Willard's House of Zingers

If you haven't been following political news over the last few days, you may not be aware that Mitt Romney has spent the last couple of months memorizing zingers for the Presidential debates.  I guess they figured Mitt's own comedy stylings about how poor people are lazy and useless wouldn't play to a national audience.

I honestly can't think of a better example of how the Romney campaign is a total disaster.  First, they take a candidate who already seems wooden and robotic and try to pre-program him with witty one-liners, as if that will do anything other than make him sound more robotic and disingenuous.  And then, they leak the story before the debates.  So now, even if Mitt actually does think of something spontaneous and funny to say all on his own, nobody will believe it was spontaneous, or that Mitt thought of it.  Well done.

I grew up believing that Republicans were the grown-ups.  That maybe they didn't always have the best ideas, but they were always the best at running campaigns and winning political fights.  The McCain campaign was a three ring circus without a ring leader, and the Romney campaign is making the McCain campaign look like it was run by a highly skilled team of Nobel laureates.  This doesn't bode well for the party, is I guess what I'm saying.

Anyway, it's time for another debate.  Unfortunately, it's just Romney and Obama this time.  I don't know why they couldn't have invited some of the other Republican candidates just for fun.  I miss Herman Cain shouting random numbers at me, and Michele Bachmann staring me down with her crazy eyes, and Rick Santorum spewing hate from behind his comfy and safe sweater vest.  Actually, I don't really miss that last one. 

On a more serious note, why doesn't Gary Johnson get to play tonight?  He's on the ballot everywhere.  How did we wind up with such a rigged system?  I hope Gary Johnson charges the stage from the audience like an NBA draft pick who wasn't invited to the green room.  If it happens, Gary has my vote, even if the Secret Service kills him.

Here we go...fair warning, I expect this to be pretty boring and quite maddening.  Proceed with caution.

9:00PM: Tonight's moderator is PBS anchor Jim Lehrer, so each candidate will be leaving with a complimentary tote bag.  (I've been practicing my zingers too...Zing!)

9:01PM: I'm watching on CNN tonight because, well, because I feel sorry for CNN.  I might switch to Fox a few times just to see if they're doctoring the audio or digitally darkening Obama's side of the stage.

9:02PM: Lehrer's review of the rules was already PBS-caliber long and boring.  He says the crowd has promised to be silent.

9:04PM: We're starting with the economy.  Ohhhh!  The one thing neither of these guys wanted to talk about.

9:04PM: Obama just wished his wife a happy anniversary.  I couldn't be less interested in that, -1 point.

9:05PM: The first question was simply "what are the major differences between the two of you on how you'd create jobs?".  Obama went first and spent 0 seconds answering that question, finishing with "I'm looking forward to having that debate".  Psst...you're having it right now!

9:07PM: Romney's got a five point job plan.  #5 was about small businesses and, as far as I could tell, was the only one that actually sort of related to jobs.

9:09PM: Both of these guys have already talked about improving our education system.  I suspect neither of them have any idea how to do that.  I also have no idea, but I'm not running for President.

9:10PM: Obama keeps saying he agrees with Governor Romney on stuff.  He knows this is a debate, right?

9:11PM: Mitt Romney just said he doesn't have a tax cut in his economic plan.  I'm 100% positive that isn't even remotely true.  Also, did you know the President is personally responsible for gas prices?  I didn't know that either.

9:13PM: Three minutes later, Romney said he wants to lower tax rates.  My head hurts already.

9:13PM: Romney, "I like coal".  He added, "clean coal".  OK, but just to be clear, clean coal isn't a real thing.

9:16PM: Romney swears he doesn't want a 5 trillion dollar tax cut, and he won't "reduce the taxes paid by upper income Americans".  But then again said he wants to bring down rates.  I think Mitt's struggling with what words mean.

9:19PM: Obama is hammering Mitt with math.  Americans don't like math Mr. President...and, from the looks of it, neither does Mitt.

9:20PM: I just noticed that Mitt's American flag lapel pin is at least twice as big as Obama's.  Breaking news on Fox, Mitt is at least twice as American as the President.

9:21PM: According to the focus group response lines on CNN, the ladies love them some Obama.

9:22PM: Breaking news from Mitt, businesses don't want businesses to have to pay higher tax rates.  Important point about Mitt here, he looks at governing in terms of what businesses want, and what's good for businesses.  If you like that, you should probably vote for Mitt.  Me?  I'm not voting for Mitt.

9:23PM: Obama says he has math, common sense and our history on his side.  Yeah right, three things that all have a well known liberal bias.

9:27PM: Mitt promises to cut all government programs that aren't worth borrowing money from China to pay for, including "Obamacare" and PBS.  He said he likes Big Bird, but still no funding for PBS.

9:29PM: Mitt is smirking while Obama is talking about how the last Republican President burned down the economy and left it for Obama to clean up.  See, it's funny because Mitt wants to do the same thing again.

9:31PM: Romney thinks the President should have jumped on the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan.  Mitt doesn't actually support Simpson-Bowles, but he thinks the President should have.  He probably thinks the President should have supported it a year ago and then changed his mind a few times.

