President Obama will look to rebound from an uncomfortable showing in his first debate with Republican challenger Mitt Romney with a big rally today in Madison, Wis., a college town he's likely to find a lot friendlier than the debate hall at the University of Denver.
Virginia is the next stop for a revitalized Romney, who in 90 commanding minutes offered his campaign, and some discouraged partisan supporters, new hope that their man can carry the newfound momentum through to Election Day.
Often criticized for being vague with his own policy proposals, Romney in his first ever presidential one-on-one made a sustained effort to rattle off dollar figures, rates, and plan-points in a rhetorical blitz that the president seemed unable to meet.
The Republican National Committee seized on Obama's body language today, releasing a web video called, "Smirk," a compendium of the president's occasionally exasperated facial contortions during the debate.
Their counterparts at the Democratic National Committee issued a YouTube spot of their own, showing Romney interrupting the moderator and president. They also released a statement saying, "If rude and unbearable is your cup of tea, you would have certainly gotten your fill from Mitt Romney last night."
But even as Democrats defended Obama on the substance of the debate, they admitted he likely lost the first round.
Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo
First 2012 Presidential Debate: How Did They Do?
Watch Video Longtime Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said on Good Morning America that Obama "left a lot of good stuff in the locker room."
Stephanie Cutter, the president's deputy campaign manager, conceded a Romney victory. "I think that Mitt Romney, yes, he absolutely wins the preparation. And he wins the style points," she said on CNN late Wednesday night.
"In one 90 minute period this race is going to have gone from a slight Obama lead to a dead even race," predicted Matt Dowd, an ABC News political analyst.
When Obama did try to push his own agenda Wednesday night, Romney turned the tables.
"But you've been president four years," was his response to Obama's promise to shave $4 trillion off the deficit with a plan his administration was "putting forward to Congress right now."
When Romney accused Obama of cutting $716 billion from Medicare to pay for "Obamacare," the president replied that he "liked" the term Obamacare.
Debate moderator Jim Lehrer, the PBS anchor, asked Obama for a response to the charge, but the president elected to speak about Romney and running mate Paul Ryan's plan to privatize parts of Medicare.
Obama also passed up the opportunity to question Romney's claim that his health care plan would cover people with "preexisting conditions," an assertion one of his top aides, Eric Fehrnstrom, qualified in the post-debate "spin room."
"We'd like to see states do what Massachusetts did," Fehrnstrom said. "In Massachusetts we have a ban on pre-existing conditions." The Massachusetts law, which provided the blueprint for the Affordable Care Act, requires insurance companies take all comers. By contrast, candidate Romney's proposal would not, instead leaving that decision to the states.
Romney also refused to provide any more specifics on how he would pay for 20 percent, across-the-board tax cuts and military spending increases estimated to come in at $2 trillion. On the stump, Romney has promised to close tax loopholes, but last night he would not name the particular deductions he planned to wipe out.
When Obama suggested Romney's declared "love" of teachers was not backed up by his budget plan, the challenger was prepared with one of those much-anticipated "zingers."
"Mr. President," he said, "you're entitled as the president to your own airplane and to your own house, but not to your own facts. All right, I'm not going to cut education funding. I don't have any plan to cut education funding."
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