I just cannot imagine President Obama working this hard at anything...

[4est_4est_Gump]

Romney’s Playbook
Robert Costa, NRO
October 4, 2012

Denver — The elements of Mitt Romney’s Rocky Mountain rout were hatched weeks ago in Vermont’s Green Mountains. In early September, Romney slowed down his campaign schedule and retreated with a small group of advisers to the home of Kerry Healey, his former lieutenant governor. Ohio senator Rob Portman, a trusted ally, joined Stuart Stevens, Eric Fehrnstrom, Bob White, and a handful of other Romney confidants. They spent days holding mock debates, and nights reviewing President Obama’s stylistic tics. When they needed a break, they roamed around Healey’s secluded estate, which is 100 miles south of Burlington, Vt. But mostly they talked, over hot chocolate and coffee, about how best to communicate Romney’s message.

Portman says Romney’s willingness to fully commit to the prep was striking. Day after day, he’d get up early, exercise, and then join the team for hours of work. Advisers certainly played a role, but according to Portman, it was the candidate who drove his advisers. Even when he had a busy week of campaigning, Romney would always find time to study or hold a brief mock debate. “It was all him,” Portman tells me. “Honestly, I’ve spent a lot of time with Mitt Romney for the past month or so, and what I saw on stage is who he is. He’s smart, he’s articulate, and he’s got a big heart.”

During the opening prep sessions, the group quickly came to a consensus: At the podium, Romney would be forceful, nearly as assertive as he was in Healey’s living room. His advisers have always admired Romney’s ability to peel apart arguments in private, and they encouraged him to do the same at the debate, with a little polish. The goal was to overwhelm the president with liveliness and information, to force him to confront the messy details of his economic and fiscal record. The strategy, sources say, clicked with Romney for two reasons: He did not want to spend hours tinkering with his mannerisms, and he wanted to focus on internalizing data. He’d take advice on his voice, his posture, and the rest, but he wanted his prep time to be a policy workshop.

“This whole thing about ‘zingers,’ I never even heard that word discussed in debate prep,” Stevens says. “If you go back to the history and look at Governor Romney’s 20 debates, he likes policy, he likes substance, and he likes strong arguments that are based on merits and on differences. He’s never been one for debate tricks and sleight of hand.”

During the mock debates, Portman engaged Romney as if they were testy undergraduates at the Oxford Union. Portman, acting as Obama, hammered Romney on every part of his agenda, sometimes to the point of belittling him. “I’ve never seen Rob Portman lose a mock debate,” Stevens says. “He’s undefeated — but he cheats. He knows the questions and has notes.” (Stevens and Portman both advised George W. Bush before debates.) On September 6, as he visited a hardware store, Romney told reporters that Portman was getting under his skin. “I’m just glad I won’t be debating Rob Portman in the final debates,” Romney said, smiling. “He’s good.”

The practice made a difference. One longtime Romney friend tells me that Romney markedly improved throughout September as he devoted himself to his briefing books and the mock debates. The friend says Romney didn’t think of the debate as a political dialogue but as a grueling, 90-minute competition that demanded discipline. He prepared in the same way he used to review pending business deals at Bain Capital: He challenged his closest advisers about the most minor points, he spent a lot of time reading, and he constantly bantered with his aides about the other side’s weaknesses and strengths.

Romney’s approach slightly diverged from his campaign’s day-to-day operation, which has seized on Obama’s verbal stumbles. Romney didn’t want to sound canned, he wanted to sound informed, so he kept a few lines he liked from prep, such as “trickle-down government,” but decided against quoting Obama’s gaffes. It was about seeming competent and presidential under the bright lights. He’d leave the gotcha games for his rapid-response squad. “We didn’t talk about the ‘private sector is doing fine,’ nor did we talk about ‘he built it,’ nor did we talk about the vice president saying the middle class has been buried,” Stevens says.

I think our President wants and relishes the title of "President of the United States" but he has little inclination or aptitude for the actual job of POTUS.

I am sure that this is what we saw in the debate.

 

[XdOu™]

in all honesty... i hope he wins, even though i could careless about either presidents on the election.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

in all honesty... i hope he wins, even though i could careless about either presidents on the election.

Nice. Like the oracle that predicted a great army would fall...

 

[Byron In Exile]

I think our President wants and relishes the title of "President of the United States" but he has little inclination or aptitude for the actual job of POTUS.

I am sure that this is what we saw in the debate.

"Potus" sounds like a germ of some sort.

 

[XdOu™]

Nice. Like the oracle that predicted a great army would fall...

loool

 

[JohnnySavage]

Romney’s Playbook
Robert Costa, NRO
October 4, 2012



I think our President wants and relishes the title of "President of the United States" but he has little inclination or aptitude for the actual job of POTUS.

