Presidential debate 2012: Romney and Obama
In the first presidential debate of the fall campaign, neither Mitt Romney nor President Obama appeared to land a knockout blow or commit the sort of serious blunder that would instantly change the presidential race.
The Republican challenger held his own during a 90-minute encounter that revolved almost exclusively around domestic issues.
Romney, offering sharper answers than Obama and seizing control of the debate at several points, was never ruffled, repeatedly predicting that Obama would provide more “trickle-down government” if he were reelected in November. He defended himself against charges from Obama that his tax cut plan would favor the wealthy.
For his part, Obama tried to bury his opponent in the very thing that Romney is said to crave – data. Repeatedly referring to arguments offered by his leading surrogate, former President Clinton, Obama tried to rebut Romney’s claim that he could balance the budget while cutting tax rates across the board and increasing military spending by $2 billion.
“Math, common sense and our history shows us that’s not a recipe for job growth” – Obama said.
Romney and Obama.
Here’s what President Obama said about the $716 billion in Medicare cuts enacted within Obamacare – “$716 billion we were able to save from the Medicare program by no longer overpaying insurance companies by making sure that we weren’t overpaying providers. And using that money, we were actually able to lower prescription drug costs for seniors by an average of $600, and we were also able to make a—make a significant dent in providing them the kind of preventive care that will ultimately save money throughout the system.”
Um, no. As I discussed on Tuesday, the “donut hole” closure imposed by Obamacare only affects 6 percent of seniors. Furthermore, Obamacare’s new spending on prescription drugs and preventive care is offset by a far greater amount of cuts. The cuts outweigh the new spending by a ratio of fifteen to one.
Romney hit that point: “That’s $1 for every $15 you’ve cut. They’re smart enough to know that’s not a good trade. I want to take that $716 billion you’ve cut and put it back into Medicare. By the way, we can include a prescription program if we need to improve it. But the idea of cutting $716 billion from Medicare to be able to balance the additional cost of Obamacare is, in my opinion, a mistake.”
From YouTube to Xbox videogame consoles, people tuned into the US presidential debate online and weighed in so intensely that it became Twitter’s hottest US political event.
While those attending the debate between President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney agreed to be silent while the men sparred verbally on stage, the Internet raged with comments and critiques.
By half-way through the debate, the top 10 “hashtags” being pegged on messages at Twitter were related to the exchange.
“Tonight’s debate was the most tweeted about event in US political history” – said Twitter, the globally popular one-to-many text messaging service.
During a debate deemed by social media repartee to be lacking in clear knock-out moments, a comment by Obama was tagged with a “#zinger” hashtag.
Obama spotlighted a seeming shift in Romney’s tax reform plan, saying his opponent’s “big bold idea is ‘Never mind’.”
Romney maintained he would save tax dollars by cutting money for programs such as public television broadcasting despite his love of the Big Bird character on educational program “Sesame Street” met with mockery.
Someone started a “FireBigBird” account at Twitter and “SupportBigBird” quickly became a trending tag for missives at the social network.