Something odd happened to the liberal media after the first presidential debate on Wednesday. They couldn't for the life of them put any postive spin on the president's lackluster performance. There was nothing they could say that could take away from Mitt Romney's clear victory, but then came the excuses. Some blamed Jim Lehrer for his inability to moderate properly, others cited what must've been an incumbent debate curse, there was even some mention of Obama's reluctance to come across as an angry black man.
But the dopiest analysis by far was from former Vice President Al Gore, on his Current TV network -- think an even farther left version of MSNBC with fewer viewers -- who blamed altitude sickness on Obama's poor performance: [ video below after page break ]
I'm going to say something controversial here. Um, Obama arrived in Denver at 2 pm today. Just a few hours before the debate started. Romney did his debate prep in Denver. When you go to 5,000 feet, and you only have a few hours to adjust. Um, I don't know maybe kind of a --
Gore seemed to forget that Denver also hosted the Democratic National Convention back in 2008, where Obama gave his acceptance speech outside in a packed football stadium. No one was asking him difficult questions at the time though.
There were plenty of opportunities for the president to explain his agenda, but he failed to do so in the amount of time that he was given. According to CNN's debate clock, Obama spoke a full four minutes more than his opponent -- without the luxury of a teleprompter.
Not only did Romney set the record straight on a number of topics and issues in a shorter period of time, but what he did best -- according to Rush Limbaugh on his radio show on Thursday was "espouse conservatism," something the news media has never seemed to fully comprehend, but the majority of the informed electorate can actually relate to:
Ladies and gentlemen, I don't think that very many people on the left have any idea what hit them last night. You see, people on the left, including Obama, but pick anybody, they do not have an intellectual understanding of conservatism. They really do not. They have rejected it out of hand their entire lives. They deal with it by treating it as some minority way of thinking, a very small bunch of people. They're kooks and extremists who believe that stuff. Conservatism to them is a foreign language and very few people speak it. So what they've done my whole life, and even longer than that, is impugn the character of conservatives. They attack conservatism with cliches and emotions. But in the arena of ideas they're lost.
Limbaugh went on to say that Obama has never really been challenged his entire life. The news media has propped him up as some kind of savior, but this has all been without merit -- like his Nobel Peace Prize for instance.
