My computer guru, Paul LaFlamme, has arranged for my booklet to be available in book form in several weeks. It is currently available in PDF format (see below.)
Testimonials:
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You wrote a great book. The brevity is one of its strong points and I know it was hard to include that in and still keep it brief. Your father in haste once wrote an overly long letter to our client, then said in the last sentence, “I’m sorry I wrote such a long letter, but I didn’t have time to write a short one.”
"Dick, I indeed marvel at how much wisdom you have been able to share with so few words. Not too unlike the experience in reading the Bible. I feel that with each read of "A Conservative Capitalist Offers:…." one will gain additional knowledge and new insights…
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"A Conservative Capitalist Offers: Eleven Lessons and a Bonus Lesson for Raising America's Youth Born and Yet To Be Born"
By Dick Berkowitz - Non Expert
I wrote this booklet because I believe a strong country must rest on a solid family unit.Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" has morphed into "A Confused, Dependent and Compromised Generation."
I hope this booklet will provide a guide to alter this trend.
Please Buy My Booklet - Half The Proceeds Go To "The Wounded Warrior Project!"
You can now order a .pdf version from www.brokerberko.com/book that you can download and read on your computer, or even print out if you want.
Cost $5.99!
Why Capitalism ? It Works!
Why Conservatism? It works?
Why My 11 lessons and a bonus lesson? They worked!
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Cost $5.99!
Why Capitalism ? It Works!
Why Conservatism? It works?
Why My 11 lessons and a bonus lesson? They worked!
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after the debate.
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From a dear friend and fellow memo reader: "Clark Kent turned into Superman last night. Go Romney!"
One day long after the campaign is over, I might be in a position to explain why the above is true. (See 1 below.)
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Comments from Obama huggers, supporters, wagon circlers. Tingles turn to shock.
I just got off the phone with one of my favorite op ed writers and she said people cannot believe what they saw last night. I told her what they saw was the unvarnished Obama. The true Obama. The lazy,golf, hoop shooting Obama. The I don't need attend security/intelligence meetings Obama etc.(See 2 and 2a below.)
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Romney made schmucks out of the media. They deserve no less. (See 3 below.)
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A certain cadre of high profile concerned pro Romneyites have been working in the background, for the last several months, to bring the Romney campaign down from 40,000 feet to ground level - kitchen table so to speak.
I am not suggesting credit be taken from Stu Stevens, Neil Newhouse and other Romney operatives for the excellent showing by our candidate but bringing in pros like Ed Gillespie has had a positive effect and there are others whose talents are being sought and who are willing to come aboard.
On the other hand, it appears Obama continues to be flying high and that was the essence of his problem. Not his laziness, not his incompetence, not his failed policies. (See 4 below.)
Now the Obama team are going to comb through every work of Romney's performance and make a concerted effort to point out flip flops, contradictions with prior statements etc.
I would liken their effort to attacking a running back who, like Obama, continues to drive through the beefy part of the defense, loses yardage and refuses to change . A certain amount of strategic thinking is in order when it becomes evident you are failing at your current effort at the line. For Romney's part you saw it in the first debate..
I suspect Ryan will clean Biden's clock and Obama will become testy and use his snide invective and sarcasm in the next debate with Romney, but what do I know? (See 4a below.)
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Is there a deal between Obama and Iran to get him through the election? I would put nothing past Obama and his crowd. The sleazier the better. You decide. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)Romney Takes the Stage
The Republican dominates the first Presidential debate
Election Day is only a month away, but for our money the Presidential campaign really began in earnest Wednesday night in Denver at the first Presidential debate. Mitt Romney met the challenge of appearing Presidential, showed a superior command of fact and argument than the incumbent, and made a confident, optimistic case for change. These columns have often criticized the former Massachusetts Governor, but this was easily his finest performance as a candidate, and the best debate effort by a Republican nominee since Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Mr. Romney has been losing the tax issue to Mr. Obama, but he certainly didn't lose the tax debate in Denver. For the first time, the Republican made a systematic, principled case for his tax reform and for lowering tax rates as a spur to economic growth.
