Four Takeaways from Romney’s Denver Debate Demolition

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/four-takeaways-romneys-denver-debate-demolition_653575.html

1. The Romney campaign is rejecting the idea the campaign is going to be a referendum on Obama’s first term and is finally presenting a bold and detailed competing vision.

“I was surprised that the president spoke in empty platitudes and had no vision about where he wanted to take the country, especially since he’s been telling us this is a choice,” said Romney campaign senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom.

2. Romney is an underrated communicator.

In a refreshing change of pace for a campaign where both candidates have avoided substantive policy debates, things got really specific tonight. Obama tried to highlight Romney’s lack of specific details in key policy areas, but the overall impression tonight was that Romney was a details guy able to reel off incredibly specific—and lucid!—details about small business taxes and energy subsidies. We began to see why he was such a good businessman. Romney knows how to explain numbers and sell people on them.

3. Conversely, Obama is an overrated communicator who’s not very good with facts.

Obama’s policy knowledge did not appear nearly as deep as Romney’s. Obama kept going back to the well, citing the $5 trillion tax cut Romney allegedly wants even after Romney vigorously and convincingly repeated it. Then he completely lost the plot on health care.

4. Even the Obama camp is more or less conceding it was a beatdown.

You would expect a gleeful GOP after the debate, and they did not disappoint. Davis was bold in declaring victory. “This was the best performance by a political candidate in a debate since Bill Clinton in 1992, so I’m being perfectly bipartisan about this,” he said. “For people who love to score these things like ball games, Mitt Romney pitched a shutout tonight.”

Obama senior adviser David Plouffe was asked if he thought the debate was a “defining moment.” He responded, “We don’t believe in defining moments.” Which is odd, because they thought that Mitt Romney’s off-the-record comments at a private fundraiser were such a defining moment they’re now running millions of dollars worth of ads based on them.

But perhaps the biggest admissions of defeat were non-verbal. As the clamor in the press room wound down, nearly a dozen Romney surrogates were still chewing reporter’s ears off in spin alley, while Axelrod was the only Democrat left talking to reporters.