It’s Friday, October 5th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

At the top of today’s order, morning-after commentary regarding what can only be termed as Mitt’s Big Break.  First up, courtesy of Speed Mach and the New York Post, Michael Goodwin convincingly suggests….

This one’s the game-changer

The big question going into last night’s debate was what Mitt Romney had to do to change the course of the campaign. My answer was simple: Romney had to win the debate. He did. Clearly and resoundingly. Romney aced the biggest test he has faced so far and, as a result, the race likely will enter a new phase. The challenger is alive and well.

President Obama had his moments, especially his closing argument. But overall, he looked small and frequently uncertain of his own points. He distorted Romney’s plans in an effort to avoid debating them, a sign he can’t handle the truth. At other times, he waded into the weeds in ways that only wonks could appreciate.

When it came to defending his record, Obama resorted to filibusters that moderator Jim Lehrer was too willing to tolerate. As though his handlers were whispering in his ear, the president trotted out his favorite campaign clichés: millionaires and billionaires, oil companies corporate jets, fair share, fair shot. It was all stale stuff.

He lashed Donald Trump and mentioned his dead grandmother to make a point on health care. He talked of “investments” instead of spending and, of course, mentioned Osama bin Laden in a debate on domestic issues. As for specifics, I have no more idea what Obama would do in a second term than I did before the debate.

Romney, by contrast, was fresh and determined to press the economic argument that remains his strength and Obama’s weakness. In a nutshell, he put the difference between them as his favoring jobs and growth, while Obama favors food stamps and redistribution. He was at his best explaining his plans on tax reform, job creation and cutting the deficit and comparing them to the president’s poor record that has left 23 million Americans unemployed or underemployed.

Romney, too, had a strong closing argument, and effectively stole one of Obama’s core 2008 pledges: to unite the country. Romney promised that he would work with Democrats and Republicans in Congress to get the country working again. It was a slick move that implicitly pointed up one of Obama’s admitted failures.

Most important, Romney filled the screen with a presidential presence. I confess to being surprised that he brought his A game to the biggest night of his political life. He was a man with a plan, and had an impressive command of his facts.

I was also surprised that Obama seemed flat and somewhat caught off guard. His first mistake was to mention it was his wedding anniversary and call his wife “Sweetie,” a cringe-inducing moment that felt totally contrived. He clearly has grown used to having control and, toward the end, brushed aside Lehrer’s offer of a two-minute answer to speak for five minutes. The imperiousness overwhelmed his points. The incident also revealed that you don’t need to know what two minutes means once you’re president of the United States!

Even Obama’s usually cool style was off. He talked most of the time to Lehrer, and only occasionally to Romney. By contrast, Romney often turned to face Obama, a direct and engaging style that showed a toughness we have too rarely seen.

To be sure, Romney has burst out of his defensive crouch before, only to retreat after a short time. If he does that again, he will have wasted a precious victory. But if he stays on his toes and continues to explain how his presidency would benefit middle-class Americans, he will be giving himself a real chance to win the job.

And, judging from the way he performed last night, Obama might even be looking forward to life after the White House.

We know we can’t wait to wish him bon voyage!

In a similar vein, the WSJ details the drama as….

Romney Takes the Stage

The Republican dominates the first Presidential debate.

Election Day is only a month away, but for our money the Presidential campaign really began in earnest Wednesday night in Denver at the first Presidential debate. Mitt Romney met the challenge of appearing Presidential, showed a superior command of fact and argument than the incumbent, and made a confident, optimistic case for change. These columns have often criticized the former Massachusetts Governor, but this was easily his finest performance as a candidate, and the best debate effort by a Republican nominee since Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Mr. Romney has been losing the tax issue to Mr. Obama, but he certainly didn’t lose the tax debate in Denver. For the first time, the Republican made a systematic, principled case for his tax reform and for lowering tax rates as a spur to economic growth. Mr. Obama tried his familiar class warfare lines and the need for a “balanced approach” to deficit reduction that must raise taxes. But Mr. Romney rose above by making the case that higher taxes will hurt growth and job creation and thus reduce government revenues.

His one mistake was saying that a reform like his has never been tried before, when he could have said Ronald Reagan did it with Democrats in 1986. But overall, and more than once, we caught ourselves saying, Where has this Romney guy been hiding?