Mr. Obama tried his familiar class warfare lines and the need for a "balanced approach" to deficit reduction that must raise taxes. But Mr. Romney rose above by making the case that higher taxes will hurt growth and job creation and thus reduce government revenues.
His one mistake was saying that a reform like his has never been tried before, when he could have said Ronald Reagan did it with Democrats in 1986. But overall, and more than once, we caught ourselves saying, Where has this Romney guy been hiding?
Mr. Romney was also strong and fluent on health care, somewhat remarkably. The only major point Mr. Obama scored was noting the similarities between his plan and Mr. Romney's Massachusetts model, but the Republican brushed off those attacks by describing the broader harm ObamaCare will inflict on U.S. medicine and the abusive way Democrats jammed the bill through Congress over the objections of the American public.
In particular he put Mr. Obama on the defensive about the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board, the 15-member "expert" and unelected commission that will tell doctors how to practice and seniors the treatments they are allowed to receive. The President struggled to stick to his own talking points, perhaps because the damaging details speak for themselves.
Mr. Obama was also on the backfoot on Medicare, which was supposed to have doomed Mr. Romney. For the first time we can recall, the President was forced to at least semi-accurately describe the plan Mr. Romney is running on and not his own distortions. That's likely because he knew his opponent would expose the straw men, and Mr. Romney responded in detail about why "premium support" isn't a voucher program that will consign Grandma to a snowbank.
The Republican stitched all of this together into a frontal assault on the economic reality of the last four years. This is something Mr. Obama doesn't want to discuss, preferring to talk about "the mess" he inherited and the hope and change that will finally arrive in a second term. He even said during the debate that the crucial question is "not where we've been but where we're going."
Mr. Romney kept reminding Americans about the unpleasant facts about where we've been as a way of casting doubt on what four more years of Mr. Obama would be like. But significantly, and for the first time, he didn't merely criticize the Obama record.
Mr. Romney went further and explained with some specificity how his policies would improve the lives and economic prospects for middle-class Americans. He was notably good on the case for education choice for poor families, while fending off Mr. Obama's stock line that Mr. Romney is anti-education because he won't pay to hire 100,000 more union teachers.
The President seemed off his game overall, verbose as he often is but with his famous restraint seeming more diffident than cool as Mr. Romney bore in with details about his record. It's clear Mr. Obama isn't used to someone challenging the attack lines that he uses to describe Mr. Romney's various proposals on the stump.
So when Mr. Romney defended those plans with his considerable and passionate detail, Mr. Obama seemed to have no answer but to repeat the charges. He was out of arguments. This was notable in particular on taxes, where Mr. Obama's trope that Mr. Romney would raise middle-class taxes by $2,000 was left shredded on the stage as a patent falsehood.
It's going to be fascinating to see how this debate influences a race that the pundit class and most Democrats had all but declared to be over. The Romney campaign apparatus now has its own challenge to rise to the level of Wednesday's performance by the candidate, in particular by improving its lackluster advertising that continues to traffic in general promises and platitudes. We'd also suggest a reworked stump speech.
What worked for Mr. Romney on Wednesday was his confident demeanor and mastery of the policy detail, stitched together into a critique of the incumbent and clear explanation of the election stakes. Undecided voters saw a different challenger than they've been reading about, or seeing on TV, and the race is finally on.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)The Denver Knockout
“I can't believe I'm saying this, but Obama looks like he DOES need a teleprompter.”
Guess who said that?
Chuck Todd: “Very important night for Mitt Romney. And he rose to the challenge.” Later in the evening, Todd reported, “[The Obama campaign] knows they lost tonight.”
Rachel Maddow began by saying, “I don’t know who won this debate.”
Chris Matthews was morose: "I don't know what he was doing out there. . . . He had his head down."
