Joey the shark chewed up and spat out that weenie little wingnut from Janesville, Wisconsin. Joe was commanding and avuncular whereas Ryan looked like he bought his suit in the kid’s department.
A few quick comments:
Martha Raddatz won some admirers in the Crack Van for playing dominatrix with Ryan. She refused to call him Mister and stuck to Congressman even though the little fuckmook’s handlers made that a “debate rule.” We never saw whether or not she was wearing dominatrix boots but she was no Jim Lehrer, y’all.
Ryan forgot to be a fake moderate when he admitted that they’d ban almost all abortions. So much for a week worth’s of weasel words from the Mittbot.
The most important thing that the Veep brought to the debate was energy after the President’s flat performance in the jinxed for incumbents first debate. He was on fire, calling Ryan on his prevarications and general malakatude.
If Paul Ryan is the “intellectual leader of the Republican party,” they’re in deep trouble. Nonsensical word salad kept spewing out of his mouth and he made no sense at least half the time. The only thing that he made clear was that Romney-Ryan have a secret plan for everything.
I call it a decisive victory for our lovable lunch bucket Democratic Veep. I guess Andrew Sullivan and Tweety can return those Depends that I sent them. Not really, but I wanted to…
I’ll let Split Enz have the last word, why I’ll never know? Oh yeah, the post title:
It’s called crushing ’em. Biden crushed Paul Ryan like he would a can of Natty Light against his own forehead. I thought Raddatz was okay except that she completely ruined the tail end of the debate with three consecutive stinker questions.
“Please let’s talk about your faith because that’s obviously relevant somehow.”
“Don’t you just hate negative people?”
and finally
“What sort of man are you?”
And this is supposedly the good moderator.
I’ll beat this dead horse one more time, but whenever Ryan or Romney talk about how the latter “worked with Democrats/was bipartisan,” someone should mention the birthers. No, they don’t outright dominate the GOP caucus, but there are plenty enough of them to make life uncomfortable for the so-called moderates.
Joe said “[Ryan] doesn’t answer the question” only once. He was far more polite than I was. I lost count of how many times I shouted at the TV, “ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION!”
Raddatz called Ryan on not answering the question once, too. She repeated the question, and he still didn’t answer it, and then she said, very coolly, “Okay, no answer then,” or “no specifics then,” I can’t remember exactly which.
But I yelled at the screen in glee at that point.
Dan and I were all “JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION – IT’S A SIMPLE YES or NO!!!”
Actually, as BFD Joe would say, Ryan was spewing malarkatude.
*) I couldn’t get Ryan’s body language. At times, bowed head looking down, other times bowed but looking up , almost like a penitent. Sometimes with big eyes like a Japanese cartoon puppy. Then he would shift to bowed down but head cocked to the side which I supposed was a combination of bowec down but I’m listening?
*) Quite telling was immediately on the end of the debate a local pol figure put up on their facebook page a share of a “Ryan is my man ” poster (from the Rush Limbaugh Excellence in Broadcasting) with a note that they liked being for a gentleman.
In short, looked like this was already planned from far before the debate. They knew Biden was going to be on the offensive. From the prez debate they hader criticized Obama for being almost submissive / deferential (well would they like an uppity N**er? Hate to use that word, but as a body language expert pointed out after the prez debate, the negative inferences many voters would make from a forceful or angry black person would have fed into that negative stereotype) Now Biden is on the offensive – although his offense was to state facts and challenge the other side (which is what I thought was part of being a debate). Not to mention the well established formula of the prez debates being to look presidential while the VP debates are letting the dogs out to actually fight over the policy).
And if you want to talk about being gentlemanly, look at Ryan’s answer to the softball question about your character. Ryan basically said that he wasn’t a two-timing philanderer like his opponent, although he had the greatest respect for. Almost brings up echoes of the gospel parable about the Scribe / Pharisee (can’t remember which ) who went to the temple and thanked God (or was that reminded God to be thankful to them) that they weren’t like the person standing next to them.
Unfortunately, the repubs have been highly successful in a strategy of seeing specific strengths of the dems, picking one and pre-emptively deriding it, and the dems cowering away from using it. This going hand-in-hand with actively rooting for their team loudly enough to make the dems feel isolated as the lone person.
*) If you want a better and more thorough look at character/faith/morality in their public life, the facebook page for America Magazine (Jesuit) has both an analysis of the debate and a follow-up interview with both Biden and Ryan (although admittedly, the person writing the debate article leant too heavily repub for me).
*) Kudos to the moderator for riding herd. Much better than in the prez debate. Also as noted by delagtar, the moderator seemed to have the idea that they were actually supposed to answer the question.
*) No secret that Biden can be a loose canon. Worried about that going into the debate. But Biden kept his composure and closest he came was about malaka. And frankly I was thinking worse at the time.
*) Like Adastros addresses the idea of Ryan being the brains of the party. I heard a lot of pleasing words, a lot of promises that their yet un-released plan will magically bring a world of puppies and flowers (In fairness, as I remember it, one of the running jokes on Obama 4 years back dealt with his flowery promises).
But, to misquote Shakespeare, Ryan seemed mostly a tale full of sound and fury, yet signifying nothing. Unfortuately though, not an idiot as the repubs have been highly successfull at continuing to press their agenda of dismantleing the social safety net while escalating tensions both to the American public (Terrah! Terrah! Terrah!) as well a drawing international affairs to fit a structure to provoke and justify war.
Almost forgot the worst continuing lie.
BIPARTISAN???
Have you looked at the House for the lat 4 years?
And if you’re gonna apply it to Romney in Mass- either to say he was bipartisan or to tout the success of his leadership
, please be kind enough to include that the SOP in Mass was that the strongly dems would vote for a bill, send it to Romney for Veto and then vote to override Romney.
you are rigth mapplestreet …
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