Quote of the Day: Romney Is No Taft Edition

“Governor Romney came in here tonight and showed he was presidential,” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said after the debate. “The president was small. … Only Mitt Romney spoke and acted like a president.”

- Fox News

It Must Be Loud In The Fox News Offices!

If you missed the debate last night, you will want to turn to transcripts to find out what was said. The snarky folk at Wonkette noticed last night that Fox News had an unfortunate audio gap (click on the above pictures to see it more fully) which was pretty lengthy! It was about a minute and a half of audio which couldn't be transcribed.

The good news is that every other news organization in the country managed to get the response down. It went like this:

We, of course, don’t want to have automatic weapons, and that’s already illegal in this country to have automatic weapons. What I believe is we have to do, as the president mentioned towards the end of his remarks there, which is to make enormous efforts to enforce the gun laws that we have, and to change the culture of violence that we have.
And you ask how — how are we going to do that? And there are a number of things. He mentioned good schools. I totally agree. We were able to drive our schools to be number one in the nation in my state. And I believe if we do a better job in education, we’ll — we’ll give people the — the hope and opportunity they deserve and perhaps less violence from that. But let me mention another thing. And that is parents. We need moms and dads, helping to raise kids. Wherever possible the — the benefit of having two parents in the home, and that’s not always possible. A lot of great single moms, single dads. But gosh to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone, that’s a great idea.

Thank heavens! I mean maybe someone was cleaning their AK-47 in the newsroom and it went off. In any event, good thing for Fox News that they're not the only network! Sometimes you need the biased totally-in-the-tank-for-Obama ones to take up the slack.

Hey by the way, Mitt Romney is for gun control! Who knew, right?

Guns, No Guns. Whatever.

...As far as I can tell, it has happened twice. Last week in New Hampshire, a gentleman had a gun strapped to his thigh. And yesterday a dozen gun-rights activists carried some weapons at an Arizona event. It was all perfectly legal and the Secret Service was hardly worked up about it.

I believe in gun rights, but I also think sporting guns at what are supposed to be peaceful, democratic protests sends the wrong message. But from what I've seen so far, I can't get super worked up over it, either.

-Jonah Goldberg

Yeah, I'm with Jonah. A dozen people showing up to a debate packing heat, or a guy hanging around Presidential appearances with an AR-15 slung over his shoulder may send the wrong message. Me, I am choosing to get super worked up over it. Then again, it's not like they're wearing T-Shirts critical of the president. Maybe we should cut these heavily-armed patriots a li'l slack, huh?

Immature Screen Grab Fun

Look, of course this is completely beside the point, it cheapens the discourse, it has no place is adult politics. From the debate last night.

Enjoy.

(h/t Wonkette) Probably not doctored, either, but if they were it wouldn't make any difference because it's completely beside the point.

Enough Substance - Now Style!

Among the other hilarious things about last night debate:

Republicans consider planetariums to be the worst pork of all. They hate 'em! We can add planetariums to the list that also includes community organizers, grieving widows, people who gave George Bush good advice, Kathleen Lopez, Spain, France, and John McCain.

In the post-debate period, Barack and Michelle Obama hung around for about forty minutes and worked the room. John and Cindy McCain left after ten minutes. Because they hate Americans.

Post debate polling of undecided voters indicated increased positives for both candidates, but Obama's were more increased. But you know, the undecideds are in the tank for him.

Some say referring to Obama as "that one" was disrespectful. Me, I found it a little charming.

What was up with everybody wanting to break the debate rules? And would it have killed Brokaw to just say "No, shut up, we're moving on." Instead, as paraphrased on Wonkette:

9:46 — Someone finishes answering a question, meaning Tom Brokaw has to yell at them both again. How do you teach those who don’t want to learn? Answer: catty sarcasm. Brokaw basically asks them if they’ve heard of clocks, which can be very useful — they tell the “time” — and especially useful during, say, TOM BROKAW’S LAST DEBATE BEFORE HE DIES. John McCain says “no”, he doesn’t know about these new Apple time gadgets or whatever, and thens asks Tom to act like a crazy retard with hands flailing to tell him the time instead.

