Here’s some red meat for your Friday – Paul Ryan giving IRS Comissioner John Koskinen the business at Friday morning’s Ways and Means Committee hearing.
“I’m sitting here listening to this testimony and I don’t believe it. That’s your problem. I don’t believe it.”
… … …
Koskinen: ” I have a long career – that is the first time anybody has said that they do not believe me.
Ryan: “I don’t believe you.”
Fireworks….
“Let him answer the question!” a Dem wagon-circler interjected at one point. “I didn’t askhim a question!” Ryan exclaimed in disgust.
He wanted to vent, and was not interested in hearing Koskinen lame protestations.
Somebody is thinking about running for president.
MORE:
I was willing to entertain the possibility that when he took over for Miller in 2013 Koskinen would be an honest actor. But when he decided back in February to reinstate millions in bonuses to IRS employees to “boost morale” at a time when the agency should have been tightening its belt, I began to have my doubts.
Now, it’s obvious – Koskinen is a company man. He’s all in for the Regime.
Context: I’m told Ryan followed a Dem member of the Black Caucus who had “apologized” to Koskinen for the uncivil way the barbaric Republicans were treating him at the hearing. That explains Ryan’s opening comments.
Rep. Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, appeared on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Wednesday night to discuss the budget deal he hashed out with Democrat Senator Patty Murray. As most of you, I’m sure know – Ryan’s budget is being called a sh*t sandwich and worse from both sides of the aisle. According to The Hill, Dems are retching as much as Republicans are. (that’s a sign of a good compromise, ya’ll.)
The budget deal worked out by House and Senate negotiators is on the verge of unraveling over the exclusion of federal unemployment benefits, several leading Democrats warned Wednesday. The lawmakers are outraged by a GOP move to add the Medicare “doc fix” to the package but not a continuation of unemployment benefits — a strategy they say could sink the entire package by scaring away Democratic votes. Reps. Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Sandy Levin (Mich.) said the move creates a “new dynamic” undermining Democratic support for the plan announced Tuesday by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). “I think it puts at risk the whole bill, and it surely puts at risk my vote,” said Levin, the top Democrat at the House Ways and Means Committee. Van Hollen echoed that message.
Here are some recent headlines from the rightosphere, via Doug Ross:
“Guess what, Sean – elections have consequences,” Ryan told Hannity after he complained that the budget deal still increases the debt and doesn’t get us anywhere near a balanced budget. Ryan explained, “we’re going to have to win a couple of elections to actually pass the kind of budgets you and I are in favor of like the one I passed just last Spring. House Republicans have passed three budgets in a row that actually balanced the budget – that actually pay off the debt.”
“So this isn’t your ideal budget,” Hannity said, (stating the obvious.)
“No, of course not – this isn’t even close to my ideal budget,” Ryan laughed. “But here’s the point, Sean,” Ryan continued. “Is this a step in the right direction, or not? This cuts spending. This lowers the deficit, it doesn’t raise taxes, and it stops those defense cuts from happening any more.”
He maintained that this deal isn’t a Republican budget – “it’s an agreement that is a step in the right direction – it’s a small step – I’m not going to oversell that – but here’s the other point, Sean: It stops government shutdown in January and it stops a shutdown in October. And we don’t think it’s in our interest to have these government shutdowns. We want to focus on ObamaCare and ObamaCare oversight. We want to focus on speaking truth to power and doing real congressional oversight on this administration, AND we want to focus on our proactive agenda. If we have all these government shutdowns, we don’t think that helps us do that…”
Ryan’s right. The dirty little secret is, the Democrat left were hoping for protracted budget fights and looming government shutdowns in 2014 – to get the public’s attention off of ObamaCrash. And I’ve been saying all year – Republicans need to be focusing on “oversight” (to use Ryan’s word) – that is – investigating the sh*t out of this corrupt Regime. This crap sandwich gives them room to do that.
Just Democrats mind you. No Republicans allowed – because — no doubt fear of, “political blowbacK” and “emboldening Republican critics.” You know – the whole reason the Regime refused to delay implementation of their horribly botched ObamaCrash site in the first place.
