The Counterpunch

Well, last night I watched the Great Debate and a couple of things struck me.



When the smoke cleared there were three different groups all pursuing different goals:



The Obama supporters.



The McCain supporters.



And the press.



The goals of the Obama and McCain supporters were simple: To pound their chests and holler they’d won.



The media’s goal was more subtle. A lot of folks like to bash the media for being politically biased and, granted, MSNBC and Fox are pushing Obama and McCain as hard as they can. But I thought CNN’s coverage of the debate spoke to the media’s real ‘bias’ – if you can call it that.



The media loves a story. And two could have come out of the debate: ‘McCain on the ropes, comes back’ or ‘Obama increases advantage.’ A story about McCain’s eleventh hour comeback is more riveting and right off CNN’s pundits tilted toward the Old Admiral – what derailed them, sort of, was a couple of focus groups showing a handful of undecided voters moving to Obama post-debate – with none, zip, zero, zilch, moving to McCain.



The best comment of the night came from Charles Krauthammer, who talked about Obama’s preternatural imperturbability. He said setting a grenade off in the corner behind Obama wouldn’t rattle him and added Obama reminded him of Reagan because Reagan didn’t get shaken up much either and that sort of calmness in the middle of a yowling presidential debate has a lot of appeal.



The other piece of bad news for us Republicans is Obama turned into a counterpuncher.



The counterpunch is one of the most underrated and underused weapons in politics. Campaigns like tossing grenades. The counterpunch (the direct answer or rebuttal of a negative ad, making it backfire on the thrower) takes more agility. But it’s a more powerful weapon.



Obama, McCain, Dole, Hagan, McCrory, and Perdue have all been throwing grenades (mostly in the form of negative ads). But no one’s bothered to do much counterpunching.



Last night, Obama shifted gears and counterpunched on William Ayers, John Lewis, and McCain saying he’d voted to deny aborted babies, who are born alive, medical care.



That’s the bad news for us Republicans. The good news is I’ve just seen a new statewide poll – not one of these 5 or 10 question polls you see all the time on TV, or one of these auto-dial wonders public relations firms put out to promote themselves but a real honest to goodness poll with 500 pages of cross-indexed data.



For Republicans, nationally, the sky may be falling but not here in North Carolina.



More on that later.




Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

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Carter Wrenn

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The Counterpunch

Well, last night I watched the Great Debate and a couple of things struck me.



When the smoke cleared there were three different groups all pursuing different goals:



The Obama supporters.



The McCain supporters.



And the press.



The goals of the Obama and McCain supporters were simple: To pound their chests and holler they’d won.



The media’s goal was more subtle. A lot of folks like to bash the media for being politically biased and, granted, MSNBC and Fox are pushing Obama and McCain as hard as they can. But I thought CNN’s coverage of the debate spoke to the media’s real ‘bias’ – if you can call it that.



The media loves a story. And two could have come out of the debate: ‘McCain on the ropes, comes back’ or ‘Obama increases advantage.’ A story about McCain’s eleventh hour comeback is more riveting and right off CNN’s pundits tilted toward the Old Admiral – what derailed them, sort of, was a couple of focus groups showing a handful of undecided voters moving to Obama post-debate – with none, zip, zero, zilch, moving to McCain.



The best comment of the night came from Charles Krauthammer, who talked about Obama’s preternatural imperturbability. He said setting a grenade off in the corner behind Obama wouldn’t rattle him and added Obama reminded him of Reagan because Reagan didn’t get shaken up much either and that sort of calmness in the middle of a yowling presidential debate has a lot of appeal.



The other piece of bad news for us Republicans is Obama turned into a counterpuncher.



The counterpunch is one of the most underrated and underused weapons in politics. Campaigns like tossing grenades. The counterpunch (the direct answer or rebuttal of a negative ad, making it backfire on the thrower) takes more agility. But it’s a more powerful weapon.



Obama, McCain, Dole, Hagan, McCrory, and Perdue have all been throwing grenades (mostly in the form of negative ads). But no one’s bothered to do much counterpunching.



Last night, Obama shifted gears and counterpunched on William Ayers, John Lewis, and McCain saying he’d voted to deny aborted babies, who are born alive, medical care.



That’s the bad news for us Republicans. The good news is I’ve just seen a new statewide poll – not one of these 5 or 10 question polls you see all the time on TV, or one of these auto-dial wonders public relations firms put out to promote themselves but a real honest to goodness poll with 500 pages of cross-indexed data.



For Republicans, nationally, the sky may be falling but not here in North Carolina.



More on that later.




Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

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Carter Wrenn

Categories

Archives