The Foundation

“If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?” –John Adams

Editorial Exegesis

“There were hits and misses and mishaps in the three presidential debates, but what is most important is that voters now know Mitt Romney. … The media for many long months allowed the Obama campaign to define Mitt Romney. They obsessed last summer over his tax returns, let an Obama aide suggest Romney might be a felon, and paid scant attention when an Obama super PAC outrageously said Romney caused the wife of a laid-off steel plant worker to die of cancer. Now that Americans have seen the Democratic and Republican nominees for president side by side on three occasions … they can better decide who Mitt Romney is. What they saw was not a monster or extremist but someone ready and able to lead as soon as the voters give him the job. Of all the things Romney said in the debates, what may end up going into the voting booths in the minds of Americans are the phrases, ‘I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again … I’ve done it my entire life.’ He was referring to ‘leadership in Washington that will actually bring people together and get the job done’ because he did it with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature as governor of Massachusetts. And he was referring to doing ‘what it takes to balance budgets,’ as he did in running and helping start up and fixing businesses – more than 150 of them. A presidential debate is not a boxing match, with three judges deciding the winner based on punches landed. … After seeing him for so long, side by side with the president and unfiltered by the media, voters now know the truth: Mitt Romney can bring competence back to the Oval Office.” –Investor’s Business Daily

Editor’s Note: View the full transcript of Monday night’s foreign policy debate.

Upright

“[T]he mantle of … leadership for promoting the principles of peace has fallen to America. We didn’t ask for it, but it’s an honor that we have it. But for us to be able to promote those principles of peace requires us to be strong, and that begins with a strong economy here at home, and unfortunately, the economy is not stronger. … [W]e have to stand by our principles. And if we’re strong in each of those things, American influence will grow. But unfortunately, in nowhere in the world is America’s influence greater today than it was four years ago.” –Mitt Romney

“[F]rom the very beginning, the president, in his campaign some four years ago, said he’d meet with all the world’s worst actors in his first year. … And then the president began what I’ve called an apology tour of going to – to various nations in the Middle East and – and criticizing America. I think they looked at that and saw weakness. … Mr. President, America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other nations from dictators.” –Mitt Romney

“This nation is the hope of the earth. We’ve been blessed by having a nation that’s free and prosperous thanks to the contributions of the Greatest Generation. They’ve held a torch for the world to see, the torch of freedom and hope and opportunity. Now it’s our turn to take that torch. I’m convinced we’ll do it.” –Mitt Romney

“[S]peaking as the son of a Marine Corps officer and the brother of a Navy officer, I think Obama’s ‘horses and bayonets’ wisecrack wasn’t his biggest miscalculation. All that did was lose him the military vote in the Norfolk area and thus, most likely, the state of Virginia. Rather, it was the weird way he kept conflating the war-fighting purpose of the military with ‘taking care’ of the veterans after they come home. Military personnel deeply resent the implication, so earnestly peddled by the bed-wetting civilians at the New York Times, among others, that returning vets are just a PTSD psycho hair-trigger away from going postal. They’re soldiers, Mr. President, not crybabies.” –columnist Michael Walsh

“DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz seems to reside in a different reality than the rest of us. After the debate [Monday] night she said: ‘What I was surprised about … during the entire section of the debate on the Middle East, Mitt Romney didn’t bring up Israel once and I think it just shows he isn’t committed to Israel as he says he is and has really only used the issue as a political opportunity.’ The only problem for Wasserman Schultz is that a mere glance at the transcript of last night’s debate shows that Romney mentioned Israel eleven times. … Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s attempt to spin the president’s abysmal record on Israel is unbecoming, and let us hope that Florida’s Jewish community will take note of Mitt Romney’s actual statements in the debate in their state.” –National Review’s Nathaniel Botwinick

Insight

“Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people.” –President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

Demo-gogues

From Barack Obama’s debate performance Monday night: “[T]he 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years. But, Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.” –Barack Obama (“So he’s Reagan, Eisenhower and Coolidge all rolled into one? Sounds way too good to be true, but one can only hope.” –WSJ columnist James Taranto)

Juvenile: “First of all, the sequester is not something that I proposed. It’s something that Congress has proposed. It will not happen. … [Gov. Romney] mentioned … that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of ‘Battleship’ where we’re counting ships.” –BO

Yes he did: “Nothing Governor Romney just said is true, starting with this notion of me apologizing. This has been probably the biggest whopper that’s been told during the course of this campaign, and every fact-checker and every reporter who’s looked at it, Governor, has said this is not true.” –BO

Class warfare: “[W]e’ve got to make sure that we reduce our deficit. Unfortunately, Governor Romney’s plan doesn’t do it. We’ve got to do it in a responsible way, by cutting out spending we don’t need but also asking the wealthiest to pay a little bit more.” –BO

Back to the same old line: “What we can’t do is go back to the same policies that got us into such difficulty in the first place. And that’s why we have to move forward and not go back.” –BO

And again: “You know, over the last four years, we’ve made real progress digging our way out of policies that gave us two prolonged wars, record deficits and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And Governor Romney wants to take us back to those policies.” –BO

Don’t worry about him: “Michelle and I will be fine no matter what happens [in the election].” –Barack Obama

