Wednesday, October 15, 2008

When McCain Won, Couric Rolled her Eyes

I watched John McCain easily win the debate tonight, and now I’m listening to how the debate is being recast into an Obama win. It’s amazing how much better Obama does, how he becomes more eloquent, more responsive, when the talking heads tell you what you really saw and heard.
Right now Katie Couric sounds like an employee of the Obama campaign. Her comments seem to go only as far as to whether John McCain rolled his eyes a couple of times. However, when she asked an unbiased audience member about the debate and heard that he thought McCain did better, Katie rolled her eyes.

I think the exchange about education was the most significant. The point that we spend more per pupil and achieve less than other nations clearly is a call for reform. I didn’t hear Obama answer the call, particularly when he dismissed school vouchers out of hand, even though so many big-city Black parents are in despair over their lack of school choice.

When Obama said that vouchers in DC didn’t get the job done because there weren’t enough vouchers, and McCain came back something like “so you don’t want any?” I thought he left Obama with big egg on his face. However, Katie Couric and Company studiously avoided noticing.

Then when she asked “Joe the Plumber” what he thought, and he started saying something good about McCain’s health plan, Katie hurriedly cut him off. Joe better figure out something good to say about Obama winning his vote, or he’ll never have Katie bat her eyes at him again.

Obama played down our public education failures very coolly. The Democrat Party, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Teachers’ Union, knows where their support base lies. Teachers have huge political clout through their unions’ political contributions (Republicans need not apply), and also indoctrinate our children in liberal ideology from Head Start through college. It’s a wonder any young people are Republicans.

Had I been McCain’s advisor, he would have done much better. I would have set the stage by describing how Bill Clinton cashed the Peace Dividend after the Soviet Union collapsed and President George H. W. Bush drove Saddam out of Kuwait, and then reaped huge tax revenues from the Dot.Com boom until its bubble popped and we entered the Clinton Recession in late 2000.

I would then have lectured Obama on how President Bush brought us back from Recession until we were struck by 9/11 (planned and organized by Al Qaida during Clinton’s administration), and about how we haven’t been attacked since (although all the “experts” after 9/11 said another attack was inevitable).

Then I would describe how our economy came back and we had a higher rate of GDP growth and far lower unemployment than the developed countries of Europe, and the stock market reached new highs. I would illustrate how President Bush, Senator McCain, and other Republicans tried to increase regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and of how they even described four and five years ago how the economy was in danger of doing exactly what is happening now, and of how Democrats like Barney Frank and the Congressional Black Caucus fought against increased regulation, calling Republicans racist for even proposing it.

And then I would show how all that started to change two years ago when Democrats took control of the House and Senate. The rate of GDP growth slowed, and unemployment started to creep up. At the same time, the “surge” in Iraq was working while Democrats called for immediate withdrawal and, in effect, surrender. To Democrats, good news in Iraq was bad for them, and so was good news about the economy.

When John McCain and 23 other Republican Senators tried again to increase financial regulation in 2006, Democrats once again blocked their efforts while receiving generous contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

If only John McCain could have shown the video clip of Barney Frank and the Congressional Black Caucus repeating over and over how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were just fine, and didn’t need more controls, it would have been all over.

Then as frosting on the cake, McCain could have shown Franklin Delano Raines, former Clinton Budget Director and Fannie Mae CEO, resigning in disgrace in 2004 when he was caught fraudulently cooking Fannie Mae’s books to generate huge bonuses for himself and other high Democrat officers.

John McCain would have wrapped up by saying that the "Democrats set the house on fire, and now they say they're the firemen!"

All this could have been, and should have been, but John McCain never punched through the main stream media filter that protects Democrats from being held accountable for their screw ups.

Now it’s too late, but all of this will come out after Obama is anointed. Then the main stream media, having reached their goal of a Democrat in the White House, will go off in pursuit of their other goal, making money.

We’ll be left asking, as always, “Why didn’t you tell us this stuff sooner?”

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