Go watch the video of the meltdown. It’s worth it. The transcript doesn’t capture just how epic it was:
"Where was Obama tonight? He should watch -- well, not just Hardball, Rachel, he should watch you, he should watch the Reverend Al [Sharpton], he should watch Lawrence. He would learn something about this debate. There's a hot debate going on in this country. You know where it's been held? Here on this network is where we're having the debate," Matthews said."We have our knives out," Matthews said, admitting his network is trying their best to defend Obama and his policies. "We go after the people and the facts. What was he doing tonight? He went in their disarmed.""He was like, 'Oh an hour and half? I think I can get through this thing. And I don't even look at this guy.' Whereas Romney -- I love the split-screen -- staring at Obama, addressing him like prey. He did it just right. 'I'm coming at an incumbent. I got to beat him. You've got to beat the champ and I'm going to beat him tonight. And I don't care what this guy, the moderator, whatever he thinks he is because I'm going to ignore him," Matthews said."What was Romney doing?" Matthews asked. "He was winning."
Ed Schultz, MSNBC: "I was disappointed in the president tonight. . . . He was off his game. I was stunned."
Michael Moore: “This is what happens when you pick John Kerry as your debate coach. . . . What's that silence I hear? No one throwing a party? No one saying this election is a slam dunk for Obama? What happened to the victory lap?”
Van Jones: "Up until tonight, we were told Romney was Thurston Howell. . . . Tonight, he was presidential."
Larry Sabato: “Probably Romney's best debate ever. Maybe Obama's worst. I lost count of # of opportunities Obama missed. . . . This debate may build audience for other 3. Voters will want to see if Obama can stage comeback. . . . Mr. President, cancel all your golf games. You did miserably tonight.”
Wolf Blitzer: “This was a pretty good night for Mitt Romney. He clearly held his own. We didn’t hear the attack lines from President Obama that we were expecting . . .”
John King: “A lot of liberals complaining about Obama’s performance. He was rusty. He hasn’t done this for four years. We didn’t hear about Bain Capital, we didn’t hear about the 47 percent.”
Anderson Cooper: “Critics of the president often say he can be professorial, I imagine they’ll be saying that tonight.”
Terry Moran: “Obama's passivity in this debate, his lack of oomph and clarity, plays into the Romney narrative: Nice guy; can't lead. Big W for GOP.”
Nicholas Kristof: “Romney is relaxed and empathetic, while Obama comes across as a constipated professor. C'mon, Mr. President!”
David Corn: “Romney looks like he's having a good time. Obama does not.”
Josh Greenman of the New York Daily News: “Possible upside: Some people might feel a little sorry for Obama?”
Michael Crowley of Time magazine: “Sensing weakness, Sasha and Malia just hounded dad into doubling their allowances.”
I mention all of these liberals and MSM folks to demonstrate that it wasn’t just us feeling good about seeing what we wanted to see in Romney. One last one:
“This was a disaster for the president for the key people he needs to reach, and his effete, wonkish lectures may have jolted a lot of independents into giving Romney a second look.Obama looked tired, even bored; he kept looking down; he had no crisp statements of passion or argument; he wasn't there. He was entirely defensive, which may have been the strategy. But it was the wrong strategy. At the wrong moment.The person with authority on that stage was Romney -- offered it by one of the lamest moderators ever, and seized with relish. This was Romney the salesman. And my gut tells me he sold a few voters on a change tonight. It's beyond depressing. But it's true.”
As for the folks watching at home . . .
CBS News instapoll: 46% said Romney won. 22% said Obama won. 32% said tie.
CNN InstaPoll: 67% say Mitt Romney won, 25% Obama, registered voters who watched the debate.
Mark Knoller: “Poll shows 56% of uncommitted voters say their opinion of Romney has changed for the better. 13% say that about the President.”
Laura Ingraham: “Obama is not good at debates because Obama is rarely challenged by anyone on anything.”
