The only part of the debate I've heard was when Candy Crowley told Mitt Romney to shut up and sit down. That was really all I needed to hear. Will Romney please go away now?
Thirteen days after [President Obama] took presidential decorum to a Xanax extreme, he tucked away a dinner of steak and potatoes and then went out on stage with plenty of red meat for anxious supporters.Whether it will decisively reroute the course of the campaign remains to be seen, but the president emerged from the encounter having settled nerves within his panicky party and claiming a new chance to frame the race with just three weeks left. ...NYT
Romney, of course, punched right back. The bottom line is who told some truths and who lied. And who tried to get the moderator to help him?
Mr. Romney’s gaze kept straying over to the moderator, Candy Crowley of CNN, peevishly calling on her to give him more time and reverting to type as a man as passionate about rules and procedure as policy. He even asked her to intercede by calling her name three times, “Candy, Candy, Candy,” a recall of a much-mocked moment in a Republican primary debate when he repeatedly asked Anderson Cooper of CNN to referee a dispute. ...NYT
Mommy, he's stealing my toys!
Mommy didn't help.
Mr. Romney had more bad moments than the president, particularly when he challenged Mr. Obama’s claim that he early on called the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, a terrorist attack, and Ms. Crowley backed Mr. Obama’s version of events. Mr. Romney stammered a bit after that, blinked as the president spoke and never quite got back on a steady, confident foot. ...NYT
Candy Crowley is a Commie stooge, for sure.
The Times somehow nails a significant difference between the two men: "Both men are tall, slim and elegant. Mr. Romney inherited an aristocratic air; Mr. Obama is naturally regal."
"Regal"? Ummm. I'd say "authentic."
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-From Greg Sargent -- and Taegan Goddard:
Obama managed the delicate balance of keeping his rhetorical fist in Romney’s face — challenging his evasions and contradictions and falsehoods — without coming across as overly aggressive, desperate, eager to make up lost ground, or unpresidential. As Taegan Goddard rightly notes, this provoked Romney, pushing him into a testy mode where he tried to roll over the moderator, which didn’t go too well. ...Greg Sargent, WaPo
-From The Hill, a future for Romney's "binders full of women":
A more pointed response came from left-leaning super-PAC American Bridge, which slammed Romney for appointing mostly white men as judges while governor.
American Bridge also announced that it purchased the Web property BindersFullofWomen.com, promising to use the site to "educate voters on Romney's real record on issues important to women." ...The Hill
-From Nate Silver:
Scientific polls conducted after Tuesday night’s presidential debate in New York give a modest edge to President Obama. ...538
-From Paul Krugman -- about Romney's claims (before the debate):
What’s amazing here is the contempt the campaign is showing for the voters and the media. Unfortunately, that contempt may be justified. ...Economics and Politics
-Ezra Klein says we should read the transcript to see what the candidate were really saying. And he concludes that conservatives won't be happy with Romney:
Romney’s answers were worst when he was describing how he’ll accomplish his key conservative goals. He’s clearly not committed to the kind of tax reforms needed to pay for his tax cuts, and given his insistence that he won’t pass any tax cuts that increase the deficit or cut taxes on the rich, it’s hard to see how he’ll be able to pass large tax cuts at all. The same is true on his spending cuts, where he’s been, if anything, vaguer than on his tax cuts. Again, it’s hard to see a candidate this afraid of trying to sell the American people on the details necessary to make conservative policies work actually following through on those policies. ...Ezra Klein, WaPo
-Kevin Drum zeroes in on the Benghazi issue:
Obama played this really, really well. He let Romney dig himself into an ever deeper hole, and just smiled when Romney tried to get him to directly deny it. This turned out to be either lucky or smart, because it gave Candy Crowley a chance to fact check Romney and confirm that she was there and she heard Obama refer to Benghazi as an act of terror on the very next day. This is going to get a lot of play. ...Kevin Drum, MoJo
-American Conservative's Scott Galupo says "Obama won Round 2 -- Will it matter?"
In what may turn out to be the most replayed snippet of all three debates, Obama invited Mitt Romney to attack him over the administration’s handling of the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. “Please proceed, governor,” he said, cockily. Romney bungled the attack — the low-information viewer was led to believe Obama and his staff were never in doubt the attack was planned and perpetrated by terrorists — and even managed to praise the president for taking responsibility for it. ...American Conservative