Mr. Romney was also strong and fluent on health care, somewhat remarkably. The only major point Mr. Obama scored was noting the similarities between his plan and Mr. Romney’s Massachusetts model, but the Republican brushed off those attacks by describing the broader harm ObamaCare will inflict on U.S. medicine and the abusive way Democrats jammed the bill through Congress over the objections of the American public.

In particular he put Mr. Obama on the defensive about the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board, the 15-member “expert” and unelected commission that will tell doctors how to practice and seniors the treatments they are allowed to receive. The President struggled to stick to his own talking points, perhaps because the damaging details speak for themselves.

As contributor Todd Stollberg remarked, that HAD to hurt!

Mr. Obama was also on the backfoot on Medicare, which was supposed to have doomed Mr. Romney. For the first time we can recall, the President was forced to at least semi-accurately describe the plan Mr. Romney is running on and not his own distortions. That’s likely because he knew his opponent would expose the straw men, and Mr. Romney responded in detail about why “premium support” isn’t a voucher program that will consign Grandma to a snowbank.

The Republican stitched all of this together into a frontal assault on the economic reality of the last four years. This is something Mr. Obama doesn’t want to discuss, preferring to talk about “the mess” he inherited and the hope and change that will finally arrive in a second term. He even said during the debate that the crucial question is “not where we’ve been but where we’re going.”

Mr. Romney kept reminding Americans about the unpleasant facts about where we’ve been as a way of casting doubt on what four more years of Mr. Obama would be like. But significantly, and for the first time, he didn’t merely criticize the Obama record.

Mr. Romney went further and explained with some specificity how his policies would improve the lives and economic prospects for middle-class Americans. He was notably good on the case for education choice for poor families, while fending off Mr. Obama’s stock line that Mr. Romney is anti-education because he won’t pay to hire 100,000 more union teachers.

The President seemed off his game overall, verbose as he often is but with his famous restraint seeming more diffident than cool as Mr. Romney bore in with details about his record. It’s clear Mr. Obama isn’t used to someone challenging the attack lines that he uses to describe Mr. Romney’s various proposals on the stump.

So when Mr. Romney defended those plans with his considerable and passionate detail, Mr. Obama seemed to have no answer but to repeat the charges. He was out of arguments. This was notable in particular on taxes, where Mr. Obama’s trope that Mr. Romney would raise middle-class taxes by $2,000 was left shredded on the stage as a patent falsehood.

It’s going to be fascinating to see how this debate influences a race that the pundit class and most Democrats had all but declared to be over. The Romney campaign apparatus now has its own challenge to rise to the level of Wednesday’s performance by the candidate, in particular by improving its lackluster advertising that continues to traffic in general promises and platitudes. We’d also suggest a reworked stump speech.

What worked for Mr. Romney on Wednesday was his confident demeanor and mastery of the policy detail, stitched together into a critique of the incumbent and clear explanation of the election stakes. Undecided voters saw a different challenger than they’ve been reading about, or seeing on TV, and the race is finally on.

Next up, courtesy of the The Washington Examiner, Michael Barone offers his….

Thoughts on the first presidential debate

Like….you expected something more from him without a teleprompter and pre-screened questions?!?

Then there’s this from John Hinderaker writing at Powerlineblog.com, courtesy of George Lawlor:

It’s Over

I’ve been watching presidential debates for quite a few years, but I have never seen one like this. It wasn’t a TKO, it was a knockout. Mitt Romney was in control from the beginning. He was the alpha male, while Barack Obama was weak, hesitant, stuttering, often apologetic. The visuals were great for Romney and awful for Obama. Obama looked small, tired, defeated after four years of failure, out of ammo. One small point among many: Obama doesn’t even know how to stand at a podium, as he continually lifted up one leg. He would be below average as a high school debater.

There were 1,800 people on Power Line Live tonight, and the verdict was unanimous: it was a great night for the forces of good. Tweets through the evening tracked how the debate went. At one point, as it became obvious that Romney was dominating, my 16 year old daughter tweeted: “So uh is now a good time to mention that I’ve met Mitt Romney?” Iowahawk kept up a steady stream, including gems like: “‘What the hell is this? I was specifically told I’d be debating John Kerry.’–Inside Obama’s head.” And: “Breaking: Choom Gang revokes Obama’s membership.”