I am sure that this is what we saw in the debate.

Love Bob Costa. His Olympic coverage is top-notch.

 

[Byron In Exile]

In Latin, "potus" means a drink.

As an adjective, it means intoxicated.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

In Vino Veritas and Romney don't get into his cups... cusp... something...



Now, President Obama, we know he loves to get down! Truth!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

A Disengaged President
Matthew Holzmann, The American Thinker
October 5, 2012

There has been a strange turn of events in the last few weeks as we have learned more about the political and personal isolation the president has created for himself. In Bob Woodward's latest book, The Price of Politics, Woodward describes a president antagonistic to his opponents to a toxic degree, one who has distanced himself even from his own party leadership. Woodward describes a "monumental communications gap" between the president and House Majority Leader John Boehner at the critical moment in the 2010 budget negotiations.

Last week, the New York Times ran an article regarding the president's response to the Arab Spring in which he is described as having distanced himself from Arab and Middle Eastern rulers and leaders, engaging them through intermediaries and with minimal direct contact. This is especially strange in view of his attempt to engage the Islamic world when he spoke at Tahrir Square in Cairo in 2009.

That he did not consult with any of those leaders prior to pulling the rug out from under Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011 sent our relations to the Gulf states into the freezer.

We were told early on in the Obama administration that the president had surrounded himself with a highly loyal cadre and at the same time we have seen an unprecedented number of czars reporting directly to the president and subverting the normal communications channels.

His complete disengagement with the opposition in Congress is also an established fact. But when you are not talking to your own people -- that becomes a real problem. This includes his various and sundry cabinet members and advisers as well. Obama's truancy at national security meetings is legendary.

Wednesday night, in the first debate, we once again saw a disengaged president. He was ill-prepared, disjointed, and quite obviously off his game. Prior to the debate, the party spinners were out in force reducing expectations, but it is generally agreed that the first debate was a disaster for the president.

The president is more comfortable, it seems, campaigning and schmoozing. Neither requires real engagement, and speaking to worshipful audiences roaring their approval is a great salve to the ego.

Master of the (white) house, doling out the charm
Ready with a handshake and an open palm
Tells a saucy tale, makes a little stir
Customers appreciate a bon-viveur
Glad to do a friend a favor
Doesn't cost me to be nice
But nothing gets you nothing
Everything has got a little price!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

What? Me Worry?
Alfred E. Neuman

What? Me Work?
Barack H. Obama

But is Obama worried? Not for a second. He doesn't care. Because that's not his job. Obama is merely the pretty face for the über-left monster. Let's face it: Obama is merely a figurehead. A happy face for the anti-American, anti-individual, anti-capitalist revolution. He's a movie star, nothing more. He's an impressive façade with nothing behind it, like a Hollywood set. But the American people should be concerned about his puppet masters: Reverend Wright, George Soros, Bill Ayers, and a cabal of Islamic supremacist Muslim Brotherhood operatives. That's who's running the country.

Obama is implementing and instituting everything on the radical, socialist, and Islamic supremacist wish list, without compromise. As far as Obama is concerned, it's up to them to deliver him. It's up to the culture, it's up to the media, it's up to J-Lo and the other soulless airheads in Hollywood. Obama is merely the face that the monster is wearing.

So is he worried? Not on your life. His contempt for the American intellect has been demonstrated. He doesn't think his constituency is even watching. They get their talking points from the mothership -- whether it's Media Matters, the Center for American Progress, or MSNBC. Goebbels-style talking points devoid of logic, accuracy, and fact. Obama goes on The View, Letterman, and Jimmy Kimmel, and he would even go on Romper Room if it were still on the air, exuding cool, hip, and groovy vibrations. And all is right with the world, even as U.S. embassies are attacked, our ambassadors are killed, jihadi revolutions overthrow our secular allies, and the economic machine that empowers this magnificent nation is routed, and the Saturday Night Live band plays on. What, me worry?

As soon as the bell rang on the close of the debate, the leftist/Islamic machine went into huddle and started hammering on an imaginary inconsistency in Romney's flawless performance. And they've been jackhammering ever since. Obama knows this going in: he's counting on America watching Real Housewives of...pick a city. But sixty million people watched. Can they be talked out of what they saw? Chris Matthews and the rest of Obama's media and civilian army are counting on it.

Obama doesn't have to worry because the media will provide for all his deficiencies. As far as the left is concerned, the debate doesn't start until after it's over. The media is like the man with the shovel following behind Obama the circus elephant. Ever since the debate ended, they've been in fifth gear, spinning a completely new narrative. America, don't believe your eyes; believe the leftist lies. They are busy answering points Romney made and impugning the accuracy of Romney's assertions.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/obamas_mask_slips.html#ixzz28QFTtw5M

 

[RobDownSouth]

Lazy Negro President seems to be the meme du jour.

