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Some thoughts on the debate…
Joe Biden is not afraid of distorting the truth. Karl Rove counted 10 outright lies from Biden; the McCain campaign found 14. That’s Joe showing his 30 years of Senate experience.
You can tell Palin won by watching the nitpicking and squirming on MSNBC. Chris “Thrill Up My Leg” Matthews complaining that Palin was mainly style rather than substance. Well congratulations, Chris, because that’s what the national media has made of our politics — style over substance! You’ve just been gutted with your own knife.
Someone on another discussion board after the debate said they bet Biden had wished that Tina Fey had of showed up instead of Palin. I’ll bet that Tina Fey didn’t understand a word of this debate.
Someone else commented, “I loved the fact that Joe Biden called Dick Cheney ‘the most dangerous Vice President in history.’ JFK may have disagreed.” Yikes! Probably true.
And speaking of appearances, between the capped teeth, the botoxed forehead, and the lies, there isn’t anything authentic about Joe Biden.
Having watched Palin’s acceptance speech, and now her performance in this debate, I’m tempted to say she’s channeling Ronald Reagan. In truth, I hope that in the next presidential debate, John McCain is channeling Sarah Palin.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 am
Yeah, the real impact of the debate is seeing whether any candidate made significant missteps.
Biden made some huge gaffes tonight and told plenty of lies:
* IRAN is not close to building a nuke? What world does Biden live in?
* Biden supports “same-sex marriage” (his words) and then 25 seconds later he opposes it. (I wish I had a clip of that part of the debate).
* Biden LIED when he said that Obama never claimed that he was willing to meet Ahmadinejad without preconditions.
* Biden LIED when he tried to backtrack from his comments saying “No clean coal plants in America!”
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:27 am
Who does Biden think he’s appealing to making these claims? The BO/JB ticket already has the “delusional vote.”
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:30 am
On merit, I think Biden won the debate. However, I think that Palin’s performance was strong enough that it opens an opportunity for McCain to start closing the gap.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:37 am
“On merit, I think Biden won the debate.”
How can someone “win” a debate when they spent the entire time lying?
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:45 am
Greg. . .If no one calls them on their lies, and if the media discusses who looked better rather than who’s words were correct, then Biden wins. I hate these debates for that reason: the debate ends and the next three days are wasted discussing what public polls say rather than what the cadidates themselves actually said. Obama has proved time and again this political season that one only needs to look good on TV to win votes. Biden is just part of that theme.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:02 am
Greg, are you disagreeing with a point you made in the previous post? You said in the previous post that Palin was the most substantive VP candidate ever.
Here it appears you’re pointing out that she is more style than substance (which I agree is what modern day politics has become).
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:18 am
part of mccain’s decline the last few weeks was due to palin’s interviews. the shift in her favorability tracks exactly with his dip in the polls. tonight she washed that away, with maybe 10 million people having seen her interviews and more then 5 times that having watched tonight. wouldn’t be shocked if this got higher ratings then the prez debate. the gap should close a bit, and nc, florida, and virginia should shift into safer positions.
next up is town hall, and mccain’s chance to shift gears.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:36 am
alaska jake: Biden looked better than Palin tonight? I’m sure everyone was impressed with his hairplugs, botox, and teeth veneers. What a phoney.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:54 am
Hunter. . .When I say all a candidate has to do is look good, I was referring to the appearance of being in command of the facts. On that respect, I would say Biden most definitely looked better. That’s not to say he was correct in what he said. He could have stood up there on stage and spouted out 5000 outright lies, but if he looks like he knows what he’s talking about, with 30 years of experience behind him, and no one calls him on the lies, then he comes out the big winner. Palin could score 100% truthful on a lie detector test but will never come across as Queen of Facts in this election. That’s all I meant by “looking good.” Although personally I don’t really care about the hairplugs and teeth veneers.
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:13 am
I gotcha. I was just giving you a hard time.
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:23 am
Oh, he’s a handsome specimen to be sure: porcelain crowns for teeth, surgically corrected eyes that pull his face into a feline grimace, botox’d forehead that arch his eyebrows like a clown, a fake-bake tan, and all of it topped by doll’s-hair plugs. But tonight Senator Biden was poise personified in the very teeth of his own arrogance and indiscipline, his own incoherence and tendency to wander, his dear and abiding love for the sonorous tones of his own voice. It was Biden’s debate to lose, friends and well wishers—against Biden. But Biden pulled even with Biden and only at the cost of Biden’s own credibility, authority, reputation, and respect of his peers. At more than one point it seemed that Biden would take down Biden but Biden bluffed, dodged, and parried Biden’s every thrust and every jab. Gov. Palin for her part resisted the temptation to look aghast or afright at Biden’s cruelty to the hapless and unprepared Biden. Good for her. For a Biden divided against itself is not a pretty sight.
But of course Biden won. He had command of the facts. Only his facts were piddling details. And his “command” reduced to the grim and artless listing of bullet points.
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:44 am
camp obama will spend friday telling america how much money they raised tonight. in other words, they’ll admit palin crushed biden.
