Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

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Romney wins first debate: spanks dazed and confused Obama like a foolish child

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The debate was the worst ass-kicking in a Presidential debate that I have ever seen.

The transcript is here. And here’s the story on what went down.

Excerpt:

GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney tonight charged that President Barack Obama’s jobs plan is a failure, with millions out of work and looking for help.

“My plan is to put people back to work in America,” Romney said tonight at the first of three presidential debates scheduled for the 2012 presidential election season.

“Look at the history of the past four years. We have 23 million people unemployed. Keeping with the status quo is not going to work for the American people.”

Obama returned to his oft-repeated theme of blaming George W. Bush, asserting the taxation approach Romney was proposing was nothing more than a return to the “trickle-down” economy of the Republican plan.

Obama began the debate by reciting familiar campaign themes, suggesting once again that his administration inherited from Bush one of the worst economies in the history of the United States.

But Romney struck a theme of energy independence and advancing small business as keys to getting the U.S. economy growing again. He accused Obama of proposing “trickle-down government,” represented by more government regulation and more taxation.

Romney disputed Obama’s assertion he was locked into a tax cut, charging that under the Obama administration the middle class has been pressed by reduced income, diminished job opportunities and increased food and energy costs.

From the first moments of the debate, Romney looked Obama directly in the eye, took exception to president’s assertions about Romney’s policies, and gave more precise answers.

Obama pressed that Romney’s economic plan called for $5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in military budget increases, a program Obama asserted would demand tax increases on middle-income earners.

“Look, I’ve got five boys and I’m used to somebody saying something that’s not true and hoping that by repeating it I’m going to believe it,” Romney countered, asserting that everything Obama said about his tax program was inaccurate.

Obama insisted Romney’s tax-reduction plan of necessity would either increase the deficit or demand tax increases for the middle class, charging that under Romney’s definition Donald Trump would be a small business.

Objecting to Jim Lehrer’s interruption that the first segment was exceeding the 15-minute limit, Romney charged that Obama would increase taxes on small businesses at the cost of 700,000 jobs.

As the discussion advanced to the nation’s deficit, Obama reiterated his statement that he inherited a massive deficit, and appeared on the defensive.

“You have been president for four years, you said you would cut the deficit in half and you have run $1 trillion in deficits each of the four years,” Romney attacked. “That does not get the job done.”

Romney pointed out that when the economy was growing as slowly as it is now, more slowly than when Obama took office, this is no time to increase taxes.

“You never balance the budget by increasing taxes,” Romney insisted. “I don’t want to go down the path of Spain.”

And:

Romney said “ignoring the 10th Amendment is not the way to have a vibrant economy.”

Romney said the key to education is great teachers, and he raised a reference to the U.S. Constitution regarding citizen rights.

“I interpret our founding documents as providing a responsibility for religious freedom – to pursue happiness by taking care of the less fortunate – but massive government involvement limits freedom – the path we are taking is not working with 23 million Americans unemployed and 50 million on food stamps.”

Obama said the responsibility of the federal government was important in improving the educational system in America.

“Budgets reflect choices. If we cut taxes to benefit people like Gov. Romney and me, it makes a difference,” Obama. He again demanded specifics of the GOP plans.

“When it comes to making college affordable, whether it be two years or four years, we cut out the middleman and eliminated banks from making a profit in student loans. Gov. Romney believes in education but he tells kids to borrow from their parents to go to college.”

Romney responded, “Mr. President, you are entitled to your own airplane and your own house – but not to your own facts.”

Romney said Obama put $90 billion into green jobs, but half of the recipients went bankrupt and others were owned by contributors to your campaign, and questioned the number of teachers that would have hired.

Romney proposed grading schools to know which were succeeding and which were failing.

“Massachusetts schools are ranked No. 1 in education because I care for education for all our children,” Romney said.

It was so bad that even gay activist and radical leftist Andrew Sullivan called it for Romney: (H/T Hot Air)

Look: you know how much I love the guy, and you know how much of a high information viewer I am, and I can see the logic of some of Obama’s meandering, weak, professorial arguments. But this was a disaster for the president for the key people he needs to reach, and his effete, wonkish lectures may have jolted a lot of independents into giving Romney a second look…

The person with authority on that stage was Romney – offered it by one of the lamest moderators ever, and seized with relish. This was Romney the salesman. And my gut tells me he sold a few voters on a change tonight. It’s beyond depressing. But it’s true.