Exurban Jon: “Expected spin: ‘Obama didn't lose this debate to Romney, he just lead from behind.’”
Jim Pethokoukis: “Romney's command of detail really showed on the small biz stuff. Knew both the sides of the argument cold.”
Matt Cover: “So, looks like Eastwood wasn't so crazy after all. #emptychair”
Biased Girl: “Barack Obama was exposed tonight.”
Jonah: “Romney should FedEx some apples to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave with a note, ‘How do you like these?’”
Iowahawk: “That faint sound? Millions of faded Obama posters coming down.”
The Right Dame: “This isn't breaking news to us, but to the rest of you who seem so confused, this is the result of an inept media. You didn’t know either man.”
Ross Douthat: “Sweet spot for GOP politicians: Center-right not hard right on substance, but w/strong attack lines against liberalism. Romney hit it.”
Patrick Ruffini: “The broader problem for Obama that surfaced tonight: He's acting like a liberal ideologue running against a pragmatic problem-solver.”
Kevin Eder: “Obama looked very tired. I'd be too if I spent all my time in partying in Vegas, chatting with Letterman, & livin' it up with Jay-Z. #buried”
AG_Conservative: “Liberals have been told for months that Romney has no specifics. No wonder they were shocked when Romney was the only one who did.”
Mary Katharine Ham: “I had no idea the 20th anniversary was the Embarrassing Capitulation Anniversary.”
Mark Hemingway: “That wasn't a debate so much as Mitt Romney just took Obama for a cross country drive strapped to the roof of his car.”
It will be interesting to see how the Obama campaign responds to this. Some new document dump? Surrogates playing the religion card more explicitly?
Josh Trevino: “Chance of unilateral US action in Libya in the coming fourteen days just went up by seventy thousand percent.”
How would you like to be Vice President Joe Biden right now? He already thinks he’s God’s gift to audiences, and in his one debate with Sarah Palin, he described some alternate-universe history that almost no one in the press called him out on, because of the ongoing Palin obsession at the moment. Michael Totten wrote:
“When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know -- if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.” [Emphasis added.]What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.
That night Palin turned in a pretty solid performance, but she wasn’t prepared to fact-check Biden on the spot when he started telling tales about Middle East policy that sounded like they might be based on classified briefings or something. Yet if Biden starts rambling a week from now, and starts offering BS stories that sound good but that do not match any known facts at all, it’s easy to picture Paul Ryan staring at him, incredulous, and saying simply, “Mister Vice President, with all due respect . . . what in God’s name are you talking about?”
I want Joe Biden swinging for the fences a week from now, feeling like he has to turn the ship around all by himself.
ADDENDUM: Toby Harnden: “Jim Lehrer telling Denver audience that "absolute silence" is required: ‘If you hear something you don't like -- sit on it!’”
Who is he, The Fonz?
2a)RJC: Americans Saw the Real Romney
Last Night
Washington, D.C. (October 4, 2012) -- The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) responded today to the first presidential debate of 2012. RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said:
"Mitt Romney took control of the first debate and won it handily on both substance and style.
"Last night Americans saw the real Mitt Romney - not the caricature of the attack ads and biased media reports. They saw Romney in command of the facts, secure in his principles, and demonstrating the leadership and competence that have been missing in the White House for nearly four years.
"Romney made his case effectively on taxes, jobs, protecting the middle class, and health care. But he also gave voice to the enduring values of America, showed how far we have strayed from them under the Obama administration, and pledged to turn America back onto the path of economic growth and opportunity for all."
"Mitt Romney took control of the first debate and won it handily on both substance and style.
"Last night Americans saw the real Mitt Romney - not the caricature of the attack ads and biased media reports. They saw Romney in command of the facts, secure in his principles, and demonstrating the leadership and competence that have been missing in the White House for nearly four years.
