The Final Presidential Debate
Stream of consciousness notes during the debate…
The very first question, McCain mentions Fannie Mae, giving him a great opportunity to bring up Obama’s assocation with former Fannie CEO Franklin Raines. Of course, he doesn’t!
Obama’s idea of allowing people to take money from their IRA or 401(k) penalty-free is ridiculous. The wrong thing to do is encourage people not to save money! Of course, McCain wants to help by cutting capital gains taxes right now; who has capital gains right now? Neither of these guys has a clue!
McCain is doing well with the “Joe the Plumber” story; Obama avoided the truth by focusing on Joe’s income tax, not his business tax, which is what will increase. He got him again on the “spread the wealth” comment, exposing Obama as the socialist that he is. Obama still doesn’t address the real question here. McCain, maybe for the first time in any debate, is hammering him!
As usual, Obama has no specifics about what programs he is going to cut. At least McCain says it will be an across-the-board “hatchet.” Neither candidate wants to admit that they cannot do everything they are promising. McCain’s earmark talking is hollow after he voted for the earmark-laden bailout; if he had voted against that crap, he might be winning right now!
“Senator Obama, I am not President Bush.” Finally, he said it; it should have been said two months ago. This is the McCain from the Republican primary that, as a Romney supporter, I hated! Where has he been the past two months? Obama is getting upset, even jumping on Fox News.
McCain is tossed a softball opportunity to hammer Obama on his associations. He’s taking a little different tack by accusing Obama supporters of lying about McCain’s associations. Obama’s referring to CBS polls to support his point; that’s pretty weak. I wish McCain would hammer him about his associations instead of his negative ads.
Finally, McCain brings up Bill Ayers and ACORN. Obama tries to write off his past associations to Ayers; not much there. Obama says that his ONLY involvement with ACORN is representing them in the motor-voter issues; the facts do not support that. Obama thinks that naming 3 or 4 reputable people today makes up for his terrible choices in the past.
Joe BIden is “one of the finest public servants to ever serve.” Wow, I didn’t know that! McCain is just going over the “reformer” talking points about Gov. Palin; why doesn’t he say, “She’s just a regular American; she understands what Americans go through every day.” McCain saves himself on this segment by turning back to Obama’s tax and spend rhetoric.
McCain’s missing the point on the reducing dependence on foreign oil question. He’s talking about 10 years when the question was a 4-year time frame. Obama does the same.
Now Obama’s now an unapologetic protectionist? McCain hits Obama on his eloquence; he could have dug deeper on this one, but at least he is being aggressive.
On to health care. Obama’s plan is just more government spending that we cannot afford. McCain has the better plan here, he is just incapable of explaining it to people. Obama is simply lying about not fining small businesses for not providing healthcare; his own website says otherwise. Obama keeps saying that health care benefits are not taxed today. Health care benefits are taxed today; health insurance premiums are not! The health insurance thing is simple: McCain wants to allow consumers to get involved in making choices in the market which he feels will improve the system and lower costs; Obama wants the government to fix it by wealth redistribution. Its free market vs. socialism.
McCain’s Supreme Court Justice answer was good. Obama believes that a Supreme Court Justice’s most important responsibility is to provide fairness and justice to the American people. Absolutely untrue! A Supreme Court Justice’s only responsibility is to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America! McCain should bring that up. He doesn’t, but he brings out Obama’s very liberal record on abortion that, I think, the vast majority of Americans disagree with.
On to education… Shockingly, Obama thinks we need to spend more money on it! He wants to make college more affordable; I wonder how he will do that? This guy is such a big-government socialist, it makes me sick! Finally, Obama says the only thing that I have agreed with him on from day one: parents must take a more active role in their children’s education. McCain gives the usual Republican school choice stuff. I wish he (and all Republicans) would talk about the root cause of our education problems: the overbearing power of teacher’s unions. Obama slams No Child Left Behind, which does basically what he just said he wants to do. His problem with it? Not enough money! Truly shocking!
In his closing argument, McCain brings up trust. I wish he would tell us why you can’t trust Obama, but he won’t.
In his closing argument, Obama brings up… guess what?… more spending!