Roe v. Raed: The First Presidential Debate
Editor’s note:
Welcome to a new feature here at ANP, Roe v. Raed. In these columns Theodore Roe and Lucy Raed will both address a recent news story an give their (most likely contrasting) opinions on the matter. A virtual coin toss will determine who decides the order on each article. Whoever wins this toss gets to read the loser’s piece before publishing, thus allowing the victor to chose if he or she wants to write a rebuttal or simply compose their work as normal.
Tonight’s subject is the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Lucy lost the coin toss, so she will begin.
Obama’s Triumph Is Romney’s Stupidity
by Lucy Raed
Conservative writer (and pompous windbag) Bill Kristol captured the essence of the right’s fawning obsession with patting Mitt Romney on the head when he wrote that the former Bain Capital CEO “stood and delivered the best debate performance by a Republican presidential candidate in more than two decades.”
This is probably true, though it is the limit of the praise this corporate thief deserves. Republican slash-and-burn policies are so difficult to defend when exposed to the light of the prudent, caring and, above all, common sense initiatives of the Democratic party that it is neigh impossible to present GOP talking points without sounding like a refugee from 18th century tsarist Russia.
I am willing to admit that Mitt Romney did a good job onstage, if you assume that he was an actor portraying a likable, compassionate conservative (I shudder every time I hear that phrase) who just wants the government to go back to some imaginary garden of eden setting where the federal powers left everyone alone – aside from forcing adherence to Christianity and banning controlled substances, of course. This Republican-flavored weltschmerz is like tonic for the aching souls of the deep-pocketed fat cats who set party policy, though it does also rope in some poor souls who mistakenly believe that the social and economic progress of the last fifty years is inferior to the civil rights wasteland of America’s pollution-ridden, crony-capitalist past.
