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Home » Romney does stand-up

Romney does stand-up

The New Neo Posted on by

And very very well, too:

And let me just say, at the risk of being thought shallow, that nobody can do white tie like Romney can do white tie. As he acknowledged: “It’s nice to finally relax and wear what Ann and I wear around the house.”

And here’s Obama, who gets in a few good jokes too (although not nearly as many, IMHO):

[Hat tip: Ace.]

Comments

Romney does stand-up — 32 Comments

  2. What a treat. My wife and just stumbled on the telecast. We were roaring throughout. Mitt pulled no punches, but every hay maker was delivered with beautiful timing and, yes, grace.

    Obama tried, but he didn’t come close. I wish every undecided voter would see this.

  5. I thought both men acquitted themselves well, and gave points to Mr. Obama for (at last?) recognizing the need to be self-effacing in certain settings. This one was more friendly to Gov. Romney, and I think his chosen speech reflected that. I prefer self-effacing to barbs aimed at another in a situation where defense is not feasible, and found Romney’s choices a tad too numerous vs. Obama.

    Biden, on the other hand, was fair game for both men.

    Romney’s self-effacing and fun-poking at himself worked really very well for me, and both men were well-received by the audience (including their opponent).

    Overall? I wish this were publicized 10x more than the debates with the hack moderators. Both men “let their hair down” a little more effectively here.

  6. I always enjoy these things. Both men did good jobs. I think W used to be especially good at this.

  7. I’ll give credit where its due: Obama’s joke about his middle name was really well done. I laughed pretty hard.

  9. Last night was debate number 3–Romney knocks out Obama. In a world with Youtube, that performance was worth $50 maybe $100 million in advertising.

    And you noticed that the guy about whom everyone must be serious, about whom the comedians have claimed for four years that there is nothing to mock, is suddenly the butt of the joke. And the crowd laughed.

    “Joe will laugh at anything.” Huge laugh of recognition from the audience. Did you notice that Biden was the butt of the joke from both sides?

    Romeny’s jokes Media unfairness? Huge laugh, more recognition.

    Romney showed he can be warm and funny. His heartfelt final comments about the Al Smith Foundation were gracious, and they had the ring of truth.

    People can remember jokes, even if the fog of media coverage leaves them unsure of what the facts are.

    The Preference Cascade just accelerated.

  10. Mitt killed! White House Correspondence dinners are going to be funny again. As in the debates, this demonstrates that the image of Romney as some stiff, robotic, out-of-touch rich/religious guys is completely wrong.
    Favorite joke: Tonight’s dinner is brought to you by the letter “O” and the number 16 trillion.

  11. Jim S – Funny how I had a different take on Obama’s joke about his middle name. It was too much of a “poor me, folks don’t like me ’cause I’m different.” Not quite the “you’re a racist” card, but close. I didn’t find it funny. But then, I really don’t find anything appealing about Obama, nothing at all – so, I’ll admit I am very biased against the guy.

    My favorite was the Romney quip about the headlines: Catholics embrace Obama while Romney dines with rich people – and it was funny because it isn’t far from the truth.

  12. Oldflyer Says:
    October 19th, 2012 at 12:29 am

    “I wish every undecided voter would see this.”

    I do too. But unfortunately, as Mitt quipped, “my job is to lay out a positive vision of the future of the country, and [the media’s] job is to make sure no one finds out about it.”

  13. John McCain prohibited his team from using that middle name. Teh media claimed it would be racist and discriminatory for anyone else to use it. BHO used it. Pretty much as a club, he used it.

  14. Just in the past few days I’ve noticed a dropping-off in the liberal hate rhetoric. Oh, sure, they’re still against Romney, but there isn’t the completely delusional “He’s an EVIL RICH GUY who’s going to STEAL YOUR VAGINA!” nonsense. Even that “binder” foolishness was pretty much laughed out of the room when lefties tried to make something of it.

    I think the preference cascade is turning into an avalanche. Even liberals are starting to realize that Romney isn’t the monster the Obama media tried to paint him as, and that he’s likely to do a better job as President than Obama is capable of ever doing.

    And for a lot of liberals I think this creates a huge sense of relief. It’s okay if Romney wins. They don’t have to stress their brains to believe palpable lies any more. They can say “He seems like a decent enough man” without having to distort reality.

    As I’ve said before, it must be exhausting to be a liberal, and constantly keep track of who and what you have to hate. That daily Orwellian “Two-Minute Hate” takes a lot out of people.

    I think a lot of liberals are quietly glad that Romney looks likely to win. They won’t have to defend the indefensible Obama administration, they won’t have to tell lies which even they no longer believe, and they can finally relax after more than a decade of screaming hate and anger.

    They will never vote for Romney, and there will undoubtedly be some bitching when he wins, but I suspect a lot of liberals will “accidentally forget to vote” on Election Day, and their sleep that night will be untroubled for once.

  16. on another note…

    REPORT: Fidel Castro suffers stroke, near ‘a neurovegetative state’…

    thats one more old communist leader that will be replaced by a young one (as i said would happen before conflict)…

  17. Romney absolutely killed it. His delivery was smooth and impeccable. Jokes were right on target.

    I watched the first minute of Obama. He looked a little slow and really needed his cards. Not a huge deal, but a telling contrast with his opponent.

