

Frankly, despite all the certainty of the pollsters and pundits, I don’t think most people in Ohio (or anywhere else) are paying much attention to the campaign at this point. In the parking lot of this McDonald’s in Galion, there is not a single car with a bumper sticker for either Obama or Romney and, driving around the state this week, I haven’t seen a lot of yard signs.

Obama may be ahead in Ohio right now, but the campaign is far from over, because many voters haven’t yet made up their minds. The attempt by the Obamaphile media to create the appearance of an early decision — with the help of the polling firm of “Madoff, Marist, Quinnipiac and Ponzi” — ought to be rejected as the propaganda ploy it really is.

Understand that most Ohioans are currently more concerned with Ohio State football (the Buckeyes beat Michigan State 17-16 today) than they are with the upcoming election. These sensible Midwesterners, who two years ago elected Republican John Kasich govern0r and Republican Rob Portman to the Senate, are unlikely to buy into a lot of media hype going ’round.

 



 

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