Posted on 10/08/2008 8:22:05 PM PDT by flyfree
Tuesday night's presidential debate was good entertainment. Both candidates were animated and loose throughout a wide-ranging discussion. Sen. Barack Obama did well in Sen. John McCain's favorite format. Mr. McCain was more focused and sharp than in the first debate, though the cameras above him made his balding pate more prominent.
Tom Brokaw was often a distraction: Did he really need over a hundred words -- including the name "Sherard Cowper-Coles" -- to ask about Afghanistan?
Mr. McCain's advocates were cheered by him advancing the theme that Mr. Obama lacks a record of accomplishment or bipartisanship in the Senate. Mr. McCain also described how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac constituted "the match that started this forest fire" that's engulfed our economy, and nailed Mr. Obama and Democrats for being AWOL on GSE reform.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
These are wildly uncertain times. Americans will go with the most certain candidate in the race: John McCain.
Try as he might, Obama has yet to knock McCain from that position. Now is not the time for ‘on the job training’.
And it most certainly is not the time for someone who is one step removed from Hugo Chavez, Louis Farrakhan, and every other piece of sh*t left winger on Earth. Take your little revival act and hit the road, Barack.
I have nothing but contempt for “undecided” voters.
They are either too stupid to know who to vote for, too lazy to find out who stands for what, or too dishonest to own up to their already existing decision.
If someone has not chosen by this time, they should not have the right to vote.
A lot of people HAVE already made up their minds - and thousands of them have already voted. It is expected that around 1 out of 4 Americans will cast their ballots before election day on November 4, so any strategy premised on waiting for the final few days is as last-millennium as buggy whips.
Helloooooo, John! Is anybody still awake in your campaign bus?
I must have missed that part of it.
Of recent candidates, only Michael Dukakis in 1988 has had a larger percentage of voters tell pollsters they believe he lacks the necessary qualifications to be president.
From none other than Karl Rove.
I cannot figure out how people can be so dense that they don’t know at this point who they want to be president. A war hero who has spent most of his life serving and suffering for this country and who has consistently stuck to his principles even if it may have gone against the wishes of his own party. Or an inexperienced product of corrupt Chicago politics who has spent his lifetime forming close relationships with terrorists, race baiters, and slumlords and whose political ideology is similar to that of Karl Marx (not to mention his intimidation tactics).
Are there really that many people in this country who are so stupid that they still, after nearly two years of campaigning, can’t choose between these two very different people? It’s just mind boggling to me....and very frightening.
I do think McCain has a big hole to dig out from under though, and there is not much time left. If I were McCain I would go completely negative over the next month and hit Barack with everything we have on him.
I'd bring up the Odinga connection and even let the "t" word slip out (treason). I'd run enough Rev. Wright ads to make sure he appears nightly in every household in every swing state in America. I'd show the Ayers / flag photo at every campaign stop.
The mushy middle would say it turns them off and the MSM would shout their false charges of racism, but it would shake up the race. It may be McCain's only hope at this late stage.
Only Karl Rove would find a presidential debate like that one "good entertainment"
You might disenfranchise the majority of the eligible voters - because The Sheep are the majority now.
I thought McCain did terrible in the debate. He let Hussein get away with saying just about anything without any real challenge.
I have given up on McCain’s capacity to get through this. I’m going to enthusiastically show up and vote against Hussein, and I hope to bring a few friends with me.
If Hussein loses the election, then we will be up against McCain as president. With a liberal democrat congress it won’t be easy, but it will be better than Hussein being in the Oval Office.
Yea, I doubt 1/4 of people will have voted before November 4th. Early voting numbers are way down in Iowa, and not so great in Ohio either.
In this race, I doubt if even 10% of them bother to vote. If you can't decide between these two, you can't decide which socks to put on in the morning.
Well said article. I agree with the assessment of the debate.
I think it depends, we see things through a Conservative Lense, how these undecided voters see things is another matter altogether.
IMO McCain should really highlight the differences on the War on Terror and Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, those issues are crucial to the defense of America, and Obama is pretty much helpless against being hit on his weakness there.
He likes the town hall format but having a mainstream media type exercise total control over which questions got put to the candidates kind of defeated the purpose.
I've always said voting is a no-brainer. I don't even need campaigns to figure it out. As long as there's a Democrat party, it's an easy choice. But this year is different. It's socialist vs socialist. McCain will not help our country. As Rush was saying a few months ago, we're screwed either way.
As for the voting public, they're idiots. Just look at Luntz's focus group. They're an embarrassment. They remind me of the kids who used to rate songs on American Bandstand. Pathetic.
Meanwhile, our media outlets and our educational system have been churning out commie propaganda for decades. I've never been as pessimistic for America as I am now. I can only hope that one day in the distant future, perhaps when man colonizes Mars or some other planet, Providence will see fit to empower great men to once again have a crack at self-government, and that this time, with not only Greece and Rome to draw from, but the United States, they'll do a better job of it.
Yea, yea, I'll vote McCain. But don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining. McCain sticks to his principles? And just what might they be?
I was talking to someone at work who described himself as a "moderate conservative" who declared himself undecided. He made a comment about there not being a real conservative in this race (and I didn't have a chance to ask about Palin before I had to go), and that he didn't remember the last conservative who ran for national office. (Hmmm...well, OK)
I get the feeling it isn't so much as being truly *undecided* as much as "hold your nose and vote". He joked that maybe he would just write in NO CONFIDENCE. I think some people just haven't committed to holding their noses.
While I am not excited at all about McCain, he is the better of the two and for brief moments, he convinces me that he truly means what he says about reining in spending, yada yada yada. I do think his hands were tied with the porky bailout bill, and he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't.
I must have missed that part of it.
I agree. I watched absolutely nothing happen during the first half-hour, started to fall asleep during the next half-hour, and was rescued by a phone call from a friend that saved me from watching the last half-hour. It reminded me of the Clinton-Dole debates from '96, except I'm older and more jaded now, and not as keen to waste my time trying to decide who's the lesser evil.
Rove is no fan of McCain.
Pray for W, McCuda and Our Troops
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