I was happy to see McCain hitting Obama pretty hard. My impression was that McCain was doing more outreach to the base on issues that get them fired up. McCain is pretty obviously not the most intellectual and articulate guy in the world, which is unfortunate going up against a candidate who can outright lie convincingly to your face, and it not only sounds believable, but wonderful. Obama is now apparently against partial birth abortion. That’s news to me! I think that’ll be news to the media too.
Sadly, the Second Amendment has been silent in this presidential election. I doubt the media is going to force Obama to talk about it, and I wouldn’t be shocked if “no gun control questions” was a condition of Obama doing the debates.
Overall, I would say, in the last two debates, there was no clear winner. In this debate, I actually think McCain came out ahead. He hit Obama on several issues that I think will scare even independents. Obama was clearly uncomfortable. But the rhetorical edge has gone to Obama in all three debates. I’ll be honest, I think Obama has a better understanding of the current economic mess than McCain does, but Obama’s problem is he looks for solutions through the lens of “Government First.” There’s no problem to which Obama thinks the solution lies in less government. His grasp of the issues is meaningless if his solution is wrong.
UPDATE: David Bernstein thinks McCain blew it, namely blew a lot of opportunity to deal a knock out punch to Obama. I agree that he wasn’t as strong as he needed to be, even if I do think his performance was better than the other two debates. One thing McCain has going against him is that conservatives are rather tired of having a president who can’t articulate our principles. We can’t expect voters, many of which barely pay attention to this stuff, to vote with us, when the leader of our ticket can’t successfully articulate the principles. We’ve had to deal with that for eight years. I’m happy to deal with it for eight more if that means we don’t have to deal with Obama, but I would really like an articulate candidate for conservative principles to take up the mantle and run with it. We’ve been sorely lacking that, and it shows.
I was kinda disappointed in McCain’s weak praise of Palin, though.
Maybe he felt he couldn’t highlight her executive experience without calling attention to his lack of it.
Obama ought to understand the current economy better than McCain — he’s an accessory before the fact. Cloward-Piven, indeed.
III
PS–I think there might be something to what you say about “no Second Amendment questions.” The fifth-column press would be only too happy to give him cover.
III
There’s little doubt in my mind the media is helping Obama bury the issue.
McCain gave him a pass when he mentally stepped over the 2nd Amendment. He was talking about how States cannot be allowed to have votes on rights like the First Amendment, mental skip, and ‘other rights’.
That was a good point to pin Obama down on 2A, Heller, and Chicago.
Even if McCain whalloped Obama on every issue – and I think he did – the MSM will say that Obama blew him out of the water. It’s lose-lose.
I think melancton Smith is right – Mccain blew it. Sure, there could have been a “no gun questions” pre-requisit, but then that would have certainly provided a great line of attack for McCain. And even if there was, had he mentioned it what would obama do – claim they had agreed not to discuss guns because it would hurt Obama????
I agree that McCain should have brought it up himself. He had the opportunity. I think he’s worried about Obama throwing the gun show issue back in his face.
Not that I’m excusing him not bringing it up. He should know how to deal with that. But I think McCain doesn’t want to talk about it either.
I don’t think that McCain wants his record on RKBA exposed any more than Obama does. His record is only good when compared to someone who is completely anti.
As far as having an articulate candidate, I was thinking the same thing while watching the debate. I guess its easier to be smooth when you are making it up as you go.
That’s my thinking Shortbus. Basically, the way I would deal with the issue as Obama is saying “There’s gun control that even you support John. We need to close the gun show loophole. I know you support that. I support that. Won’t you join me today in declaring that you’ll help get it passed, no matter who wins this election?”