No racism to see here, folks, move right along.


WE GET IT

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Even Throb's daily blustering, blubbering and blasting hate show more energy than does our President...



Is it because he cannot afford the golf fees that he has so much pent-up hostility?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

What the first Presidential debate revealed is that President Obama is basically an empty suit. By retaining his enigmatic calm, the President has enabled the press to project any and all of their fantasies upon him. Obama is the smartest President ever. He has accomplished more than Roosevelt. He's as charismatic as John F. Kennedy. If he has trouble with particulars, it is only because he is thinking of higher things. When Chris Matthews told the President he could recover his mojo by watching MSNBC, he wasn't kidding. The subtext, of course, is: "We're the ones who made you who you are."

Obama is a grown-up college Marxist. He probably hasn't changed his perspective much since he was an undergraduate. What he has mastered is the academic trope of pretending to entertain all different points of view before settling on the one furthest to the left. He is a pure product of academia. All the President's famous faux pas -- the rural folk seeking consolation in "guns and religion," the small business owners who "didn't build that" -- are the routine scuttlebutt of faculty lounges.

There is nothing more frustrating to a junior professor who scored 700s on his SATs and spent seven years earning his Ph.D. than the moment when he goes back to his 15th high school reunion and discovers that the dumb kid who used to sit in the back of the class drawing pictures of jet airplanes on his forearm in indelible ink has become a successful builder and is riding around town in a Porsche. "If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there." I wonder who we're talking about there?

So the question remains, if the press has essentially created Obama, can they rescue him now that the blank slate upon which they have been drawing has been shattered? Well, they can certainly try and they definitely will.

William Tucker
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/10/05/can-the-press-rescue-obama

 

[RobDownSouth]

Even Throb's daily blustering, blubbering and blasting hate show more energy than does our President...
Is it because he cannot afford the golf fees that he has so much pent-up hostility?

Let me see if I have this straight....*You're* the one who bashes President Obama on a daily basis, so that proves that *I'M* the "hostile" one....


WE GET IT

 

[miles]

In the next debate I expect a much more animated and enthusiastic Obama to spew even more lies and bullshit.

 

[RobDownSouth]

In the next debate I expect a much more animated and enthusiastic Obama to spew even more lies and bullshit.

Well, if anyone is an authority on "lies and bullshit" it'd be you, Miles.

 

[fuckwaffle]

Well, if anyone is an authority on "lies and bullshit" it'd be you, Miles.

It too bad you don't put all that effort you use to call people names to use at a real job.

 

[RobDownSouth]

It too bad you don't put all that effort you use to call people names to use at a real job.

Oh look, it's Mr. World-of-Warcraft-IS-my-job weighing in!

 

[fuckwaffle]

Oh look, it's Mr. World-of-Warcraft-IS-my-job weighing in!

Yep, from now until the election the nasty name calling will just increase with every failure of the beloved leader of the liberal front. It to bad really...wait, no it isn't.

 

[tactful]

In Latin, "potus" means a drink.

As an adjective, it means intoxicated.

Always thought it meant pass the doobie, among friends, but, that's just me I guess.

 

[Liar]

Your self admitted lack of imagination is duly noted.

 

[Wrong Element]

Romney’s Playbook
Robert Costa, NRO
October 4, 2012



I think our President wants and relishes the title of "President of the United States" but he has little inclination or aptitude for the actual job of POTUS.

I am sure that this is what we saw in the debate.

I like how Obama's inability to rehearse as much as Romney did is seen as evidence that he doesn't want to do his job.

I guess for Reagan worshippers, style over substance is the job.

 

[garbage can]

I like how Obama's inability to rehearse as much as Romney did is seen as evidence that he doesn't want to do his job.

I guess for Reagan worshippers, style over substance is the job.

Can I assume your dislike for Mitt is as strong as your dislike for Reagan?

 

[RobDownSouth]

Can I assume your dislike for Mitt is as strong as your dislike for Reagan?

Reagan, for all his faults, was always well-rehearsed in public.

 

[FloridaCouple]

Romney’s Playbook
Robert Costa, NRO
October 4, 2012



I think our President wants and relishes the title of "President of the United States" but he has little inclination or aptitude for the actual job of POTUS.

I am sure that this is what we saw in the debate.

Reminds me of Caroline Kennedy in 2009 when the she wanted to be appointed as Senator to NY to fill Hillary's empty senate seat. Caroline was all for being appointed. But she lacked the fire in the belly to fight for it.