Mike Hash, who directs the Office of Health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services, will brief House Democrats Wednesday about implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
The closed-door session, which will start at 8:50 a.m., marks the first time the administration will have briefed members of Congress on the online enrollment system since its troubled rollout on Oct. 1.
The office of House Speaker John Boehner is calling for the Obama administration to brief House Republicans on the problems with the ObamaCare website, following a report that House Democrats will get a closed-door briefing on Wednesday.
Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said in a statement to Fox News the speaker’s office has requested the meeting with the president but has not yet received a reply, saying “all members – as well as the American people – deserve answers for this debacle.”
“This snub is all the more offensive after Secretary Sebelius declined to testify at a House hearing this week,” Buck said. “It’s time for the Obama administration to honor its promises of transparency and face some accountability.”
And Tuesday, Congressman Paul Ryan sent Kathleen Sebelius an angry letter blasting her for her lack of transparency. Politicoobtained a copy of the letter ahead of its scheduled Wednesday release.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) says Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has stonewalled his committee and the public on Obamacare.
Ryan says the secretary has refused repeated requests for information on implementation of the health law and invitations to testify in front of his committee.
“Your continued silence on these important inquiries after refusing to testify raises serious questions about the administration’s commitment to transparency and accountability” Ryan wrote in the letter.
Ryan plans to release a series of letters, going back to Aug. 15, that he says shows a pattern of refusal to testify in front of the House Budget Committee on the health law. Ryan, who strongly opposes Obamacare and says Sebelius should resign over the HealthCare.gov problems, says he wants to know the costs of the recently announced “tech surge” to repair the site. He’s also interested in the cost and management of the federal tax subsidies.
More evidence that this thing was nowhere near ready to launch….
The Obamacare planners haven’t included doctors in the planning of the exchanges. Doctors have no idea what is going on, at least not in New York.
The government has put all their efforts into the website (that’s scary) and they forgot to talk to doctors.
If you go to 02:00 on the video below you will hear some shocking information – doctors were not told anything about the exchanges nor have they been approached about being on the exchanges.
President Obama and his henchmen have savagely attacked the Tea Party, with the president himself branding his opponents as “extremists” and his surrogates comparing them to terrorists, for starters.
Well thank God this president’s “open minded” worldview stops at the Tea Party’s door.
If any Obama officials or their allies are reading, let me introduce to one these terrorists, a woman named Georgina. As you will be able to discern, she’s a dangerous radical, drunk with hatred, desperate to destroy the nation’s credit rating, and dying to stick it to Obama.
I think this should confirm your suspicions that you are nobly combating a dangerous element. If you have some jackboots and truncheons at the ready, please don them, because Georgina must be stopped.
Healthcare.gov features a tool to search through health insurance providers in your area to see how much Obamacare can save you. The catch? The catch is, those prices are all AFTER maximum subsidies are calculated into the price by the website.
This is apparently the lack of insecurity you can expect from the folks at HHS and healthcare.gov. A level of incompetence and lack of common sense programming I didn’t even think were possible for government until today.
The same glitch which previously exposed the prices of Obamacare plans without subsidies now also exposes the names, business addresses and business phone numbers of all Healthcare navigators nationwide.
Republicans are putting forward a legitimate counter-proposal, which draws from an “imperfect but fair middle ground” plan authored by the Democratic co-chairman of the president’s fiscal commission, Erskine Bowles. Bowles, for reference, was President Clinton’s chief of staff. The Washington Post summarizes the broad outlines of his idea, which Republicans have essentially appropriated: “House Republican leaders endorsed a far-reaching plan Monday to rein in the national debt that would raise $800 billion in new tax revenue, slice $600 billion from federal health programs and apply a stingier measure of inflation to Social Security benefits.” That $800 Billion figure is similar to the number reportedly offered up by Boehner during debt negotiations last summer, and slightly more than the one advanced by Republicans on the so-called “super committee.” (The special joint committee failed to reach an agreement when Democrats rebuffed the GOP plan and refused to put forward a unified proposal of their own). Crucially, none of these new revenues come from increased marginal tax rates; they are derived from a tax code simplification plan, which cuts and caps loopholes, deductions and credits (which disproportionately favor the rich). These effective tax increases are partially offset by lowering rates across the board, a key feature of the original Simpson-Bowles proposal.
