Cross-Posted at
Political Moneyball
I was so eagerly looking forward to the Casey/Sanatorium debate, I could hardly sleep on Saturday night. I was mildly disappointed.
I think Casey won the debate, but I'm biased. I guess it could be seen as a toss-up, but in my opinion, Casey gets points for a few good, well delivered lines, and Sen. Batshit-crazy loses a few for low-blows (suggesting Casey is a disappointment to his father!?).
Follow me over the fold, and I'll be more specific.
Content:
Casey gets points for directly talking to Sen. Smacked-ass, and asking him pointedly about the support he received from Cheney (the most unpopular VP ever. Even more so than Martin Van Buren):
MR. CASEY: And I want to ask you today, Rick, do you--are you going to sit here today and not denounce him [Dick Cheney] for continually opposing sanctions, and are you going to give the money back that he raised for you? I think he raised you 300,000 bucks in Luzerne County.
SEN. SANTORUM: I'm not going to denounce the vice president of the United States, and I think you'd find that...
Casey also scores on the fact that Sen. Scumbag has voted 98% of the time with the President. In what was a rather funny moment, Casey (and Russert) called Sen. Screwball out for his "Iraq had WMD, and we found them" routine:
MR. CASEY: And I think when you point to the 9/11 question on Saddam Hussein, and you point to this crazy theory that there's still weapons of mass destruction, Tim, I think you've unearthed something. You've unearthed the 2 percent of the time that Rick Santorum disagrees with President Bush, and I think that's new information for this campaign.
I mean, who really thinks Saddam had new WMDs? And even the president has admitted Iraq and 9/11 were not connected.
Sen. Moron did a good job arguing that Casey wasn't outlining a specific plan. I chalk this up to Casey's general uneasiness on a nationally televised debate, but Casey did a pretty bad job with specifics.
I give the social security issue to the Senator. With Russert probing him, Casey fell back on the tired argument of stimulating growth to increase jobs, and thus tax revenue, while at the same time rolling back Bush's tax cuts. This will help him with the low income voters (who must have been glued to the tube for this debate), but may alienate the Main Line "Security Moms" who can imagine their more of their allowance shrinking as their husbands move up the food chain at whatever Fortune 500 company they're lucky to work for. What Casey needed to hammer home was the complete insanity of private accounts: they'll take money out of the current SS trust fund, and with the market as unpredictable as ever, won't guarantee anything.
Style:
Sen. Crackhead looked like a driven, determined man who knows he's down 18 points among likely voters and fighting for his political life. At times, he appeared, like a rabid dog, ready to pounce on Casey and rip his throat open.
Casey looked uneasy, especially when, in the first 90 seconds of the debate, Russert pressed him on his theoretical Iraq war vote. He recovered, slowly, and his soft-spoken manner made for a nice contrast to Sen. Fucktard's virulent and vitriolic personal attacks on Casey.
Final Thoughts:
Again, it's a toss up, maybe leaning towards Casey. It's not that I like sitting on the fence on this one: I really think Casey was under-whelming, and his campaign didn't do a good enough job of lowering expectations. Sen. "I only sleep in PA one month out of the year" looked as crazy and delusional as ever, and some new voters may find that offensive.
Casey did a decent job with the DSCC's talking points: "New Direction" and "Rubberstamp for the President." And he had the best line with "And I think, Tim, when you have two politicians in Washington that agree 98 percent of the time, one of them's really not necessary. We could have, we could have a machine have that kind of vote."
Sen. Sucks-at-life effectively framed the Iraq debate as why we're at war, as opposed to Bush and Rumsfeld's mismanagement of the Iraq debacle. His hard line on Iran reinforces the White House's belief that the National Security card will work for them again.
In a country where 28% of voters think the country is heading in the right direction, and only 38% think Republicans should be running Congress, I'm not so sure Sen. Ricky should have expressed his desire to be the number two man in the Senate.
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