A post-debate poll from left-wing CNN found that an astonishing 67% of registered voters thought that Romney won the debate.

Even the radically left-wing National Journal says:

Call it the curse of incumbency. Like many of his predecessors, President Obama fell victim Wednesday night to high expectations, a short fuse, and a hungry challenger.

If Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney didn’t win the first of three presidential debates outright, he more than covered the spread. He was personable, funny, and relentlessly on the attack against a heavily favored Obama.

The president looked peeved and flat as he carried a conversation, for the first time in four years, with somebody telling him he’s wrong.

This debate was a blowout – and that’s just the reaction of the left.

Left-wing reactions on Twitter

Bill Maher: (HBO)

Bill Maher says Romney defeated Obama
Bill Maher says Romney defeated Obama

Peter Beinart (The New Republic)

Peter Beinart says Romney defeated Obama
Peter Beinart says Romney defeated Obama

Piers Morgan: (CNN)

Piers Morgan says Romney defeated Obama
Piers Morgan says Romney defeated Obama

And CHRIS MATTHEWS too:

Something else ran down his leg tonight, and it wasn’t a tingle, it was a tinkle.

Romney leading by 4 points in swing states

The latest poll of swings states from the left-wing Politico shows Romney leading Obama by 4 points, even with a 2 point oversampling of Democrats.

Breitbart explains: (links removed)

This week, Politico released its latest Battleground pollof the presidential race. Despite coming from the left-wing news site, the poll is one of my favorites. Its put together by respected pollsters from both parties, makes available its full cross-tabs and uses a very modest and reasonable turnout model for its sample. Including leaners, the sample in the poll is D+2. Nationally, Obama leads by 2-3 points, but, in the critical swing states, Romney now has the edge.

Each candidate leads in states considered “safe” for their party. In safe GOP states, Romney leads by 8. In safe Democrat states, Obama leads by a massive 22 points. But, in the more numerous and more important “toss up” states, Romney leads by 4, hitting the critical 50% threshold.

In the slightly different category of “battleground” states identified by Politico, Romney leads by 2, 49-47. Romney’s lead over Obama is powered primarily by his edge with independents. Romney leads Obama by 4 among the important swing voters. By 11 points, these voters think Romney would do better on the economy than Obama, 51-40.

Romney also has a big edge with middle class families, who prefer him over Obama by 15 points, 56-41.

My prediction for this election remains Romney 52, Obama 47.

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Seven stories about Mitt Romney that you won’t hear from the liberal media

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Mr. Hawkins wrote a column entitled “7 Incredible Personal Stories About Mitt Romney That You May Not Know“.

Here’s my favorite:

2) Mitt Romney gave milk to a V.A. hospital: This is the kind of thing Mitt Romney has done for people in need who cross his path.

He shared a story of a V.A. hospital in Boston that Mitt Romney stopped at while on the campaign trail running against Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy had made a thirty minute stop at the same location a couple of weeks prior.After touring the V.A. hospital, Mitt asked to look at their books. After he spent forty minutes going through their books, he told them, “You run a very good place, very tight. Very good.” Romney asked to go on another tour of the hospital, and after spending an hour and forty minutes there, the last question he asked was, “So what… what do you — what are you lacking? What do you need help with?”

The response? “Milk.”

Since the press was around, snapping photos and asking questions, Glenn explained that Romney did a really awkward joke where he said, “maybe we should teach everyone here how to milk a cow.”

Of course, that’s all the press cared to hear and ran with a story that claims “Mitt Romney says veterans should have to milk cows.”

“This is where it gets good,” Glenn started. “Romney calls him up the next morning.”

Romney first apologizes to the man who runs the hospital for any problems the attention from the press jumping on his words brought to the hospital. He next offers to help with the milk situation.