House Republican leadership aides told Townhall’s Guy Benson that while far from ideal, the Bowles’ compromise was worth embracing in order to avert the harsh economic impact of going over the cliff.
The tax side of the plan is short on specifics at the moment, though the aide notes that “a number of center-left groups” have published frameworks that could attain $800 Billion in new revenues without raising tax rates.
As you have probably heard – the compromise has already been rejected because it’s not “balanced” enough, meaning of course that it’s not as one sided as Obama would like it.
On tonight’s edition of Special Report, Charles Krauthammer argued that, although Democrats could raise the necessary revenues through deductions and exclusions, the president is bent on raising tax rates because he wants “drive a stake through” the heart of the GOP in the wake of his electoral victory. “This is all about politics, it is nothing about economics,” Krauthammer said.
John Fund agrees. The malignant narcissist Obama isn’t negotiating in good faith. He’s trying to break the Republicans by forcing them to repudiate their anti-tax pledges, thus cementing his historical legacy as a “progressive” hero. Roll Call reported, Republicans now “believe the president is more interested in raking them over the coals publicly than striking a deal privately.” As Fund, noted, “duh”. If this is a lose/lose for Republicans, they may as well lose with their integrity intact.
Republicans must recognize that while going over the fiscal cliff would damage them politically, so too would their surrendering to Obama. Post-election Gallup polls show that only 11 percent of Americans favor tax hikes alone (basically the current Obama position) in any deal to avert the fiscal cliff. According to Gallup, 88 percent favor taking “major steps” to bolster the long-term stability of Social Security and Medicare. In addition, 92 percent of Americans believe “major cuts” to federal spending are an important priority. A full 68 percent say both sides should “compromise equally.”
But the only way the general public can tell who is offering serious proposals and is willing to “compromise equally” is for the budget negotiations to be held in public. If they’re held in secret, leaks by one side or the other could improperly frame the issue. Secret talks allow the White House to avoid having the Congressional Budget Office score its proposals and reveal them to be as phony as the last Obama budget, which not a single Democrat in the Senate voted for. A backroom deal that is then forced on rank-and-file members of Congress at the last minute would be both bad policy and bad politics.
President Obama rode to the White House in part on promises of transparency and open government. Recall his promise to conduct all health-care negotiations in front of C-SPAN cameras. He broke that pledge. Republicans should now demand that the budget talks be televised.
On Sunday, President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist called for fiscal cliff negotiations to take place in front ofTV cameras:
“It’s the president who is threatening to raise taxes on the middle class if he doesn’t stamp his feet and get his way,” Norquist said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “He should get into a room with C-Span cameras there and negotiate. Lets have it in front of C-Span cameras. And if the Republicans are being reasonable, we’ll see that. If they’re not, we’ll see that. Gotta have cameras in that room.”
“Over the last two years, Congress and the President have held an endless series of secret negotiations. There have been gangs of six and eight, a supercommittee of 12, talks at the Blair House and the White House. But the only thing these secret talks have produced is a government that skips from one crisis to the next…
That’s why the process needs to be taken out of the shadows… We ought to be engaged. The engagement of the Senate would allow the American people to know what’s happening. They are entitled to that. I believe we can do better. We must do better.”
I can tell you right now who’ll come off as sincere and in command of the facts and who will look like the insincere, preening, divisive demagogue.
That’s why the White House will never agree to televised talks – but Republicans leaders should start demanding it – loudly. At the very least, it will be an opportunity to pound the deceitful hypocrite on his lack of transparency.
Another idea that would require some spine on the Republicans’ part, (so don’t hold your breath) via The American Thinker:
…there is a way out of this and the president has shown us what that way is: End runs.
