Presidential Debate (Page 11)

You do not have to admit your guys sucks, just that there might be a better candidate.  And the best one is presented forward.  I mean Romney lost the GOP nomination in 2008.  Now he's back and has won it.  Similar IMO.

Of course this assumes that the process is fair and unbiased and in the best interest of the county... I had a hard time even typing that.

I read somewhere that the pattern for the Republicans for many cycles now has been that the guy who came in second alwas get the nomination next time around (I'm pretty sure that it holds true going back to Reagan, at least). (Which should mean that Santorum will have the nomination next time the Republicans field a new candidate).

As to keeping the sitting prez, that is not just something the Democrats do - Bush was not the most popular person in 2004, but I don't recall any serious efforts to replace him at the ballot.

I read a Slate article recently that talked about how the first few presidents would have considered the whole idea of campaigning to be wrong. If people are calling for you to do the job, you take it. You don't go around telling people that you would be the right person.

I think there's a lot of "it depends".  If Romney/Ryan were to win and then get reelected I suspect Ryan would be the heir apparent in 2020.  If they were to lose then it's an open field again and it all depends on who shows up and the Santorum would be at an advantage.

Now for Obama/Biden, if they were to win reelection I can't imagine Biden would be seriously considered for the nomination so it would probably be a new face on the Dem side. (possibly Hillary, if she has another run in her)

And Josh too.... simple reality. Candidates do not run for the Presidency, party nominees do. Look how well candidates do for the Presidency. In order to back your man, you have to back him... which they continue doing even when he is blowing it... current Pres is a good example.... so now all along as a party you have backed your guy, fostered partisanship and blamed the other party and their guys... and you expect to win an election when you say sure, we like Obama, but we like this guy even more. Simply isn't going to fly with todays political system. We are talking odds here and the odds would be against you from the start. It's a loosing bet.

Oh? Who ran for the Republican candidacy when a Bush was in office as a first term president?

OK, that's true - I guess I am assuming that he will lose, and so the next time they have to find a new guy will be 2016.

ETA - I am pretty sure Hillary could run again - and have a better shot in the general election than she did in 2008. My dream match up would be Clinton and Condolezza Rice. 2 smart women, with foreign policy experience.

Not kill, but end federal subsidy.  And why does Big Bird need a handout from the government anyway?  Have you been in a Toys R Us lately?  That guy's got to have some serious coin...

GHWB wasn't second to Reagan, was he? (checks wikipedia)...Oh...he was.  Didn't know that.

Well GWB didn't run for Prez in 1996. (delete the h, click search)...OK, that checks-out...SO THERE!!!

This one is interesting.  Did you watch the John Adams shows?  If there had been modern campaigning and modern primaries, the election would've probably been between Hamilton and Jefferson and most likely would've gone to Jefferson. 

#2 in 1996 was Pat Buchanan. Who ran as a reform party candidate in 2000 before the primaries. 

OK, so I am looking at the other years:

1976: Candidate - Ford. Runner up - Reagan

1980: Candidate - Reagan. Runner up - Bush

1984 - Reagan again

1988: Candidate - Bush. Runner up - Dole

1992 - Bush again

1996: Candidate - Dole. Runner up - Buchanon (see above)

2000: Candidate - Bush. Runner up - McCain

2004 - Bush again

2008: Candidate - McCain. Runner up - Huccabee #3 - Romney

2012: Candidate - Romney (Huccabee working for Fox News since 2008). 

It looks like the only times in the last 11 elections it was not the #2 candidate, that person had either dropped out of politics or switched to another party before the primaries.

Just for fun, here were the #2's on the other side each of those years:

 1976 - Jerry Brown

1980 - Ted Kennedy

1984 - Gary Hart

1988 - Jesse Jackson (Al Gore was #3)

1992 - Jerry Brown (again)

1996 - Technically, Lyndon LaRouche got votes for 2 delegates from 2 different states, but they were never awarded to him

2000 - Bill Bradly (again, really just a token - took no delegates)

2004 - John Edwards

2008 - Hillary Clinton

2012 - (Technically, John Wolfe of Tennessee, but only getting <2% of votes, and no delegates)

So basically, the Republicans keep saying "Oh, we should have gone with the other guy", while the dem's say "man, these guys sucked! Who else do we have in the back?"

back on topic:

I knew someone would do it.  I just didn't think it would be the New Yorker...