“Friday comes, and the milkman comes,” Glenn continues. “This is what the vets needed – they needed 7,000 pints of milk a week. Milkman shows up, 7,000 pints. The head of the V.A. hospital asks, ‘Where did all this come from?’ He [the milkman] said ‘an anonymous donor.’ Now, the guy didn’t put it together.”

Glenn explains that when the next week rolled around, the milkman shows up again, and continued to show up every week for two years. After two years of delivering 7,000 pints of milk a week to the hospital, as the milkman is retiring, the man finally gets him to reveal the anonymous donor.

It’s Mitt Romney.

“Mitt Romney was writing a personal check and didn’t want anybody to know for two years and provided the vets with all of their milk in Boston,” Glenn explained to listeners this morning.

When Romney became governor, he sent a bill through to help the V.A. hospital – it was down to the dollar.

Read the other six.

Meanwhile, taxpayers spent $1.4 billion on Barack Obama and his family.

Mr. Hawkins and I share the view that Romney was not the most conservative candidate in the Republican primary. I wanted Michele Bachmann first, then Rick Santorum when she dropped out. John wanted Newt Gingrich. But we would both rather have Romney, than Obama. At least now we know that there are some good things about Mitt Romney as a man, even if I don’t agree with him on policy.

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Romney gave 1,000 times as much to charity in one year as Biden gave in a decade

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From the Weekly Standard:

The release of Mitt Romney’s 2011 tax returns shows that he freely gave away more than $4 million to charity last year (about 30 percent of his income).  In comparison, when Joe Biden was first running for vice president, his tax returns showed that he had given away just $3,690 to charity over the previous ten years (about 0.2 percent of his income).  In other words, Romney gave away a thousand times as much to charity in one year as Biden gave in a decade.

That’s despite the fact that the Bidens earned well over $2 million over that decade.  In fact, their income was $320,000 in 2008, thereby putting them comfortably over the $250,000-a-year line that marks the entry point for “millionaires and billionaires” in Obama-speak.

Last year, Romney freely gave away more than $10,000 a day to charity — an impressive sum by nearly any standard.  Of course, it’s not too hard to beat Biden’s tally.  Over the span of that decade, or 3,650 days, he gave away $3,690 — an average of $1.01 a day.

Should we be surprised by this lack of charity from leftists? Well, Democrats are typically non-religious, as you might expect of people who support killing unborn children. In fact, Obama leads Romney 69% to 23% among non-religious people. So do people of no religion typically give a lot to charity, like the religious Romney, or are they mostly opposed to giving charity, like the pro-abortion secularist Joe Biden?

Consider this article from the Boston Globe.

Excerpt:

States with the least religious residents are also the stingiest about giving money to charity, a new study on the generosity of Americans suggests.

The study, released Monday by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, found that residents in states where religious participation is higher than the rest of the nation, particularly in the South, gave the greatest percentage of their discretionary income to charity.

The Northeast, with lower religious participation, was the least generous to charities, with the six New England states filling the last six slots among the 50 states.

[…]The most generous state was Utah, where residents gave 10.6 percent of their discretionary income to charity. Next were Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina. The least generous was New Hampshire, at 2.5 percent, followed by Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

[…]The study found that in the Northeast region, including New England, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, people gave 4.1 percent of their discretionary income to charity. The percentage was 5.2 percent in the Southern states, a region from Texas east to Delaware and Florida, and including most of the so-called Bible Belt.

[…]The study was based on Internal Revenue Service records of people who itemized deductions in 2008, the most recent year statistics were available. The data allowed researchers to detail charitable giving down to the ZIP code.

To ensure that states with differing costs of living were judged by the same standard, researchers calculated each state’s median discretionary income — the money remaining per household after variable but essential costs such as housing, child care and food are paid for. They then looked at the percentage of discretionary income that the typical household in each state gave to charity.

[…]Of the 10 least generous states, nine voted for Democrat Barack Obama for president in the last election. By contrast, of the 10 most generous states, eight voted for Republican John McCain.

If you think that this is the only life you have, and there is no one out there to hold you accountable, then it’s easy to be self-centered. Unless charity makes you feel good, there is no reason to do it on atheism. And when you don’t have a reason to be moral, then you often won’t be.