As Newt Gingrich never tires of pointing out: The House of Representatives holds the purse strings. The House is majority Republican and the House needs to unfund, de-fund, and refuse to fund the president’s ridiculously destructive orders and regulations and even his signature legislation, the sadly misnamed “Affordable Care Act,” which was rammed through Congress against the will of the majority of Americans and with not one single Republican vote. And the Republican governors of the several states need to arm themselves with the 10th Amendment and refuse to comply with any federally mandated rule or regulation that impacts the citizens of their states adversely.
The president of the United States is not an absolute ruler; he is not a king. His is one of three branches of government. His position is that of an elected official who, ostensibly, represents ALL the people. Barack Obama has not fulfilled that duty, but has chosen, instead, to represent only the people who contribute to his endless campaigns and those who vote for him; in this, he has made himself irrelevant to the governing process of the United States.
It is time for those with the power, the will, and the intelligence to govern this nation responsibly as the Constitution provides to stand up and do it. It is time to take back America.
UPDATE:
Something I forgot to mention when I posted this yesterday – yes, as Mark Levin has been suggesting for days – Republicans need to find a way to go over the heads of the MSM and engage in a public relations war with the Obamacrats. Even if it means spending big $$$ on prime time TV spots. Too many Americans have no idea how dire the fiscal situation is, nor how much they’ve been lied to by this duplicitous Regime.
Its time for the GOP to wage an all-out media assault on the President, pointing out his obstinate decision to put politics in front of the needs of the country. They will receive little help from the mainstream media who are all too willing to find fault with anything the GOP proposes.The President and his staff play Chicago-style politics and they play for keeps. With out a strong effort taking this issue directly to the public, the GOP might find itself in a deep hole with no way to get out.
Of course, holding negotiations in public would serve the same purpose for free.
The Washington Postreported that Ryan spoke before about 800 supporters, many of whom didn’t even know about the event until Friday night. His speech focused, naturally on Obama’s “war on coal”:
MOON TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Stoking speculation about whether Republicans may seek to make an 11th-hour play in this long-Democratic state, GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan on Saturday headlined a brief, hastily scheduled rally in an airport hangar here on his way to an event in eastern Ohio.
Addressing an enthusiastic group of about 800 supporters, many of whom got word of the rally only on Friday night, Ryan told the crowd that President Obama is waging a “war on coal” and cast the decision facing the country as one that will have consequences beyond the next four years.
“This is not just a paycheck election,” said Ryan, who wore a red-and-black jacket. “This is not just an election about growing the economy or about giving our kids a debt-free nation. This is about the meaning of America.”
The stop is only Ryan’s second in Pennsylvania since he became Mitt Romney’s running mate in August. His last visit to the Keystone State was on Aug. 21, when he held rallies in Carnegie and West Chester and raised campaign cash in Philadelphia.
“If he’s reelected we know exactly what the next four years will look like,” Ryan said. “We’ll have more of the same failed policies. More taxes, more spending, more debts, and four more years of these disastrous energy policies. Look, gas prices are more than double what they were four years ago, who knows what they’re going to be if he got four more years.”
Ryan often hits his Democratic opponents on their energy policy, but his remarks Saturday were more pointed, accusing the president of employing policies that would both prevent getting “people back to work and lower(ing) our energy prices.”
“He’ll keep his war on coal going,” Ryan said of Obama. “Over a hundred coal plants are scheduled to close costing us thousands of jobs…not only do these policies cost us jobs, not only do they mean that American energy dollars go to the Middle East they are keeping us from having a boon, they are keeping us from having jobs, they are keeping us from making our pay checks stretch farther.
He ended the attack by assuring the enthusiastic group of supporters his ticket would be victorious, noting Pennsylvania would help them get there.
“The good news is none of that’s going to happen because we’re going to win this election and we’re going to turn back on American energy,” Ryan said.
The Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee are planning to send more than 60 staffers to Pennsylvania for the closing two weeks of the presidential election, a RNC official told The Huffington Post. The move is the clearest sign to date that Republicans view the Keystone State as in play this November, though it’s not entirely clear whether the staffing is being done as a head-fake for Democrats or out of general electoral optimism. GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign had previously moved its Pennsylvania communications director to Virginia. That communications director was recently caught tweeting from Virginia even as vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan was appearing at a Pittsburgh-area rally.
Addendum: This move supplements the Old Line Staters (that’s Maryland for you out-of-towners) who are there already:
“In my opinion, any active Republican not currently working on a local campaign should be heading to Virginia or Pennsylvania,” said Chris Cavey, a longtime GOP leader in Maryland who is vice chair of Romney’s state campaign. “When it’s within the margin of error, you can’t say which door or set of doors … or which phone call it was that made the difference.” Both campaigns are exporting hundreds of Maryland volunteers to neighboring states each weekend. They travel on buses or carpool into critical precincts. They knock on doors, hand out campaign literature and staff telephone banks. Sometimes they are waved off by voters weary of the attention that living in a political battleground brings. Occasionally, initial encounters between strangers spark conversations that continue for weeks. With 16 days to go before the Nov. 6 election, such scenes are playing out across the country. In Alabama — where voters last chose a Democratic candidate for president in 1976 — the state Republican Party is organizing bus trips to Ohio and Florida, a spokeswoman said.
Where: Rashid Auditorium, 4th Floor, Hillman Center for Future-Generation Technologies, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh, PA 15213
UPDATE:
Americans For Prosperity comes through with more reinforcements: AFP plans to send five busloads of conservatives from New Jersey, New York and Maryland to fortify its ground game in Pennsylvania.
This weekend, the powerful nonprofit, founded and funded by billionaire David Koch, is sending 160 Oklahoma activists to help mobilize voters in Colorado. Meanwhile, 180 canvassers from Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Oregon and California will converge on Nevada, another key swing state in the presidential race.
The deployments mark the final stage of a $30 million effort to oust President Barack Obama and Democratic Senators, relying almost exclusively on issue advocacy advertisements, direct mail and other get-out-the-vote efforts.
Two weeks from now, AFP plans to send five busloads of conservatives from New Jersey, New York and Maryland to fortify its ground game in Pennsylvania. The group’s Georgia chapter has a crew of 200 lined up for Florida. Maryland also will send a team of 40 activists to neighboring Virginia during two separate weekend bus-ins. The weekend before the elections, the Arkansas state chapter expects to send two buses to the crucial battleground of Ohio.
Romney may have been aggressive, but he was polite, and always a gentleman. He wasn’t overbearing and didn’t come off like an unhinged, condescending crank, like Biden did for this entire debate, laughing, sneering and mugging during all of Ryan’s answers – even on serious issues like Libya, Afghanistan, and Iran. What was that all about? Romney was fighting for equal time in a debate where Obama was allowed four minutes more time. Biden was merely fighting. Chris Wallace said “I’ve Never Seen a Debate Where one Candidate Was So Disrespectful”.He got a minute more time than Ryan who was interrupted at nearly every turn, either by Biden or by the moderator – the two of them seemed at times to be tag teaming him.
In spite of that, Ryan remained calm, winning easily on debate style, and holding his own on debate substance in the face of the blizzard of lies coming from Biden – a problem Sarah Palin also encountered back in 2008..
Dana Perino quipped:
Overheard at the pinnochio factory, "Hey, we're gonna need some more wood for the morning's fact checks!"
Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan were the two candidates on stage at Thursday’s vice presidential debate, but a third character emerged: Joe Biden’s laugh, which didn’t escape the notice of tweeting politicos. (And led, of course, to at least three satirical Twitter accounts: Laughing Joe Biden, Biden Smirk, and yet another Laughing Joe Biden.)
TIME’s Michael Scherer: “Not sure debate cameras have been light tested for Biden’s teeth. Best to watch with sunglasses.”
Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein: “Biden’s strategy seems to be to laugh at Ryan constantly. Will it work to infantalize Ryan, or backfire like Gore sighing?”
