In his post-debate analysis Tuesday night, Chuck Todd took a look at how the president’s unyielding yet fact-based approach threw Romney off his game, especially on the topic of foreign policy in Benghazi.
Todd observed how Obama barely let any seemingly questionable Romney claim go by, which might have allowed voters to see through the Romney salesman pitch in a way they hadn’t before. But, Todd said, Romney’s dead-wrong claim that Obama hadn’t addressed the attack on U.S. ambassadors as an “act of terror” is what did him in.
“Mitt Romney was sort of hanging tough there … and then the Libya moment happened,” said Todd. “At that point it seemed as if Mitt Romney got rattled by that moment and the sort of instant fact-check by the two of them [Obama and debate moderator Candy Crowley]. And what’s going to be interesting about this is, the Romney people are spinning furiously behind me, saying ‘hey, that wasn’t the spirit of what the president was saying,’ about whether that was a terrorist attack, but the moment itself was just a moment of weakness. And even Romney people are saying ‘he could have answered the question better.’”
“It reminded me of what people were saying about the president” in the first debate, Todd added. “It doesn’t matter if people spinning for you seem to have a better answer. You didn’t do it in the moment, when you were on camera in front of 65 million people. That said, it certainly sets up debate three.”
Quinn Wonderling