That's the interesting thing to me.  There are quite a few liberal outlets now openly questioning Barack Obama's candidacy.  Which means he has to come-out swinging in the next debate and we'll see how he does.  I think the next debate will break all records for viewers.

Looks like she's conjuring up Aunt Esther.

(20121004-083307.jpg)

The last debate was one of the best viewed in a long time, since Clinton-Bush, according to the paper this morning.

Even my wife thought Romney did well in the debate. What troubles me is that so much of what he said turned out to be false, but people will remember more how he came across and not so much what he said (or in the case of how he will meet his projections, what he didn't say).

I don't think his candidacy is being questioned, I think it is his commitment to the battle. Ironically, I think the most accessible information about either sides plans is coming from Bill Clinton. He is showing more passion in speeches and appearances that either candidate, with a firm and quick grasp on the numbers for both sides. That guy should really run for office...

 Oh you want proof? Buahahahahahahahahahhahaha. Good luck with that. It's the same old tired song and dance. Make the accusation and let the accused prove otherwise.  'But..but..but Media Matters said.."

Well, what counts as "liberal fact checkers"? And if something is true or false, it is true or false. Unless you are worried that reality has a liberal bias.

But, from Politifact, here are some of the lies:

• Romney said six tax studies look at a study that Obama described and "say it's completely wrong." Previously, Romney has claimed that five studies back his tax plan. We found that Mostly False. We saw no more than two independent studies out of the five claimed.

• Romney also said that Obama doubled the deficit. But that's not the case, so we rated that False.

• Romney said part of his plan to create jobs includes North American energy independence. He said that while oil and gas production might be up, Obama shouldn't get credit — the increase was on private lands, not public. We have previously found that oil production on public lands dropped 14 percent in one year, but that's not the whole story. It was small snapshot, and partly because of hurricanes.  We rated a claim from Crossroads GPS that oil "production's down where Obama's in charge" Half True. Our reporting confirmed Romney's claim that Obama shouldn't get credit — but neither, perhaps, should President George W. Bush.

• Romney said that Obama "put in place a board that can tell people ultimately what treatments they're going to receive." Romney avoided the more inaccurate and harsher wording of some other critics, who have falsely described the board as "rationing" care. But Romney's claim can leave viewers with the impression that the board makes health care decisions for individual Americans, and that's not the case. We rated his statement Mostly False.

• Romney said his health care plan covered people with pre-existing conditions, so that insurers can't deny them coverage. But he left out a critical qualifier: People only get protection under his plan if they maintain continuous coverage without gaps where they're uninsured. That's a big difference from the health care law on the books. We rated his statement Mostly False.

• Romney said, "In one year, (President Obama) provided $90 billion in breaks to the green energy world … into solar and wind, to Solyndra and Fisker and Tesla and Ener1." That is incorrect in several ways. That $90 billion wasn’t provided in one year, wasn’t distributed primarily via tax breaks, wasn’t primarily provided directly to companies, wasn’t primarily spent on solar and wind, and wasn’t spent at all on Fisker or Tesla. We rated his statement False.

Here's a handful of others from other sites: Romney said that Obama was lying about tax loopholes that create incentives for moving jobs overseas. But (although it is small overall in terms of the amounts lost), companies can take deductions for moving business units. Which is not limited to moving them within the US, so moving overseas for cheaper labor still gets a tax deduction.

Romney said his health plan in MA did not result in higher taxes. But this is true only because the fed kicked in money.

Romney also said that Obamacare results in unelected boards telling people what kind of treatment they can get (death panels again?). The law explicitly says they cannot ration care.

There are others, but you should get the point. And I need to walk my dogs, not just continue to point out information which is as readily available to you as to me, if you are seriously interested in seeing how he lied and told half truths. I can't help it if the democrats are too incompetent to make commercials spinning that, or if they are only showing them in swing states.

