By all accounts, Mitt Romney took Barack Obama to the woodshed last night.  Hey, anything that puts the staff at MSNBC on a suicide watch must have been good.

All indications are that Mr. Romney ‘won’ last night’s debate by a wide margin. You can put me in the “surprised” category on that one.  President Obama is a talented orator, and he performed very well during the debates in 2008.  I expected that the best Romney could accomplish would be to not lose badly.  I’ve seen nothing in him that indicates that he’s a good debater, but I guess the preparation and practice really paid off.  The football fan in me wonders if he didn’t watch tapes of the 2008, 1980, and 1984 debates to get an idea of how to handle his opponent.

Personally, I didn’t watch the debate.  Sorry guys, but I’m not going to do that for blog fodder.  I’ve already made up my mind that I’m not voting for Obama, and what Romney says in a carefully choreographed ‘debate’ with someone who’s already lost my vote isn’t going to convince me to vote for him.

I put debate in quotes  because I don’t see this as a true debate.  When you hold negotiations on what will be asked, it’s not a debate, it’s a joint press conference between two men who don’t care for each other.  The two major parties stopped using a neutral third party like the League of Women Voters to run the debates while I was in high school, and for the most part, candidates without a (D) or an (R) aren’t welcome.   This is especially true since Ross Perot stole the show in 1992.  I’m not convinced that Gary Johnson is the best man for the job, but it would have been nice if he and the candidates from one or two of the other alternate parties could have participated in at least one debate.  I guess when you plan the soire, you get to pick and choose who gets invited.  Heaven forbid that someone who will actually make the candidates articulate and defend their positions on issues shows up and pisses in the punchbowl.

So anyway, congratulations to Mitt Romney on the victory.  Coming up, we have the VP candidates debating in Danville, Kentucky, followed by a couple more presidential debates, where the guy in the blue suit and red tie will disagree with the other guy in the blue suit and the red tie.  I’m off to make popcorn.