"Romney made his case effectively on taxes, jobs, protecting the middle class, and health care. But he also gave voice to the enduring values of America, showed how far we have strayed from them under the Obama administration, and pledged to turn America back onto the path of economic growth and opportunity for all."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)Mitt Humiliates The Media and Now They Will Seek Revenge
"Who is this guy?" tens of millions of American voters asked themselves last night. "This isn't the Mitt Romney the media's presented to me over the last six months?"
Free of the corrupt media's corrupt filter; free of the spin, the lying fact-checkers, the gotchas, and the desperate effort to cover up any and all bad news that might hurt Obama -- by every standard, every measure, every opinion and every opinion poll, what we witnessed last night at the first presidential debate of 2012 was a commanding, dominating blow-out performance by Governor Mitt Romney.
Last night the GOP contender showed up to kick butt and chew bubblegum, but unfortunately for Barack Obama, Romney was all out of bubblegum. The real loser, though, was a corrupt mainstream media that had just spent months desperately crafting a Mitt Romney that doesn't exist -- a Mitt Romney voters would not find acceptable as president.
We've all seen what's happened month after month after month after month: Obama's Media Palace Guards have assured us that Romney can do nothing right and Obama can do nothing wrong. This carefully crafted media game-plan (coordinated openly with the Obama campaign) was meant to strip Romney of the single quality voters demand in a president, and that's competence. If you're not competent you’re not an acceptable alternative, which means we're going to vote for "the devil we know."
But last night all of this blew up in the media's face, and this morning the American people trust the media even less than they did the night before -- and for one very simple reason: they were lied to … again. Where was the bumbling, elitist, out of touch, awkward, wife-killing, gay-hating, corporate vulture who tortures dogs and stumbles through Europe like Chevy Chase in a "Vacation" sequel?
Well, he didn’t show up last night because that's not who Mitt Romney is. That Mitt Romney is a media creation manufactured out of lies and desperation by those who spend 24 hours a day crafting trip wires, fabricating gaffes, and standing before the elephant of Barack Obama's failures and asking, "What elephant?"
For all of moderator Jim Lehrer's flaws last night, the 78 year-old semi-retired PBS newsman did the only thing we conservatives ask of the media: he mostly stayed out of the way and offered up a fairly level playing field. There were no gotcha questions and no,What about your gaaaaaffes? To his great credit (though he did try to rescue the president more than once), Lehrer kept the debate in an arena no liberal can win in --and that's on the issues.
Unlike his cretin colleagues, Lehrer was actually interested in the issues that matter. So he asked about taxes, job creation, education, the deficit, and an overall governing philosophy. In other words, he didn't stack the deck to distract away from what a horrible philosophy big government liberalism really is. With a rare opportunity like this, if you’re smart, prepared and all out of bubblegum, a conservative can win any debate. Obviously, Mitt Romney not only won last night, he delivered the kind of satisfying drubbing to Barack Obama we conservatives have been waiting four years to savor.
Yes, someone finally was given and took full advantage of the opportunity to point to that little emperor and say to the world, "Look, he's naked!"
And now the lying, biased, corrupt, degenerate mainstream media has a problem on its hands. Because now the whole world knows that they were not only pointing to clothes that didn’t exist but also attempting to destroy anyone who dared cry "Naked!"
In ninety short but delicious and unforgettable minutes, Mitt Romney not only exposed President FailureTeleprompter as the churlish, entitled failure he truly is -- he also destroyed the caricature our thoroughly corrupted media institutions had built around him.
Romney's commanding victory was Reaganesque, and so is the result. In 1980, the media did everything in its power to scare voters away from Ronald Reagan by portraying him as a scary warmonger. But during his first and only debate with then-President Jimmy Carter, Reagan proved the media a liar.
This is exactly what Romney did last night, but unfortunately, he has two more debates ahead of him. This means that the media has two more kicks at the cat to rescue Obama, and Romney had better be prepared because the push is already on to ensure he is asked,What about your gaaaafffes?