Oh how I love Wonkette.

I wonder if Republicans are still going to demand that Obama should do another 9 Townhall-style debates? There's probably time if they both can squeeze 'em in, and I bet McCain would crack by number 3, tops. He seemed a barely tamped down caldron of rage already last night. And yet, the promised "gloves" didn't "come off." My guess - he realized he wouldn't be able to put them back on once he got started.

Something to Look For In Tonight's Debate

FiveThirtyEight, the poll aggregators, currently have the vote going to Obama. Specifically the popular vote is running 51.9% to McCain's 46.5% (or what Bush would call a hyper-mandate) and the electoral vote favors Obama 345.4 to 192.6. Those margins were smaller last week before the VP Debate, in which Sarah Palin reclaimed her mantle as the not-complete-failure we all hoped for.

Thus, the stellar Palin appearance didn't help. So tonight's debate is a potential game-changer for McCain. All he has to do is solidify the support he enjoys from a handful of Democrats who favor him and the handful of Republicans who do the same. And then, my friends, he can turn this thing around.

I can't find the link now (***update: found it!***) but this morning I read an interesting piece about the weird formalist rules to be followed in this townhall debate. Among others - the candidates are allowed to walk around, but only within a certain area that doesn't intersect with the other candidate's - questioners will have their mics turned off after they ask, to prevent followups. A fun drinking game - every time McCain mavericks the rules (steps beyond the bounds, asks for a followup from a sympathetic questioner) drink up. Every time Obama mentions the economy, drink. Bonus drinks if he works the economy into a foreign policy question.

Extra special bonus drinking if Obama says to McCain: "You say there is too much Americans don't know about me... what do you want to know? Ask me." This isn't part of the drinking game per se, just a warning that if the debate goes that far into negative territory you'll need to self-medicate.

Anyway, check the polls later in the week and see how the McCain strategy is reaping votes.

A Startling Palin Insight

Remember the debate Thursday night? Fairly early in the evening, Palin said this to Biden:

...And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.

It seemed kind of refreshing, an admission that there is very little actual debate in these things. But today in my Voice Acting class I got a hold of a script with the following notation:

Mild Southern accent, IF that's who you are. DO NOT READ THE ITALICIZED DESCRIPTIONS.

And that's when it hit me - Sarah thought she was delivering a talking point, but she was delivering the instructions instead! They've been drilling her, baby, drilling, for weeks now and it all sunk in, even the parts when they said, "And don't forget, you don't have to answer the questions they ask you. And for God's sake, don't talk to Biden or Ifill. Talk straight to the American people. And let them know your track record!" I'm not saying she is too stupid to know the difference, I'm saying it slipped out under pressure. 

I bet they also told her to go ahead and flirt with the camera a little.

But Enough About Me.

As I said, I think Sarah Palin won the debate last night. I'd leave it at that, but since I've lost all my conservative readers I don't feel the need to shelter their hypersensitivities any more. And some people are a little more concerned with substance than I am.

Sean at FIVETHIRTYEIGHT.COM liveblogged: It seems the meta thru-line of Governor Palin's performance tonight is that we need change from the folks who've been in Washington for a long time. That can't be a good thematic element. (Arguably, Biden said the same, but he didn't keep hammering it home so much, which means it's harder to pin on him.)

Courtesy THINK PROGRESS: On MSNBC, Pat Buchanan is quite vehemently insisting that Palin “wiped the floor” with Joe Biden whom he described as “boring.” Rachel Maddow tried to press Buchanan on whether Palin’s various factual errors were relevant, but Buchanan dismissed these concerns as “picayune.” This is important. I think most people who say Palin came out ahead last night are basing the judgement on the same likability criteria. If that matters. But again from fivethirtyeight maybe people aren't as shallow as they used to be: Biden won the CBS poll of undecideds 46-21, and the CNN poll of debate watchers 51-36. Independents in the large MediaCurves focus group panel went for Biden about 2:1.