And Acehas the results of CNN’s undecided poll: Ryan Wins CNN’s Poll of Undecided Likely Voters, 48-44% Also Wins on Likability, Ryan 53% Biden 43%
Not a crushing victory, but a victory nonetheless — the sitting VP was bested by the challenger.
So Romney passed the Threshold test — spectacularly — and Ryan passed it as well.
And in both debates, they won.
Alex Castellantos on CNN had a point: The post-debate buzz will be about Biden’s buffoonish mugging.
I hate to say this, but as I said in the liveblog, Biden’s Mission Number One was to reassure and re-energize the base. He did that. He at least stopped some Democrats from defecting to Romney, or deciding not to vote.
And see – this is why some people think Allahpunditand Ace are the same person:
I expected “table-pounding atmospherics” from Biden but I didn’t expect him to act like a total jackhole for fully 90 minutes. Give him credit for knowing his target audience, though: His task tonight was to get the left excited again after Obama fell into a semi-coma in Denver, and evincing utter disdain for Ryan — grimacing, shouting, laughing inappropriately, constantly interrupting, the total jackhole experience — is just what the doctor ordered. He might have irritated independents and undecideds, but probably not so much that it’ll change people’s votes. The Democrats needed someone to go out there and clown for liberals, and if there’s one thing this guy knows, it’s clowning.
Vice President Joe Biden claimed that the administration wasn’t aware of requests for more security in Libya before the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi during Thursday night’s debate, contradicting two State Department officials and the former head of diplomatic security in Libya.
“We weren’t told they wanted more security. We did not know they wanted more security there,” Biden said.
In fact, two security officials who worked for the State Department in Libya at the time testified Thursday that they repeatedly requested more security and two State Department officials admitted they had denied those requests.
Biden try to explain away the Obama administration’s pro-abortion assault on Catholics, evangelicals and other religious groups and businesses.
“With regard to the assault on the Catholic church, let me make it absolutely clear, no religious institution, Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic Social Services, Georgetown Hospital, Mercy Hospital, any hospital, none has to either refer contraception, none has to pay for contraception, none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact,” Biden falsely claimed.
“Now, I’ve got to take issue with the Catholic church and religious liberty,” Ryan retorted. “Why would they keep — why would they keep suing you? It’s a distinction without a difference.”
That’s all Ryan was able to get in before he was cut off. Shhhhh!!!!
The mandate compels religious employers to pay for and refer women for abortion-causing drugs, birth control, contraception and sterilizations.
The left has tried to turn the right’s objection to this into the phoney Republican War on Women™.
UPDATE:
Like I said, Biden’s smirking and sneering got panned by almost everybody:
We’re about thirty minutes into the debate and already Vide President Joe Biden is receiveing pretty tough reviews for his bizarre smiling and smirking as debate moderator Martha Raddatz talks about issues as serious as Iran getting a nuclear weapon.
These aren’t exactly conservative media types, either.
In 2000, Al Gore was just being a smug jerk trying to rattle George W. Bush. Gore also probably thought he was off-camera. Biden was obviously trying to rattle Ryan, but he also knew the camera would be on him, so other than hoping to distract the audience so they wouldn’t hear Ryan’s superior arguments, I have no idea what this debate game-plan was intended to accomplish.
My guess is that Team Obama simply didn’t expect moderator Martha Raddatz (who might be the worst debate moderator in history) to open things with a serious topic like foreign policy — and this is where Biden got in trouble, even with left-wingers like Tom Brokaw…
“By the way, they talk about this great recession like it fell out of the sky–like, ‘Oh my goodness, where did it come from?’” Biden said. “It came from this man voting to put two wars on a credit card, at the same time, put a prescription drug plan on the credit card, a trillion dollar tax cut for the very wealthy.”
“I was there, I voted against them,” Biden continued. “I said, no, we can’t afford that.”
Then Sen. Biden voted for the Afghanistan resolution on Sept. 14, 2001 which authorized “the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.”