    Really liked Romney’s closing. You’ve got to believe that he truly doesn’t want to be POTUS just to be POTUS for his ego.

  18. (cargo cult vs substance?)

    Show vs. Substance

    It was left to the president’s challenger to spoil the story by introducing a few of those dull, gray facts that can drain the color from even the brightest of fancies. Mitt Romney had more than a few such details to relate. The man is a glutton for data, spreadsheets, stats, graphs, percentages … you’d think he was some kind of investor, mainly the successful kind, an expert at turnarounds and reorganizations who now wants to turn around the whole, gigantic enterprise and experiment called the United States of America.

    The man rolls out facts and figures like a pocket calculator, flooding the conversation with them, as if he were out to transform the historical romance his opponent has just produced into a tragedy by the numbers:

    “Well, what you’re seeing in this country is 23 million people struggling to find a job. And a lot of them, as you say, Candy, have been out of work for a long, long, long time. … We have fewer people working today than we had when the president took office. If the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent when he took office, it’s 7.8 percent now. But if you calculated that unemployment rate, taking back the people who dropped out of the workforce, it would be 10.7 percent….

    “There are 3.5 million more women living in poverty today than when the president took office. … How about $4 trillion of deficits over the last four years, $5 trillion? … Women have lost 580,000 jobs. That’s the net of what’s happened in the last four years. … An economy with 50 percent of kids graduating from college that can’t find a job, that’s not what we have to have….

    http://townhall.com/columnists/paulgreenberg/2012/10/19/show_vs_substance/page/full/

  19. another example of Cargo Cult surface games.

    ever watch the famous movie “The Sting”?

    the crew orchestrated a small reality for the subjects of the sting. it was constructed so that their natural choices and personalities would lead to the end results the constructors of that reality wanted.

    whats different today with the left?

    scale..

    the sting in the movie could be done in a week, and dismantled in hours…

    the sting of the socialists forming different social realities (a la lippmans idea of manufactured consensus), took years and years to develop as you replaced parts of the machine with new socialist parts that would play their role in the sting. teachers who pretend to teach, politicians who pretend to govern, facts that are pretend facts to support a false history…

    another movie, which i referenced obtusely was blazing saddles.. what was the solution bart had? to construct a fake town, a facade, a false front…

    what did christine quinn get in trouble for we forget? the 50 million she parked in fake front socialist organizations she then used as a political piggy bank (she is running for mayor of ny soon).

    how about Bloomberg and his new gun pac

    what a facade that is.. when they make guns illegal, will they also make metal supply, machine shops, lathes, milling equipment, drills, cooling oil, forges, and on and on illegal too?

    so his pac amounts to a front… a way to funnel money for a lost cause that wouldnt otherwise be avialable… once given ther eis no way to insure it goes where you want it.

    A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, organized crime groups, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy groups, or corporations. Front organizations can act for the parent group without the actions being attributed to the parent group.

    Front organizations that appear to be independent voluntary associations or charitable organizations are called front groups. In the business world, front organizations such as front companies or shell corporations are used to shield the parent company from legal liability. In international relations, a puppet state is a state which acts as a front (or surrogate) for another state.

    ACORN?

    In politics, a group may be called a front organization if is perceived to be disingenuous in its control or goals, or if it attempts to mask extremist views within a supposedly more moderate group.

    feminism fits that definition if you compare what their constituency wants with what they work for and give them…

    the same is true of the racialist group that lie about the history…

    but a front is a conspiracy
    and there are no conspiracy
    despite a collective being a state conspiracy by definition.

    what if socialism is a front for feudal oligarchical aristocracies return?
    [as bella dodd leader of the teachers union and cpusa testified to congress? ]

  20. Thank you Artful Dodger, very good reference.

    With our petty Boy King leaving his throne, sobriety chills the bones. This battle was not the war, only a microcosm of what needs done. Excitement is perhaps not the best response at this time, but thankfulness that perchance this country has dodged the bullet of it’s assassination one more time.

  21. Trimegistus – wow, that is good.

    I never really thought about it; but, yep, it must be exhausting to be a liberal. Trying to defend the indefensible, trying to keep up with who to hate and who to love. I think that is so spot on.

    And, yea, I am getting tired myself from their decade of screaming hate.

    P.S. I am so going to use that line of yours: Romney is an evil rich guy who is going to steal your vagina! that is LOL for sure.