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:50 am
someone from the mccain campaign should put out a web video with biden lying. with a red family-feud-esque buzzing X over biden’s face whenever he lies.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:13 am
The polling from CBS and CNN sounds to me to be typical liberal MSM bullshit, of course i could be wrong….
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:21 am
Here are a couple of other lies:
“We spent in three weeks in Iraq as much as we have in seven years in Afghanistan”
Fact: Amount spent in Afgahnistan: 172 billion
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:32 am
15:
That sounded sketchy to me. Maybe he meant the first 3 weeks?
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:33 am
The best part for me was when Joe referred to people from Bosnia as “Bosniaks” — I had milk coming out my nose…
Actual quote “Look what we did in Bosnia. We took Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, being told by everyone, I was told by everyone that this would mean that they had been killing each other for a thousand years, it would never work.”
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:40 am
Virginia is GONE.
Take that to the bank.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:44 am
Here are a couple of other lies I didn’t see in the material above:
Number 1- “We spend as much in 3 weeks in Iraq as we have in 7 years in Afghanistan:
Fact: amount spent in Afghanistan: 172 billion
amount spent in Iraq: 653 billion
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf
So if you consider in 5 years there have been about 250 weeks in Iraq, that’s about 2.5 billion per week, about 8 billion for three weeks. So he’s only off by about 2000%.
Number 2- “The commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge would not work in Afghanistan”
Wrong! he said the insurgency would fail and that we would win!
http://media-newswire.com/release_1075078.html
This is probably more due to Biden’s senility and not knowing the difference between “surge” and “insurgency” than a contemptible lie.
No, we didn’t spend as much in Afghanistan in 7 years as we have in three weeks in Iraq, but I think it is safe to say we got more gaffes and lies out of Biden tonight than we have in the rest of his life.
If McCain’s campaign can make a series of ads highlighting some of these, it might be effective.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:45 am
Here’s another Biden quote:
IFILL: Is there a line that should be drawn about when we decide to go in?
BIDEN: Absolutely. There is a line that should be drawn.
IFILL: What is it?
BIDEN: The line that should be drawn is whether we A, first of all have the capacity to do anything about it number one. And number two, certain new lines that have to be drawn internationally. When a country engages in genocide, when a country engaging in harboring terrorists and will do nothing about it, at that point that country in my view and Barack’s view forfeits their right to say you have no right to intervene at all.
Completely exposing his (and Obama’s and the entire left’s) inconsistent and illogical support for intervention in Dharfur while opposing intervention in Iraq.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:46 am
Joe, what do you mean VA is gone?
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:55 am
#16- Thomas Allen- Sorry I was writing my post and something slipped. See #19. In the first year of the Iraq war, we spent 53 billion dollars. the amounts have gone up each year since then. So no way does Biden’s statement come even close to the truth.
http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/policy/securityspending/articles/supplemental_war_funding/
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:03 am
#21 OklahomCougar- That is a correct principle by Biden. Saddam engaged in genocide and supported suicide bombing in Israel. We made the right decision to go into Iraq.
In Dharfur, there was genocide, but no harboring of terrorists.
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:43 am
Ok all you fixed news fans your girl did great,then again you could trot out any pagent baby fill its head with facts and yes as long as it can read as she was seen doing on stage YA got a good one WINK! Look I was impressed with how much she took away from her cram sessions but come on be honest with your selves she is not ready to be the President of this nation.My god we are still tring to get over Bush please no more.Sen. McCain is a good an honorable soilder and we all know he did not pick this person as his running mate but leiberman just would not get by the NEO test so the Rove Machine stuck him with this glorified cheer leader!
I can hear them now “Give em something to entertain them and the people will never catch on,hey we got Bush In”
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:14 am
I would say with the higher than usual number of trolls I have seen here, on Redstate, and a few other sites, Governor Palin really got under their skin last night. Maybe they are actually worried.
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:27 am
I am the only one who heard Joe Biden sigh during the debate last night? The camera was on Palin, and she was talking and there was a loud sigh. It must have been Biden. It was about an hour into the debate when she was starting to get to him. Has anyone heard anything about this? I didn’t notice it at first, but my wife caught it.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:12 am
Biden’s BS was the most frustrating part of the debate. He lied and lied and she only stuck it to him a few times. I went back and reviewed the debate and watched only Palin’s remarks, and I have to say, she was awesome! She was pointed, fluid, rarely stumbled, and she was strong on the issues. She has principles. And she’s sexy of course. What a woman!
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:10 am
#17 Oklahoma Cougar: “Bosniaks” is a term referring to Bosnian Muslims. The use of the word was not an error on Joe’s part.
Also, with regard to the most dangerous vice president, I think that would have to go to Aaron Burr, who, while serving as VP, shot and killed one of the Founding Fathers.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:22 am
25) I heard the sigh too.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Hey guys theres this wonderful place outside the right and left called fact check before accussing someone of a lie check it out. Just a thought Wow a sigh lets make the guy resign for breathing LOL
October 4th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Sorry your girl lost of course not on fixed news though to here Murdocks Mavericks shes the President gues poor John is out I guess she’s right “Palin McCain”