Subscribe to RSSRomney the clear victor of presidential debate
By Colton Darger
Gov. Romney shocked the youth of America by announcing his intention to cut funding for the nation’s favorite yellow bird. Despite Romney’s shocking anti-Sesame Street platform, he emerged the clear victor in a passionate debate. Throughout the course of the debate, President Obama was visibly uncomfortable as a cool, composed Romney unleashed a barrage of attacks on the president regarding his first term in office. In a surprisingly apathetic performance, the president refrained from referencing Romney’s recent gaffes, the governor’s history at Bain Capital, and even remained passive as Romney touted highly exaggerated and even misleading statements. While this was only one of three presidential debates, it represented a crucial moment in defining the remainder of the race.
In spite of the overall friendly atmosphere, which purposely put greater emphasis on the use of discussion based dialogue, Romney was able to force the president to spend the majority of his allocated time defending his own policies, without being able to criticize his opponent. This was clearly evident during the segment dedicated to the economy where Romney was able to present his ambiguous reform policies with minimal retaliation from the president. In order for President Obama to be considered a daunting opponent in the remaining debates, he must spend more time scrutinizing Romney’s plans — or lack thereof — and developing a strategy which doesn’t resemble the bantering of a confused senior citizen. As a result of Obama’s lackluster performance, Romney was able to claim victory in a debate where baseless reports and fraudulent statistics were the foundation of his arguments.
While Obama was successful at keeping the attention focused on Romney’s massive tax reductions, due to inadequate debating on the president’s part, Romney appeared morally and intellectually superior. The governor repeatedly claimed he was adamant about not increasing taxes on any Americans, and he believes during times of such slow economic growth, increasing taxes would be detrimental to the country’s recovery. As a counter argument, the president referenced a study done by the Tax Policy Center, which concluded Romney’s tax plan would effectively give sweeping tax cuts to the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. In a desperate attempt to refute these claims, Romney cited six “studies” confirming his plan was possible. According to Factcheck.org, none of the these studies were nonpartisan, and even included two blogs by Romney supporters. Despite what Romney may claim, there is still no reliable evidence proving his tax plans could lower tax rates for every citizen while simultaneously decreasing the nation’s deficit.
Throughout the debate, Romney incessantly purported either misleading or false statistics about unemployment, healthcare and the deficit: he claimed 23 million people are out of work, 20 million people will lose health insurance as a result of the Affordable Care Act and that the middle class has been “crushed” by the Obama administrations. While all of these claims are based on some sort of empirical evidence, Romney was able to contort reliable information into complete lies. While these fantasized statistics provoked harsh responses from just about every fact checking group in the country, Obama provided minimal retaliation.
In order for Obama to come out victorious in the next two debates, he will need to dramatically alter his debate strategy. The president must adequately analyze Romney’s plan and provide evidence from the myriad of reports about the feasibility of his proposals, rather than attempt to portray himself as a relatable guy who’s “doing the best he can.” If he does this, then winning a against a man who believes funding PBS is contributing to the nation’s fiscal dilemma should be an easy task.