This was such an obvious, blatant lie. Ryan’s been in Washington long enough to know the truth. Why did he get Biden get away with it? The day after fact checks are not where the action is. You have to call them out on their lies when you have the chance, or most people will never know the truth.
Pundits and news anchors are expressing post-debate shock at how smirky, condescending and arrogant Vice President Joe Biden was tonight. They buzzed on Twitter at his “malarkey” rebuke of Paul Ryan’s foreign policy criticism.
But this is all old, tired recycled behavior and rhetoric from the last election cycle. Remember? Go back and read my VP debate thread from 2008. It was titled: Sarah vs. Smirky. Go back to 2008, when Biden derided Sarah Palin for her “malarkey” about Bill Ayers.
You don’t win a nationally televised debate by being rude and obnoxious. You don’t win by interrupting your opponent time after time after time or by being a blowhard. You don’t win with facial expressions, especially smirks or fake laughs, or by pretending to be utterly exasperated with what your opponent is saying.
That’s why Vice President Joe Biden didn’t win the one and only debate last night with his Republican rival, Mitt Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan.
In fact, though Ryan had several weak moments—one of them was on Syria—the only conceivable takeaway from the veep debate was Biden’s out of control conduct. It will be long remembered—and not favorably.
There’s one person who should be delighted with Biden. That’s Al Gore. He had the honor of having delivered the most over the top and weird performance in a presidential campaign debate when he sighed and frowned and acted frustrated in his first debate with George W. Bush in 2000. Now Biden has taken that crown—or dunce cap—from Gore.
Finally, via Twitchy, the Tweet of the night, as far as I’m concerned:
Proverbs 29:9 "If a wise person debates with a fool, the fool rages and scoffs, and there is no peace." That about sums it up. #VPDebate
When Biden was in the Senate and the upper-body sent out “non-binding letters supporting Israel, Biden support was missing:
November 2001, Bond/Schumer Letter Urging President Not to Meet with Arafat until the Violence Ends, 89 Signers: Sen. Biden did not sign this letter urging President Bush not to meet with Arafat until Palestinian violence ceased. The letter had 89 signers.
March 2004, Schumer-Hatch-Clinton-Smith Letter Urging Kofi Annan to Reverse Support for ICJ Hearings on the Security Fence, 79 Signers: Sen. Biden did not sign this letter urging Kofi Annan to reverse support for the International Court of Justice Hearings on the Security fence which ultimately had 79 signers.
December 2005,Talent/Nelson Letter Urging Pres. Bush to Press Palestinian Leadership to Bar Terrorist Groups from Participating in Palestinian Legislative Elections, 73 co-signers: Sen. Biden did not sign this letter barring ter
ror groups from participating in Palestinian elections which ultimately had 73 co-signers.
June 2008, Landrieu/Collins Letter to President Bush Supporting Israel’s Quest for Peace, 77 Signers: Sen. Biden did not sign this pro-Israel letter which had 77 signers.
Joe Biden is one more reason for supporters of Israel to be concerned about the Obama Administration.
The good thing was that Ryan was able to make his points quickly and efficiently. The bad thing was that he occasionally looked like a deer in the headlights. I understand that this look reflected his amazement at Joe’s behavior, his shock at Joe’s bald-faced lies, and his frustration that both Joe and debate moderator Martha Raddatz kept cutting him off and giving the floor to the crazy uncle. Still, I wish he hadn’t been such a polite Midwesterner.
Thinking about it, though, Ryan may have done just the right thing. While the base probably found Joe’s performance exciting and emotionally honest, I suspect that millions of Americans did not appreciate that Joe made a mockery of a ritual performance that is meant to enhance the honor of the presidential office and to give voters an opportunity to compare the two parties. If people were actually comparing the two debaters, Ryan was an attractive, polite, stable, normal, well-informed young man. Joe was the bloviating, obnoxious drunk at the bar who had grabbed Ryan by his lapel and wouldn’t let go. You could practically see Ryan’s hair melt from the noxious odors wafting out from behind Joe’s peculiarly whitened dentures.
Nice Deb 