Even though Obama enjoyed four more minutes to speak than Romney, immediately after last night's debate, the left marched in unison to blame the moderator for not controlling things enough. And this makes perfect sense. Leftists know they can't win on a level playing field. But if the referee takes control, victory can be had!
This means that for the two upcoming debates, Romney had better be prepared for questions about his dog, Bain, gaffes, wealth, taxes, high school bullying, perfect hair, the mole that wasn't there before, and his disastrously racist victory over Obama in the last debate.
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4)
Former Vice President Al Gore, no stranger to disappointing debate performances, took to the airwaves to offer his own inconvenient excuse for President Obama’s shaky effort Wednesday night in Denver: Gore blamed it on the altitude.
“I’m going to say something controversial here,” Gore said on his Current TV network’s post-debate analysis. “Obama arrived in Denver at 2:00 p.m. today, just a few hours before the debate started.
“Romney did his debate prep in Denver. When you go to 5,000 feet and you only have a few hours to adjust — I don’t know, maybe ….”
Gore’s rationale for Obama’s inexplicable muff elevated the alibis from the left -- which already include complaints about left-leaning PBS moderator Jim Lehrer, as well as the format of the debate -- to dizzying new heights.
Gore’s own employees weren’t buying their bosses latest improbable theory, however. “I just came from LA the same day,” Current TV host Cenk Uygur told his boss. “You know what I did? I drank two cups of coffee coming out here.”
There were a few other notable problems with Gore’s argument: The altitude did not appear to trouble Obama much in 2008, when the Democratic National Convention was held in mile-high Denver. That was when Obama gave his acceptance speech standing before a temple-like colonnade of columns erected on Denver’s Invesco Field (since redubbed Sports Authority Stadium at Mile High).
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4)
Al Gore: Altitude Caused Obama’s Flop in Denver
By David A. PattenFormer Vice President Al Gore, no stranger to disappointing debate performances, took to the airwaves to offer his own inconvenient excuse for President Obama’s shaky effort Wednesday night in Denver: Gore blamed it on the altitude.
“I’m going to say something controversial here,” Gore said on his Current TV network’s post-debate analysis. “Obama arrived in Denver at 2:00 p.m. today, just a few hours before the debate started.
“Romney did his debate prep in Denver. When you go to 5,000 feet and you only have a few hours to adjust — I don’t know, maybe ….”
Gore’s rationale for Obama’s inexplicable muff elevated the alibis from the left -- which already include complaints about left-leaning PBS moderator Jim Lehrer, as well as the format of the debate -- to dizzying new heights.
Gore’s own employees weren’t buying their bosses latest improbable theory, however. “I just came from LA the same day,” Current TV host Cenk Uygur told his boss. “You know what I did? I drank two cups of coffee coming out here.”
There were a few other notable problems with Gore’s argument: The altitude did not appear to trouble Obama much in 2008, when the Democratic National Convention was held in mile-high Denver. That was when Obama gave his acceptance speech standing before a temple-like colonnade of columns erected on Denver’s Invesco Field (since redubbed Sports Authority Stadium at Mile High).
4a)
Get Ready for Chicago Rules
Mr. Romney has exposed the weaknesses in the president's re-election strategy. We can now expect nonstop vilification.
By Kim Strassel
The most interesting place to have been in America on
Thursday morning? Obama campaign headquarters.
No need to guess what the post-debate conversation was in Boston: jubilation over Mitt Romney's wildly impressive Denver performance, and a strategy session on how to keep the momentum. But in Chicago? Amid the gloom, amid the shock, one pained question surely drove the discussion: "What now?"
Because Chicago understands that the immediate critique of Barack Obama's debate performance understates the damage the president did to his campaign. Yes, he was detached. Yes, he was unprepared. Yet those problems can be rectified in future performances. The bigger concern for the campaign is that the president allowed his opponent to dismantle the core planks of its carefully constructed strategy.
