Friday, October 12, 2012

Big F'ing Deal, Joe

Oh, there you go again Joe. Biden came out in last night's debate doing exactly what I thought he would do. No, I didn't expect the creepy Cheshire grin, but I expected him to be angry, over the top, rude and combative, and boy, did he deliver.  The strategy on Ryan's side seemed to be to step back and let Biden make an ass of himself. One of my rules in debate is if my opponent is going to make himself look foolish, step out of the way and let them do it. I just hope it worked in this case; I would have liked to have seen Ryan be a little more forceful. It would also be good to have someone actually moderate a debate and not participate in it or allow one person to interrupt the other one some 82 times in 90 minutes.

Overall, I was disappointed by the debate. Biden got away with too much antagonism and has re-energized the Democrat base. He also got away with lying his ass off while accusing Ryan of doing the same. Right from the outset when he said "not a single thing he just said is true" he was on shaky ground, as is anyone who speaks in absolutes as an absolute is easily disprovable - but then again, someone has to go back and disprove it and the MSM will not do that.  His lies are cataloged here, here and I'm sure elsewhere as well, but I'll wager you won't see them on NBC (though you probably will see a thorough breakdown of everything Ryan said).  Paul Ryan made the comment last night that the Obama campaign has adopted a strategy of "attack, blame and defame" and that is the truth.  The Obama/Biden/DNC strategy is "a lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth catches up." They also know that the lie gets printed on page one, the correction on page 30.  On TV the correction never gets aired unless it's become so well known that the network has to mention it to given themselves a semblance of credibility.

I would have liked Ryan to say something to this effect last night: "Joe, you can keep interrupting me and throwing out numbers and statistics all you want, but it won't change the fact that you've failed as a leader, your policies have failed, and Americans are smart enough to see through your smokescreen of noise and funny faces."  Beyond his grimaces, that's all Biden did - he was able to denigrate Ryan for not providing specifics on the Romney plan to cut taxes, while avoiding providing any specifics himself by dumping a truckload of numbers on the public, and the 'moderator' let him get away with it. Despite all the talking Biden did, all the throwing out of numbers, all the bluster, he did not provide anything that amounted to a policy or a plan to accelerate the recovery.  No one in the media is going to call him on it, either, and Ryan missed his chance.

For the debate next week, Romney needs to shut Obama down. We've seen the DNC blueprint last night. Obama is going to be more animated and he'll be on the attack. But he's not good at extemporaneous speaking. I would like Romney to focus on the Obama failures and lies, and when confronted with a new lie to call it out and refute it on the spot. He has the ability to do so without looking like a deranged mental patient like Biden.

In the end, I think people who watched the debate saw Biden either laughing at Americans being killed in Libya, or mocking his opponent - these are the only two options available, and neither of which is a good thing for a sitting vice president to be doing. On that alone, I think Biden lost this debate, but it wasn't because Ryan performed overwhelmingly better than Biden.  Still, while the Democrat base is energized by last night, everyone else, notably women and independents, were turned off by Biden's antics, and that is a big f'ing deal.

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