Also from TP - 9:44: Palin just said that the plan that Obama, Maliki, and President Bush currently supports is “a white flag of surrender.”

ABC News pointed out that Palin's assertion that we are back down to pre-surge troop levels is incorrect. Iraq troop levels before the surge were at 133,500. While U.S. troop levels in Iraq have been in the 142,000 range recently, today they are at around 150,000 because of an ongoing troop rotation.

Also, Palin seems totally behind the Dick Cheney idea that the Vice President's office is some super-legislative entitity that runs all branches of government. I'm more traditional on this one: it's a limited role until the President either dies from a heart attack or is killed by panicked white supremacists. God Forbid in either case.

By the way, is it my imagination or was Sarah smiling a little too broadly when she addressed that subject?

De Bate! Dee Bate!

Tonight is the big VP debate, between Palin and Biden. It doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter. And yet I'm probably going to watch, not because it will influence my vote and not even because I could pick up a few talking points. I'm going to watch out of pure, white-hot schaudenfreude.

I'd predict that the affair will be a train wreck, but since there was a real train wreck right near me last month I'm trying to avoid that metaphor.

So what are the fun things to look for tonight in the contest between the woman who is afraid to speak and the man who can't shut up? You could enjoy a drinking game. One commenter suggests-

Palin: Reform

Biden: Look

- although Ana Marie Cox wants to take a shot any time Palin says "you know" which means she should be out within 12 minutes.

Then there is the Gwen Ifill controversey. You can look at it as a legitimate concern about bias or as an attempt to make excuses in advance, but the blogosphere is raising issues about Ifill's upcoming book, which is about African-American political figures. My conclusion? Ifill is totally in the tank for Colin Powell. (Hey, maybe she'll throw out a question about the "Powell Doctrine!" Fun!) The drive to get Ifill replaced with someone unbiased like (seriously) Britt Hume is counterproductive. For one thing, it reinforces the idea that Palin isn't ready; for another, both candidates have been training for weeks with a Gwen Ifill stand-in. Palin litererally wouldn't be ready.

By the way, McCain was okay with the Ifill choice yesterday, and a little queasy about it this morning.

Biden could roll with it - if you want to talk about lowered expectations, nobody is really watching the debate to see Biden say something stupid. It would be like watching the sun to see if it sets in the east. And no matter who is asking the questions, he has years of experience delivering non-answers to them.

In fact, this last point is why the debate (all debates, actually) will untimately be so squirm-inducing. No politician is stupid enough to answer a question honestly, and the best ones are so smart that they can answer a question while literally saying nothing. So tonight ingore substance. Won't be none! Watch to see who appears more nervous. The other one wins.

Flaunting My Ignorance

The first ever YouTube debates happened a couple of days ago. There's been plenty of comment around the blogosphere about 'em, and even a fun hoax which claimed that somehow the goatse had made it on to CNN. I don't want to say any more about the goatse. Look it up on Wikipedia, and even follow the links if you want to know more. You'll be sorry.

I didn't watch, perhaps out of goatsephobia, but mostly because it's too damn early. The campaign cycle is criminally lengthy and I don't need these people shouting VOTE FOR ME in my face when we all know that a year and a half from now the elections will have been cancelled because Dick Cheney has declared martial law. I've got to buy a barrel of rice and a water tank and shotgun shells. YouTube! Ha!

Also don't fool yourself that opening up the questions to WeThePeople was somehow more democratizing than the normal debate format. The questions were screened, and there were many thousands to choose from. Even taking out anything with goatse footage, any question a moderator would have asked on their own was surely supplied by SOMEONE in YouTubeniverse. If you think the debates are normally sealed off from reality, this is worse because it has the appearance of not being so. Which is more dangerous, a Terminator that's a titanium skeleton or a terminator that appears to be a flesh and blood policeman? I think you know the answer to that!

At this early stage it's not only safe to ignore the candidates posturings, it's VITAL. This is their training period. Pay attention next year. If you must vote in the primaries, start looking at them in that final month when they have their messages all polished up. If they can stay on message and only use small, easy-to-digest sentences -- vote for the other guy.