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Days After the Debate, Confusion Reigns in the Ivory Tower Posted: 06 Oct 2012 02:31 PM PDT Normally, when a mere mortal like you or me launches an endeavor and fails in an early part of it, we do what Nat King Cole suggested — pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and start all over again. Sometimes, though, you find one of the petulant few, the person who believes their own BS, who thinks they can, quite literally, do anything. When a person like that tries to cross the street and stumbles over a curb, they don’t stand up, brush their trousers, shake their head ruefully at their own clumsiness, and share a chuckle with the everyone who saw it. No. They blame the curb and summon a horde of yes men to rival Ruby Rhod’s entourage to find and excoriate the paving company cruel enough to entrippenate someone whose nose is pointed Heavenward. Which brings me to the point. Last week, the President got beaten in a debate. Badly. Mitt Romney delivered the most polite rhetorical curb-stomping seen since Ronald Reagan took Walter Mondale to the woodshed in 1984. His loyal followers have taken it hard. Normally, when your candidate takes a drubbing, you take a mental step back and attempt to analyze his performance. You ask questions about how he phrased his arguments, how he countered the arguments of the other guy. You need to take the view of a non-partisan, a view from the vantage point of someone who might know a little about the issues but who doesn’t marinate in them for hours every day. You need to look at your candidate’s performance through the eyes of someone who gets their news from, well, the news — television, radio, a quick glance over the headlines on Yahoo or even Drudge. What you should not do, what a normal person would not do, is assume that the pure white light of your guy’s truth will shine through and banish the other candidate as if he hit the stage and suddenly brandished the Phial of Galadriel in the face of Shelob.  Yet that is what the President’s most ardent admirers have done for the past several days. They assembled like Lion Force Voltron to form a Human Ablative Blame Shield to protect his evidently fragile ego from any real criticism. Ace compiled a few of the reasons the HABS gave in a recent a New Yorker article for why the President lost. Here are a couple. He’s Just Too Interested In Finding Common Ground and Rising Above Petty Disputes To Lower Himself To Being An Effective Debater. [...] Obama Was “Too Professorial” To Explain Complex Thoughts To A Lay Audience. Ace is only exaggerating a little here. He provides quotes from the New Yorker article, then a little commentary of his own that is very much worth your time. He treats their confused attempts to understand why the Shining One seemed so very mortal with the perfect amount of derision. I want to leave you with two things. First, the people in that article, the people who are either too isolated from the rest of humanity to be able to think outside their own narrow view of the world, want to run every part of your life. Indeed, they have already taken control of great swaths of your life already. If you don’t believe me, just wait until Obamacare hits with its full force in just a year or so. Second, Ace left the very best reason Barack Obama lost to Mitt Romney. The Dog Ate His Debates Notes, then Obama Ate the Dog. Good night, everyone. Try the veal.

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