  22. Communist front
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_front

    To coordinate their activities the Comintern set up various international umbrella organizations (linking groups across national borders), such as the Young Communist International (youth), Profintern (trade unions),[5] Krestintern (peasants), International Red Aid (humanitarian aid), Sportintern (organized sports), etc. In Europe, front organizations were especially influential in Italy and France, which in 1933 became the base for Communist front organizer Willi Mé¼nzenberg. These organizations were dissolved the late 1930s or early 1940s.

    and we again, return again full circle to munzenberg (not to be confused with the hat tip to him in the hudsucker proxy among other hat tips)

    Schrecker says that anti-Communist leaders believed that the Party used front groups to attract “fellow travelers,” who were “unsuspecting liberals and well-meaning dupes drawn into the Communist orbit without realizing that the party was using them for its own purposes.” Schrecker says that on the contrary, “most of these people knowingly collaborated with the party, believing it to be the most effective ally they could find.”[24] Theodore Draper asks, “To what extent was it possible, at least in the nineteen-twenties, to belong to a Communist front without being a Communist sympathizer?” His answer is that, “Only the most naive could have belonged to a front for any considerable length of time without realizing its political coloration. The top leaders of the early fronts were not merely Communists; they were top-ranking Communists.”

    Students for a Democratic Society

    Campus chapters of SDS all over the country started to lead small, localized demonstrations against the war and the NO became the focal group that organized the march against the war in Washington on April 17. Endorsements came from nearly all of the other peace groups and leading personalities, there was significant increase in income and by the end of March there were 52 chapters. The media began to cover the organization and the New Left. However, the call for the march and the openness of the organization in allowing other groups, even communist front groups, or communists themselves, to join in caused great strains with the LID and some other old left organizations.

    Bill Ayers
    Ayers became involved in the New Left and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).[10] He rose to national prominence as an SDS leader in 1968 and 1969. As head of an SDS regional group, the “Jesse James Gang,” Ayers made decisive contributions to the Weatherman orientation toward militancy.

    but why learn about fronts, munsenberger, Theodore Draper, the methods and such.

    Draper later recalled:

    “My initiation came in the National Student League, which I joined in 1930… Most of its leaders were members of the Young Communist League, but I was not. I preferred being a ‘fellow-traveler,’ which was how I came to be around it. I was enough of a true believer to be convinced that whatever its faults or shortcomings, only the Communist movement was capable of making the ‘Revolution’; a revolutionary, therefore, had to be close to it. Nevertheless, I was unwilling to give up a measure of freedom or absence of discipline, such as I could enjoy as a fellow-traveler.”

    just sit back and watch saving graces and assume that what you see is real.

    is it?
    how would you know?

    to quote Pink Floyd… Green Field

    So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
    blue skies from pain.
    Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
    A smile from a veil?
    Do you think you can tell?
    And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
    Hot ashes for trees?
    Hot air for a cool breeze?
    Cold comfort for change?
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPL_SV3n7IU

  24. I’ve been thinking and asking myself why I like these dinners where the president and challenger make jokes about each other and themselves so much.

    I think one part of it is that I like seeing Republican and Democrat leaders “getting along”, each sticking to basic principles but working out deals to get things done that help the country. I like the thought of Reagan and Tip O’Neil working together like they did.

    I like seeing the two guys smiling at each other and patting each other on the back as they leave such an event. I know, I know…most of that is superficial but I, at least, like the ritual.

    And I’m not alone. I have some pretty conservative friends who have expressed strong desires for the two parties to work together better and end the terrible divisiveness we’ve had in this country so long. Several participants in Frank Luntz’s focus group after the 1st presidential debate said that’s one thing they liked about Romney…that he worked with Democrats in MA to get things done…some of which any conservative would like…balancing the budget for example.

    Maybe that’s one reason why liberals don’t seem so afraid of Romney anymore as was so well commented above by Trimegistus.

    If Romney can keep that concept alive to some extent until the election without making arch-conservatives call him a RINO, it will help him win the election.

    And after the election, it will help him govern.

  25. The Romney Re-Roll Out is hit despite the MSM running interference for Obama.

    People see that he is a genuinely nice guy and not some mustache twirling robot

  26. P.S. I also hope that if Romney wins, we keep the House, and gain control of the Senate, Democrat congressional leaders are smart enough to kick witchy Pelosi and catatonic Reid out of their positions.

    That will make it MUCH easier for everyone to work together.

  27. I think trimegistus and texexec might be right. Liberals right now are like teenagers who threw a big party when the ‘rents were gone but are secretly glad when Mom and Dad come back home. Lefties in general can’t govern, really. They’re much happier carping and complaining–oops, I mean “standing up for the little guy” and “speaking truth to power.”

  28. AJ Strata at his excellent site said the Obama campaign is entering a form of “harmonic convergence”. He describes this, paraphrasing, as disillusionment followed by apathy, followed by greater disillusionment… (I would think the term would be harmonic divergence–but, that is not my field.)

    In aviation we called it a “graveyard spiral”. Aptly named. It would begin due to sensory confusion, and once begun became ever tighter and nearly impossible to correct. (I came very close one ugly night with a bad case of vertigo, but my flight leader, and best friend, talked me through it.)

    I do think, given recent events, that AJ Strata’s observation could be prophetic.

  29. As to Romney’s hilarious performance: it shouldn’t be surprising. He’s just using all the material professional comedians have been avoiding since 2008.

  31. …and bringing people together was a big plus for Obama in 2008 (“There are no red states, no blue states”, “I’ll work for all Americans”…etc. etc.).

    But with many other things, that promise wasn’t kept.

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