Thursday, October 11, 2012

In the Spin Room: Joltin’ Joe Hits It Out of the Park

So did you see it? I took people to a quick dinner tonight so I could get home and watch my Vice President, Joe “Joltin’ Joe” Biden in a major smackdown over Paul “Bobbin’ Boy” Ryan.

Joe Biden made Paul Ryan look small, but Paul Ryan made himself look even smaller. Ryan continued the Republican meme of, in Joe’s own word, utter malarkey, but this time this was not allowed to be said unchallenged. And I suspect Ryan expected this. I quite often found myself pitying Ryan. I suspect Ryan is not comfortable with shape shifting as much as his running mate is and as a result he looked absolutely stricken sometimes in his refutations – uttering things that he himself knew were untrue.

It came to a head in one of his classic refutations when Ryan exhibited an unnatural case of head bobbing. If I didn’t know better, and I do, Ryan exhibited such rapid head oscillations that one would wonder if he didn’t have a case of Touretts Syndrome. At one time I was seriously concerned that he would emerge from the debate with a serious case of whiplash.

I wonder if someone will capture all of Ryan’s head bobbing and compile them in a You Tube video.

But seriously, Joe Biden was the statesman tonight, and Paul Ryan was the naïf. Joe Biden had the facts, Paul Ryan had the campaign slogans. And this in the end was the risk. Romney could have selected a more mature running mate with a larger world view, but instead he chose the nerdy kid with serious head issues from backwater Wisconsin.

No doubt Joe Biden has restored the respect of some flagging Independent voters tonight. And in so doing, has restored the confidence of Democrats who know we can win this thing.

Because we are that good and that right.

And they just aren’t.

3 comments:

Rhymes With Right said...

If you consider grinning like Martha Raye in a PoliGrip commercial and interrupting your opponent an average of once every 30 seconds to be winning, then you are correct.

On the other hand, most polling seems to indicate that either Ryan won or the debate was a draw -- and historically a draw has meant the challenger won the debate by holding their own.

Anonymous said...

My husband and I both noticed the peculiar head bobbing by Ryan, and no one on TV has been talking about it so we decided to Google it and found your post. Thanks for pointing it out. We thought that he did it whenever he was getting frustrated.
He also drank water excessively, we thought when he was nervous and uncomfortable with having to explain his positions.
Also, Ryan had said pre-debate that he wanted to be called Mr. Ryan, but both Biden and Martha called him Congressman Ryan. Beautiful.

Hal said...

"Grinning like Martha Raye" and interrupting is the best you can do to explain "the kid's" performance? Heck, when Barack had his bad night we Dems fully admitted it. Why can't Republicans own up to their own countless failures?