The Obama campaign didn't settle on that approach until about July, but once it did, things clicked. Its first objective was to paint Mr. Romney as a disconnected millionaire, with a failed record and discredited ideas, who would bury an already distressed middle class. The second objective was to present Mr. Obama as the reasonable alternative, offering modest but pleasant promises.
The strategy allowed the president to focus anxiety-ridden voters on the Romney bad that might come, and away from the Obama bad of the past four years. With the help of compliant media and a disengaged Mr. Romney, the approach was lulling America.
That is, until Denver, when Mr. Romney exposed for 58 million TV viewers just how fragile the Obama campaign strategy always was. Like the small child in the Hans Christian Andersen tale, the Republican stood on the debate stage and declared: "But the Obama has no clothes!" And suddenly, that seemed obvious to everyone.
By pummeling the president on the facts and the policy, Mr. Romney looked in control. By walking through the concepts of growth, of free-market health care, of tax reform, he inspired with ideas. By explaining how his specific policies will help average Americans, and by doing it with a sunny demeanor, he became that likeable candidate.
The effect was not only to erase the months-long Obama caricature of Mr. Romney. It also undermined Mr. Obama's own pitch. The bold Romney vision put the president's (modest, pleasant) promises—for a "balanced approach," for "clean energy," to "invest in education"—in context: small, tired, failed. In outlining the great that might be, Mr. Romney made voters think about how measly the past four years have been. He flipped the Obama equation.
Cue the frantic "What now?" question in Chicago. Campaigns are about momentum, and after Wednesday's debacle, Mr. Obama will be under great pressure to come up with something fresh. All the more so because a diminished Obama threatens to undo the Democratic voter enthusiasm that the party worked so hard to gin up with its convention.
Yet the painful reality is that the strategy Mr. Romney torpedoed on stage was the best Team Obama had. The president can't run on his legislation; it isn't liked. He can't run on the economy; it's terrible. Pivot to something sunny and big? Too late. And so the early indications from the Obama campaign are that it instead intends to go past Romney caricatures and straight to character assassination.
By late Thursday morning, Obama adviser David Axelrod had his new talking points, which hinged, as he revealed in a conference call, on casting Mr. Romney as a liar and a flip-flopper who will say anything to get elected. The Republican's debate performance, said Mr. Axelrod, was "devoid of honesty," and full of "serial evasions and deceptions."
Mr. Obama—that great uniter—was up with the same theme at his first post-debate event, telling a crowd: "The man on stage last night does not want to be held accountable for the real Mitt Romney's decisions and what he's been saying for the last year." And the Obama campaign went up with a new ad called "Trust," accusing Mr. Romney of snowing the public on his tax plan.
Those are the reactions of a weak campaign, though the Romney folks should not underestimate what desperation will do. Mr. Obama, coasting on Wednesday, chose not to mention the "47%" video or the "war on women" or Bain Capital. He will in the future. He'll throw up new lines of attack on Mr. Romney's tax plan and on Medicare reform. He'll drill into one of the few topics that Mr. Romney left unexplained in Denver—say, health insurance for pre-existing conditions. Mr. Obama will redouble efforts to tie the governor to President Bush on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and on "tax cuts for the rich."
Overhanging all this will be the character argument, with the press no doubt more eager than ever to "fact check" every Romney-Ryan utterance. The Obama campaign is looking to turn Mr. Romney into John Kerry—who won the first debate in 2004 and still lost the election.
Mr. Romney's Denver performance is the (now proven) model for how to answer these coming attacks. Bold. Specific. Energetic. A smile, and a touch of humor. The bigger the Romney campaign is, the smaller (and clothes-free) Mr. Obama's will seem.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5)OCTOBER SURPRISE? OBAMA SECRET IRAN DEAL CUTLook for announcement of temporary halt to uranium enrichmen
by REZA KAHLILI
Iran could announce a temporary halt to uranium enrichment before next month’s U.S. election in a move to save Barack Obama’s presidency, a source affiliated with high Iranian officials said today.
