Oftentimes, it’s difficult to pick a winner in a presidential debate, but this time there was no question that Mitt Romney dominated. Throughout the night, Romney was the aggressor – dissecting President Obama’s record and policies on the economy, health care, deficits and energy while explaining his different approach. He was articulate, passionate and totally relaxed and even funny at times.
It was a far cry from Romney’s detached, robotic image. The best part of his debate performance was how specific he got. For instance, when criticizing Obama’s financial regulatory reform, he didn’t merely give a generic Republican attack on “regulation” – he explained the unintended consequences of creating too big to fail banks and how it hurts smaller community banks. When it came to tax policy, he described how Obama’s plan to raise taxes on “the rich” would actually hurt a typical small business and make them less likely to hire. We’ve heard Romney tell us again and again that his private sector experience means that he knows how the economy works, but tonight he showed us. When Obama attacked tax subsidies to oil companies, Romney pointed out that Obama gave 50 years worth of such tax breaks to green energy companies, many of which failed. The $90 billion in subsidies, he noted, would be enough to hire two million teachers.
