So, I watched the California debate online at CNN. I loved the focus group rating response on the screen the entire time (videos of this are below).
First, I thought Romney did great and McCain looked like a fussy old man – the kind you laugh at (not with) when he makes snarky comments. Second, I thought that Huckabee had a few nice answers but his continued jokes about not being a part of the debate made it obvious to anyone – even those who haven’t been paying attention to the campaign – that he is not in the running.
What I found reassuring was that the focus group and I agreed most of the time, giving Romney the upper hand over McCain.
Then I started watching the commentaries and reading MSM releases about the debate. It was like they saw a debate that I didn't. It reminded me of how I started getting to be more politically active. After 9/11, I would spend my lunchtime watching both the Pentagon and Whitehouse daily briefings. At that time they were every day. Within a few months I started to notice that when I would watch the briefings and then watch the evening news (which would do a report on the briefing), I would say to myself, "Hey, that is not the same thing that I saw". It was like there were two briefings: the one I watched and the one that the MSM reported on.
Last night's debate was the same. There was the one the focus group and I watched, and then there was the one the MSM reported on. The tale of two debates...
Thanks Nealie Ride for the invitation to post at NYforMitt (this is my first post here), I have been reading NYforMitt for a while now. Neilie Ride and I go back a ways. I think he got tired of me filling his inbox with ideas and links…
Read me at my day job at http://healthyvoice.blogspot.com/
8 comments:
As many of my fellow Mitt-Supporters were feeling exhausted and saddened after the Florida primary, last nights debate was amazing: Our Leader Mitt Romney showed us the professionalism, the optimism, and the calmness that are qualities which the "President of the United States" should poccess!
Doug from Illinois
I was thinking the same thing!
Mr. Larynx,
Nice nickname! And nice post!
Welcome aboard!
Good coment. I saw the same thing on Fox this morning. I was so angry that I sent Fox an email.
Stan
This is absolutely true. I have to admit that the coverage is making me increasingly ANGRY.
The Luntz focus group clearly thought Mitt won. The undecided voters with their hands on the immediate reaction knobs clearly thought Mitt won. And many conservative bloggers thought Mitt won.
And then, in the alternate universe of the main stream media, you get this other version where McCain WASN'T an angry, slouchy, fact-impaired, goober. I just watched this silly "fact check" video from Fox News and they actually said that McCain's attack of Romney about withdrawal timetables was "barely true" and that McCain's attack about Romney being a flipflopper was "true". Undeniably, I think they said.
They left off the little things like McCain confusing Romney's lietenant governor with Jane Swift, using inaccurate figures about jobs, using inaccurate figures about taxes and fees, etc. Those, apparently, don't need to be "fact checked". I'm getting more and more angry as I type this.
That McCain used his final answer to insult Romney rather than copmliment Reagan or even paint a positive picture of himself only underlined his defensive, cranky, hateful nature. That his accusation of Romney as being responsible for the "negative tone" in the campaign has been quoted widely in the news without any acknowledgement of what a cranky, crotchety, irritable, miserable fusspot McCain was through the whole debate!
It's all unbelievable to me. You've got reality, and then you've got McCain love land.
I finally found a story that saw it the way I saw it.
http://www.thestreet.com/s/romney-scores-but-mccain-may-have-won-the-game/markets/marketfeatures/10401426.html?puc=_googlen?cm_ven=GOOGLEN&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA
The nice thing is it was linked to the front page of iGoogle so it will at least get some reads.
[sorry for the long link though...]
To add to what I said above, it is a well written piece that does seem to present things as I saw them. However, notice the title, "Romney's Rhetoric Won't Derail McCain". The title makes it sound like there was just "Rhetoric" and no substance even though if you read the article, Romney clearly won the day.
Some Editor somewhere still got his 'take' on the debate in.
I really despise most of the MSM...
It's like this presidential race is going on in crazy land. It makes me want to change my career to be a journalist so I can say what nobody else is willing to say. I mean, I'll say it here, but it probably doesn't get quite the readership... :-)
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