By Mona Charen
Friday, October 05, 2012
It's impossible to overstate the effect that Mitt
Romney's performance in the first presidential debate has had on conservatives
and Republicans. The past four years have been a torment as we've watched a
committed left-wing activist grease the skids for America's decline into a
socialist state. Our TV screens have featured images of violent protests in
Greece, Italy and Spain as their socialist paper boats capsize.
Yet the Obama Administration's resolute march into that
dead end has proceeded apace. There was a brief bloom of hope that the Supreme
Court would save the country from the worst time bomb of the Obama presidency,
but a late betrayal by a conservative justice extinguished it.
The past few weeks have been especially painful as Mr.
Obama seemed to gain traction in the polls and escape responsibility for the
completely foreseeable results of his policies -- economic enfeeblement, rising
poverty and dependency, loss of world influence and looming insolvency. More
than that, a mendacious address by Bill Clinton, blaming the economic meltdown
of 2008 on free markets and Republicans, seemed to be the only argument on
offer -- and one that voters were inclined to accept.
The Romney campaign seemed to be missing in action.
Increasingly desperate conservatives (this columnist included) begged him to
improve his television ads, which were insipid and off-topic; they pleaded with
him to "go big" and address the crisis the Obama presidency has
created for the nation; and they warned that the Obama campaign's lies about
Romney's tax proposals should not go unrebutted. Incredibly, polls were showing
that voters trusted Obama more than Romney even on the matter of taxes, though
Republicans are well known to be the party of tax cuts.
The feeling on the right was that the fate of the nation
was really at stake. Due to a tendentious and corrupt press, an inattentive
electorate and a watery nominee, the country might be on the verge of an
irreversible disaster -- reelecting an incompetent leftist ideologue. It was a
nightmare.
So it was more than partisan glee that lifted our spirits
when a supremely skilled, razor-sharp Romney sailed to victory over Obama in
Denver. It was the release of years of pent-up frustration at the fact that Mr.
Obama has skated by with platitudes, lies, misrepresentations and
"cool," while the nation we love, still "the last best hope of
earth," seemed to be sliding toward the drain.
With a brilliant and nearly perfectly pitched
performance, Mitt Romney highlighted Mr. Obama's distortions and lies,
sometimes with simple declarative sentences ("Virtually everything he just
said about my tax plan is inaccurate"), and sometimes with humor. When
Obama recited one of his favorite faux facts, that companies get "a tax
break for shipping jobs overseas," Romney, in one of his tidy and
organized catalogue of corrections, responded: "You said you get a
deduction for taking a plant overseas. Look, I've been in business for 25
years. I have no idea what you're talking about. I maybe need to get a new
accountant."
The mythical tax break for shipping jobs overseas, a
staple of Obama rhetoric for more than four years, is a perfect encapsulation
of the story of this presidency. Obama seems to be identifying a problem,
except that his description is false. And if it were true, why did Obama do
nothing about it when his party controlled both houses of Congress?
Yet he has repeated this falsehood, along with so many
others, to rousing cheers and approval from a Nobel Prize winning economist and
most of the press. He has never been pressed on his serial dishonesty and low
demagoguery. He has lied with impunity, until now.
On Wednesday night in Denver, Mitt Romney pulled the
statue from its plinth. He did so without showing disrespect for the man or the
office he holds. With calm command of the facts, he expertly punctured the
inflated balloon of complacent self-regard that President Obama has become, all
the while keeping his focus on the larger matter at hand: how to remove the
strangling grip of the state from the economy's neck.
One debate does not usually decide an election. Mr. Obama
will doubtless arrive in New York better prepared on October 16. But Mitt Romney,
in one quite dazzling performance, has transformed the image of the president
and of himself. It was the absolute best presidential debate performance I have
ever seen -- and it didn't come a moment too soon.
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