9:33PM: Mitt is throwing a medium sized tantrum about raising taxes.  Another important distinction here.  Obama wants to get more revenue by collecting more revenue, Romney wants to get more revenue through the magic power of tax cuts.  One of those things sounds more plausible.

9:36PM: Apparently Obama met a stripper in Vegas with 42 kids, or, er, a teacher in Vegas with 42 kids in her class.  Whatever, I hate these stupid stories about random people candidates met.

9:37PM: Romney just got a text message from Rick Santorum, who is infuriated because Mitt hasn't yet mentioned how the gays are destroying America.

9:38PM: Romney just mocked the Obama administration for investing in alternative energy.  Yeah, fuck that shit!  Oil and coal are an infinite resource, we just have to keep digging.

9:40PM: It's very important to Lehrer that we understand which segment of the debate we're currently in.

9:43PM: Mitt just invited people over 60 to stop listening.  Don't worry Mitt, they're mostly asleep by now, along with pretty much everyone else.  Come on, Mitt!  What happened to the zingers?

9:44PM: They're talking about social security and medicare now.  This is basically just a competition to see who can do a better job of demonizing the other guy.

9:45PM: Mitt wants to be very clear that his terrible plan to turn medicare into a voucher program will only screw "future people".

9:46PM: I would describe Mitt Romney's performance tonight as smirktastic.

9:48PM: Important point here.  Romney claims his medicare idea will give people a choice between the current medicare model or private plans, but that's not really true because sucking money out of the current model and putting it into private insurance will weaken and ultimately kill the current model, leaving people with no choices, which is approximately when the prices go back up.

9:51PM: Romney says he would repeal and replace Dodd-Frank.  I mean, you know, he'd get around to replacing it, eventually.

9:53PM:  If Mitt's been practicing his zingers, Barack's been practicing his incredibly long, slightly exasperated pauses.

9:55PM: Blaming people who took out mortgages they couldn't really afford for the financial crisis is one of the stupider Republican talking points.  "Yeah!  How dare those poor people try to have a place to live!"

9:56PM: Mitt wants to repeal Obamacare because businesses can't afford it.  You hear this from Republicans a lot, and it's a scam.  Republicans are the ones who made sure the Affordable Care Act did nothing to lower costs, and now they're bitching because it didn't lower costs.

10:00PM: I predict Republicans will hammer the President after this debate for attacking profits.  It'll be a lie, but they'll do it anyway and it'll probably work.

10:01PM: How did it become the President's fault that he had to do everything without any Republican support?  "Yeah, it's that mean President, he turned us all into a bunch of crying toddlers!"  Doesn't the President actually deserve credit for doing things with the legislative equivalent of one arm tied behind his back?

10:04PM: Obama just said Cleveland Clinic is one of the best health care systems in the world.  I'm sorry, I refuse to believe anything associated with Cleveland is the best in the world at anything.

10:08PM: Nobody in the federal government is taking over health care you crazy idiot!

10:10PM: Obama just asked if Romney is keeping all of his plans secret because they're just so good.  I think I saw Mitt writing that one down.  Best line of the night.

10:12PM: Romney appears to be talking hypothetically about a number of possible things a President Romney could do about health care, but he's unwilling to actually pick one because he says he shouldn't go into office with a plan that he wants to ram through.  That's not a terrible approach as long as you have a Congress to work with that's useful and competent.  We have one of those, right?  Right?

10:13PM:  I'm pretty sure the camera just caught Mitt flirting with the audience, or Lehrer.

10:17PM: Mitt still hasn't mentioned how the gays are ruining everything, or how using birth control makes a woman a slut.  Does he know he's a Republican?

10:18PM: Romney. "it's time for a new path".  He added, "I mean, I'm proposing the same path we were on like four years ago, so it's more like a certified pre-owned path, but still".

10:22PM: I'm not 100% sure Mitt is familiar with his own platform.

10:23PM: My biggest take away from this debate is that Mitt Romney LOVES him some business.

10:27PM: Obama just used the word "principled".  Someone get Mitt a dictionary.

10:29PM: I didn't hear one zinger tonight, but maybe we just don't know what Mitt thinks a zinger is.

Final Thought: I don't understand how Romney can spend 18 months running as a fringe conservative and then show up tonight talking like some kind of bi-partisan moderate.  Sadly, I suspect people who weren't paying attention before now may fall for it.  But then again, you never really know who the real Mitt is.  Maybe it's the fringe conservatives that fell for it.  Mitt's a puzzle.

The media literally can't wait to tell me how Romney dominated this debate.  As someone who's been paying attention the whole time, I didn't really see it that way because I know Mitt lied a bunch of times, but I can see how someone who just starting paying attention would see this as a pretty solid Romney win.  Which leads me to ask, was the media not really paying attention before now?

Maybe I'll spend some time tomorrow night putting together some coherent thoughts about what I just saw, or maybe not, I don't know.  Either way, see you at the next debate.