The source, who remains anonymous for security reasons, said a three-person delegation of the Obama administration led by a woman engaged in secret negotiations yesterday with a representative of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The delegation urged the Iranian leader to announce a halt to enrichment, even if temporary, before the Nov. 6 election, promising removal of some sanctions.
The source said the delegation warned that a Mitt Romney presidency would change the U.S. relationship with Iran regarding its nuclear program.
The U.S. representatives reminded the Iranians that President Obama has stood in front of Israel, preventing the Jewish state from attacking Iran over its illicit nuclear arms policy.
Yesterday’s meeting, which took place in Doha, Qatar, was coordinated by the Qatar monarchy, whose members attended at the request of the Obama administration.
Ali Akbar Velayati, the former Iranian foreign minister and current close adviser to the supreme leader on international affairs, secretly traveled to Qatar for the meeting. Velayati is wanted by Argentina for the Jewish community center bombing in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed 85 people.
One Obama representative, the woman, who had met Velayati before, urged Velayati to announce a halt, even if it is only for a week or two, to uranium enrichment prior to the U.S. election, according to the source. The U.S. representatives promised the Obama administration quickly would remove some sanctions on the Iranian central bank and oil industry, with further collaboration after the election, the source said.
Yesterday’s secret meeting took place even as hundreds of merchants in Tehran marched on parliament to protest the collapsing Iranian currency and the Islamic regime’s financial support for the besieged Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.
Riot police violently clamped down on black-market money changers while merchants in the sprawling bazaar closed their shops during the protest. With inflation soaring, Iranian merchants can’t sell their goods, for fear they won’t be able to restock their shelves.
Yesterday’s negotiation was an extension of secret negotiations begun in early January when, according to Iranian officials and a report by Fars News Agency, Obama requested collaboration with the Islamic regime through three different channels. The channels were a letter to the supreme leader, a message to the Iranian U.N. delegate and a direct message through Swiss Ambassador Livia Leu Agosti in Tehran in a meeting with Iranian Foreign Ministry officials, who quoted a message from Obama.
The Obama message said: “I didn’t want to impose sanctions on your central bank, but I had no options but to approve it since a Congress majority had approved the decision.”
A unanimous U.S. Senate vote had approved strong sanctions against the Iranian central bank and oil industry, but with a veto threat by the president, the effective date of the implementation of the sanctions was delayed to July 1.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday in Kazakhstan that the sanctions can be lifted immediately if the regime meets its nuclear obligations. She blamed its leaders for the financial crisis and spreading protests and said U.S. policy only seeks to convince the regime to seriously negotiate over its uranium enrichment program.
The Islamic leaders face increasing challenges with the Iranian people, a majority of whom resent the regime and are once again gathering energy to confront it with the hope of achieving regime change and freedom and democracy.
Fox News has reported that Iranian authorities dispatched riot police to key locations in Tehran just within the last 24 hours because of the turmoil over the plunging value of the nation’s currency. Many shop owners were closed the day before, and trash bins were burned as citizens and security forces clashed. More than a dozen were “detained.”
In 2009, when Iranians came out by the millions demanding change and urging Obama to support them, the administration instead negotiated with the regime in the hope of reaching a solution over Iran’s nuclear program. Though the Islamic leaders promised to collaborate with the president once the masses were fully suppressed, the Iranian leaders announced that not only was the offer no longer acceptable but they had further progressed with their nuclear program by reaching a milestone of enriching uranium to the 20-percent level.
The Aug. 30 IAEA report showed Iran has doubled the number of centrifuges at its Fordow facility deep within a mountain to more than 2,000, and work continues unabated at the 20-percent enrichment level. Meanwhile, more than 10,000 centrifuges at the Natanz facility are enriching to the 3.5-percent level, with enough low-enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs should Iran decide to enrich further.
Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and author of the award-winning book “A Time to Betray” (Simon & Schuster, 2010). He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI).
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