Dezinformatsia

Sycophantic praise: “We always try to look for the phrase or expression that will live forever out of these. Tonight has to be ‘horses and bayonets.’ … It was specifically about the military, the governor’s assertion we have fewer ships as a Navy since, at any time since 1916. A very sharp comeback from the president.” –NBC’s Brian Williams

Protesting too much: “Dear conservatives – NO ONE GIVES A SH-T ABOUT FAST & FURIOUS. Manufactured issue, was a mistake and was resolved.” –leftist Fox News contributor Sally Kohn

‘Non Compos Mentis’: “I think [Republicans] hate Obama. They want him out of the White House more than they want to destroy al-Qa'ida. Their number one enemy in the world right now, on the right, is their hatred – hatred for Obama. … This isn’t about being a better president. They want to get rid of this president. That’s their number one goal and they’re willing to let Romney go to the hard center, even if it’s to the left on issues, as long as they get rid of this guy.” –MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who hit his head hard on the center of something

Bizarre explanation: “I think Obama is in it because he feels a higher calling. Not that he likes doing it but he really feels like he can do something better for the country. … [I]‘m not quite sure why [Romney] wants to be president other than the fact that it seems like the next thing he should be doing with his life.” –MSNBC’s Alex Wagner

Conspiracy theories: “Keep in mind: The whole upper tier of Ohio state government is in the hands of the GOP now. In very close voting they have the power to influence what votes are counted and how. … Remember Ohio, Bush v. Kerry in 2004 and Florida, Bush v. Gore in 2000.” –former CBS anchor Dan “Fake But Accurate” Rather

Newspulper Headlines:

'Help!’: “Obama’s Stump Speech Boils Down to One Word” –The New York Times

Longest Books Ever Written: “The Shortfalls of ‘Obamacare’” –New England Journal of Medicine website

We Blame Global Warming: “Pelosi Continues to Make Rain for House Democrats” –NationalJournal.com

Questions Nobody Is Asking: “Why the Chill on Climate Change?” –The Washington Post

Look Out Below!: “Obama’s Plan: Push Republicans off the Fiscal Cliff” –Washington Post website

We Blame George W. Bush: “Who’s Really to Blame for the Death of Newsweek?” –TheAtlantic.com

Bottom Story of the Day: “Newsweek Set to End Print Publication, Switch to All-Digital Version in 2013” –New York Post

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

Village Idiots

Blame voters: “This shouldn’t be a race. The only reason it is, is because Americans are impatient on things not made before yesterday and they don’t understand why the economy is not totally hunky-dory again.” –Bill Clinton, once again not really helping Obama

Belly laugh and class warfare: “[Y]our president, he didn’t point fingers. He didn’t place blame. Instead, he got to work, because he was thinking about folks like my dad and like his grandmother. See, and that’s why he cut taxes for small businesses and for working families because he believes that in America, teachers and firefighters should not pay higher tax rates than millionaires and billionaires.” –Michelle Obama

From the one-trick pony: “Where is global warming in this #debate? Climate change is an urgent foreign policy issue.” –Al Gore tweeting his frustrations

Tired old lines: “We have a very specific agenda about how we’d like to move forward. On the other hand what you hear from Mitt Romney are a bunch of chapter heads with no chapters and a plan to spend $7 trillion more in tax cuts and more money for the Pentagon than they’re even asking for. So if there’s anyone whose running without a real plan here, it’s Gov. Romney, and to the extent he has one it’s going back to the same policies from the last administration.” –Obama adviser David Axelrod

Some things never change: “On Nov. 7 we’re going to party hard.” –Michelle Obama

From the Glitterati: “Villagers, I don’t endorse politicians. Not my thing. However, Obama is the light & the future. Keep going towards the light. Put America first.” –actor Russell Crowe

Sometimes they get it right: “I’m not sure that I would’ve been President Obama’s nominee if I weren’t a woman.” –Justice Elena Kagan

Short Cuts

“So the big issue for Democrats: binders full of women. They’ve clung to a number of distractions so far, but this is probably the least coherent. When I heard Romney [in the town hall debate] use the phrase ‘binders full of women,’ I immediately made fun of it because it was so inartful. But the Democrats contention now is that its actually offensive somehow. How… they can’t really explain. They seem to act like Romney wants to physically put women in binders… but even they know that doesn’t really make any sense. So it’s somehow offensive Romney was looking at resumes of women… because its pandering? So the party who treats women like vaginas that vote and need nothing more than some free birth control thrown at them are offending by pandering?” –humorist Frank J. Fleming

“After [Monday] night, I suspected Obama’s solution to the Benghazi attack would be to send in more teachers. That seems to be his solution to everything.” –radio talk-show Rush Limbaugh

“The Wall Street Journal reports that more and more Americans are moving overseas to look for career and business opportunity. Thousands are fleeing abroad. Now people in other countries will know what it’s like to lose their American jobs to a foreigner.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“The FEC reports that Obama’s campaign took out a $15 million loan from bailout recipient Bank of America. Wow… BoA just can’t stop making bad investments, can they?” –Fred Thompson

“So far for Halloween, sales of Obama masks are 30 percent higher than the sales of Mitt Romney masks. That makes sense. I mean, what’s scarier than four more years of this economy?” –comedian Jay Leno

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team