Through the evening, Romney came across as the competent executive, in command and optimistic. Obama was the defeated, out of ammo failure whose ideas have been tried and found wanting. I don’t know how the Democrats will try to spin this one, but it just doesn’t matter. There was only one credible leader on the stage tonight, and it wasn’t our failed president. This was a huge night for the cause of freedom, one from which, one hopes, Obama can’t recover. The pitiful figure that we saw tonight was the real Obama, the loser behind the curtain who is finally revealed as an utter hoax.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan, maybe the dumbest of all the liberals, writes: “This was a disaster.” Yes, it definitely was a disaster. Meanwhile, they are ballistic on MSNBC. Too funny! Now they think Obama is an idiot. Well, for once they are coming close to the truth.

MORE: CNN finds Romney “winning” 67-25. That is an unbelievable blowout.

JOE adds: The body language telegraphed a lot. Barack Obama spoke down to viewers:

While Mitt Romney spoke up:

And John was right about Barack Obama’s amateurish posture. Narcissus was just passing the time:

We also had an additional comment on the ostensibly “neutral” moderator from KT in VA, who noted:

“Jim Lehrer looked like a substitute teacher in a class full of unruly 3rd-graders: over his head and out of control.”

Here’s the juice: that Mitt beat Barack like an Hawaiian drum….

….is simply beyond dispute. What inquiring minds want to know is how Team Tick-Tock plans to respond between now and the next debate, which will focus on foreign policy.

Here are two factors to consider: first, the Benghazi debacle should have been Obama’s Iranian Hostage Crisis; only the MSM doing their biased best to bury the story has thus far has prevented it costing him another term.  Second, as the only real foreign policy “achievement” The Dear Misleader can claim is bagging bin Laden (hardly a singular success), he’s going to be looking, and looking hard, for a similar opportunity.

At the risk of sounding sick or twisted to some, we’ll borrow a phrase from Nicky Santoro in Casino and state for the record that as soon as it’s apparent there’s the slightest chance B. Hussein could lose this election….

But in this case, the guys gettin’ clipped will be some unsuspecting Muslims somewhere in the Middle East….who may or may not have had anything whatsoever to do with the Benghazi murders.  Dimocrats won’t care….as long as The Dear Misleader has another foreign policy “triumph” to trumpet.  Can anyone else recall when waterboarding constituted the apex of Evil?!?

Remember, you heard it here first.

Moving on to the Indoctrination Section, FOX News‘ Todd Starnes tells us how a Philly…..

Teacher Compares Student’s Romney Shirt to KKK Robe

A Philadelphia high school teacher is under investigation after she reportedly ordered a student to take off a t-shirt supporting Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and compared the shirt to a Ku Klux Klan sheet. The incident occurred at Charles Carroll High School in Port Richmond. When the student refused the order, she tried to throw the girl out of class.

The teacher reportedly told the 16-year-old student that the high school was a “Democratic school” and then threatened to use a marker to cross out Romney’s name.

Philadelphia School District spokesman Fernando Gallard confirmed to Philly.com that, “a teacher made some comments to a student wearing a Romney t-shirt in their classroom.” “The comments were of a political nature, and also of a personal nature,” he told the newspaper. “We are looking into the comments, and the conduct of the teacher.”

Gallard said the student was within her rights. “She was expressing her freedom of speech, and was not in violation of any school or district policy,” he told the newspaper. The incident became public when the child’s father called radio station IQ 106.9 FM.

In the meantime, the teacher was switched out of the class “to allow the student to feel comfortable to come to the class.”

Note there’s no problem identifying the innocent; only the guilty remain nameless.

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this from Balls Cotton….

….and this from Randy Jugs which strongly suggests if The Obamao were a stock, supporters would be well advised to short him:

Finally, we’ll call it a week with further proof The Apocalypse is Upon Us….as well as chilling confirmation America’s on the brink of surrendering her technological edge:

Wanna Build A Tank? DARPA Offers $4M Prize For Marine Amphib

Seriously….what’s next; design your own space shuttle?

Oh….sorry; they already tried that.

Magoo