What debate were YOU watching?

Last night was another stellar performance by Mitt Romney. In fact, I'd argue that last night was perhaps the single best indictment of the Obama economic record ever publicly made by a candidate for office. And just as an aside, maybe I'm wrong but I'm getting the feeling you found Romney's first debate performance less than impressive. Buddy, even that bastion of right-wing propaganda CNN had that debate polling at 72% to 27%, Romney. The first debate performance single handily changed the momentum of the race. It's why Chris Matthews had a melt down, about which you posted. Look at these post-first debate swing in numbers from the Pew Research Center:

This was a direct result of the first debate. I mean what more do you want man?

To last night... yes he did allow the Benghazi issue to get away from him, but (unlike I thought) it is the third/next debate that is solely focused on foreign policy and Romney will have more than adequate opportunity to expose the inconsistency in that scandal. And in fact the missed opportunity may have caused the chance for a greater opportunity in Monday's foreign policy debate because Romney got the POTUS "on the record" (Romney's actual words) claiming he was calling the Benghazi assault a terrorist attack starting on 9/12. On Monday night he can now compare that claim to the 9 days that followed in which the entire administration, including Obama's speech at the UN (where he mentioned the video 6 times), emphatically reiterated that the attack was a result of spontaneous protests. Now we can get into whether Obama was directly referring to Benghazi on 9/12 when he used the phrase "terrorist attacks" or not, but that argument, essentially over what the definition of "is, is", is not the point. The point is the POTUS is now claiming that from day 1 he thought it was a terrorist attack. That's incredible! It means he purposely misled the world for the 8 days that followed. And by the way, it's now clear that State Department officials watched the attacks unfold in real time. The woman at State whom claims this is true, her name has been made public. We have someone specific to point to and say "she knew." So what do Biden and the rest mean then when they say "we were told it was due to protests"? By whom? When? How come State has a tape of it, yet the POTUS was informed of a fictional protest? Trust me, this will prove fertile ground come Monday. Obama ducked it Tuesday, thanks largely due to Candy Crowely, but he dug himself into a deeper hole for Monday.

But here's the more important point in this presidential race as of 10/17/12: Romney has  owned the room on the economic issue since that first debate, and did so again last night. And it's because, in my opinion, he employed a simple, potent strategy for defeating the flowery "hope and change" rhetoric of 08'- compare it to the now established record. When that black gentleman said to the the president (via his question) "I'm less than enthusiastic this time around", the answer Romney gave during his 2 minute follow up starting with, "I think you know we can do better", was a specific, uninterrupted prosecutorial style verbal indictment of the Obama failures (including this fallacy of creating  5 million jobs) that has never been accomplished by any sitting member of the GOP in four years. And Romney repeatedly returned to this list of failures, including the fact that the president had four years, two including control of both houses of congress, to fulfill his promise that he'd pass "sweeping immigration reform in my first year" yet failed to even propose legislation. Romney succinctly compared the cost of gasoline today at nearly $4, versus that of January of 2009 when the national average was $1.86 a gallon. Obama's only retort to gas prices was, "The reason prices were so low then was because the economy was on the edge of  collapse." What does that even mean, that now that we're away from the edge they're back to normal at $3.86 a gallon? WTF? That was perhaps the most pathetically weak answer of the night, and it should leave every undecided voter scratching their heads and wondering if this guy grasps even the most basic of economic issues. For example, most registered voters today remember that gas was cheap under the Clinton era dot.com boom ($0.99/gallon). Romney won that exchange in a walk. Romney also crushed the POTUS on the oil and coal issue, in particular the topic of oil leases on federal land. That exchange was borderline emasculating for the CIC. He articulated at every opportunity that the president promised health care costs would go down two-thousand five hundred dollars, and yet they went up by two-thousand five-hundred dollars on average per family; that 32 million Americans were on food stamps in January 09', now 47 million fill those roles; that 1 in 6 Americans are now living in poverty; that the president promised, at this point, that we'd be at 5.2% unemployment and the difference between that number and where we are constitutes 9 million Americans out of work (which is a more effective way of comparing 5.2% and 7.8%); and that the president promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term and instead has doubled it. And in a statistic I thought particularly provocative, that even wonks like us haven't heard, there are 3.1 million more women in poverty now than when the president took over. These are simple, easy to grasp failures that people see and feel in their everyday lives and Romney relentlessly exposed them last night. Obama routinely had to look to Candy Crowely for a bailout of the conversation. It was a prosecutor with a hostile witness on the stand and quite frankly I feel it was a devastating performance by Mitt. I'm being serious when I ask if you watched the entire debate, uninterrupted? If not, watch it again.

Look - you must bare in mind two very crucial things in regard to last night's debate. 1) everyone (especially the Left) agreed that Obama's first debate performance was a disaster. In fact when we look back on it, perhaps historically so. Romney emerged with an 8 point swing nationally and in 7 of 11 battleground states as a result of that first debate (you can read its devastating impact on the polls from Leftist columnist Andrew Sullivan here.). My point being is all that Obama had to do to be successful in the second debate was show up because he could have hardly done worse than his first performance. 2) Most analysts/polls are claiming that overall the second debate was a draw or a slight edge to Obama (again, see point #1). It was not an equivalent knock out as Romney had in the first. However, when asked whom won the economic portion of last night's debate CBS has it Romney 55%, Obama 37%. CNN has it at 65% Romney to 33% Obama. And this is a critical stat Titus - a sitting president can not lose the economic argument and win the election. And the proof, as they say, is in the pudding: on Monday morning the grand puba of presidential polling, USA Today/Gallup opened up Romney at a 50% to 46% lead over the president. As the challenger, reaching that 50% mark was a crucial a milestone. This morning USA Today/Gallup has it 51% to 45%, Romney. The task of last night's debate for Obama was to stave off Romney's momentum. Obama failed.

Do me a favor. In fact, do yourself a favor - you, Jambo, me, people like us, we have a litany of visceral, factual debates with team Obama on a regular basis. In our heads, in the car listening to the radio, watching television. So don't fall into this trap where you compare Romney's arguments to the ones you would, and have, made. He'll never measure up to that standard, believe me. But that's ok. With 20 days left to the election he's not going after the Titus/Jambo/Ryan vote. He's got us. His job at this late date is to move anyone that is movable from 08', into his camp. And winning the economic issue at a 2:1 ratio is exactly how he's going to accomplish that goal. So pack your pipe, have a swig of Jameson and relax, he's gonna bring this thing home buddy. The polls are bearing that out.