2 isn't 5, that makes it a lie. If I say 90% of something but it's only 40% I'm lying.

False. The deficit is almost exactly the same as it was when he took office. 

Obama shouldn't get credit. True.

This one is semantics. No idea.

But he doesn't have a plan. His plan is to do nothing and leave the status quo. That's not a plan. I call that false.

Romney said it was for solar and wind. That's not true. A majority of it was for other purposes like weatherization of low income homes. False.

I have no idea how anyone can vote for either of these guys.

Gearboy you forgot to mention the Obama "lies".  
They both certainly stretched things to their advantage, but I'm not so sure that Romney did it more than Obama.

I copied from the uber right wing AP, so please consider the source: (there are right wing "fact check" sites that refute these a lot more strongly)
FACT CHECK: Presidential debate missteps 

OBAMA: "I've proposed a specific $4 trillion deficit reduction plan. ... The way we do it is $2.50 for every cut, we ask for $1 in additional revenue."

THE FACTS: In promising $4 trillion, Obama is already banking more than $2 trillion from legislation enacted along with Republicans last year that cut agency operating budgets and capped them for 10 years. He also claims more than $800 billion in war savings that would occur anyway. And he uses creative bookkeeping to hide spending on Medicare reimbursements to doctors. Take those "cuts" away and Obama's $2.50/$1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases shifts significantly more in the direction of tax increases.

Obama's February budget offered proposals that would cut deficits over the coming decade by $2 trillion instead of $4 trillion. Of that deficit reduction, tax increases accounted for $1.6 trillion. He promises relatively small spending cuts of $597 billion from big federal benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid. He also proposed higher spending on infrastructure projects.

OBAMA: It's important "that we take some of the money that we're saving as we wind down two wars to rebuild America."

THE FACTS: This oft-repeated claim is based on a fiscal fiction. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were paid for mostly with borrowed money, so stopping them doesn't create a new pool of available cash that can be used for something else, like rebuilding America. It just slows down the government's borrowing.

OBAMA: "Gov. Romney's central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut — on top of the extension of the Bush tax cuts, that's another trillion dollars — and $2 trillion in additional military spending that the military hasn't asked for. That's $8 trillion. How we pay for that, reduce the deficit, and make the investments that we need to make, without dumping those costs onto middle-class Americans, I think is one of the central questions of this campaign."

THE FACTS: Obama's claim that Romney wants to cut taxes by $5 trillion doesn't add up. Presumably, Obama was talking about the effect of Romney's tax plan over 10 years, which is common in Washington. But Obama's math doesn't take into account Romney's entire plan.

Romney proposes to reduce income tax rates by 20 percent and eliminate the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. The Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group, says that would reduce federal tax revenues by $465 billion in 2015, which would add up to about $5 trillion over 10 years.

However, Romney says he wants to pay for the tax cuts by reducing or eliminating tax credits, deductions and exemptions. The goal is a simpler tax code that raises the same amount of money as the current system but does it in a more efficient manner.

The knock on Romney's plan, which Obama accurately cited, is that Romney has refused to say which tax breaks he would eliminate to pay for the lower rates.

OBAMA: "Independent studies looking at this said the only way to meet Gov. Romney's pledge of not ... adding to the deficit is by burdening middle-class families. The average middle-class family with children would pay about $2,000 more."

THE FACTS: That's just one scenario. Obama's claim relies on a study by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group. The study, however, is more nuanced than Obama indicated.

The study concludes it would be impossible for Romney to meet all of his stated goals without shifting some of the tax burden from people who make more than $200,000 to people who make less.

In one scenario, the study says, Romney's proposal could result in a $2,000 tax increase for families who make less than $200,000 and have children.

Romney says his plan wouldn't raise taxes on anyone, and his campaign points to several studies by conservative think tanks that dispute the Tax Policy Center's findings. Most of the conservative studies argue that Romney's tax plan would stimulate economic growth, generating additional tax revenue without shifting any of the tax burden to the middle class. Congress, however, doesn't use those kinds of projections when it estimates the effect of tax legislation.