Chad’s Morning Brief: Obama Campaign Goes on the Defensive, College Students Agreed With the President, & More

Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of October 5, 2012. Give us your feedback below and tune in to The Chad Hasty Show for these and many more topics from 8:30 to 11 am.

1. Obama Goes on Defensive (link)

The day after Mitt Romney dominated President Obama in the first Presidential debate, Democrats and the President came out swinging. Obama even spent some time calling Romney a fake. According to the NY Times:

Under fire from fellow Democrats, Mr. Obama came out swinging, accusing Mr. Romney of lying to the American people about his plans for the nation. “I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney,” Mr. Obama told 12,000 supporters during a lakeside rally. “But it couldn’t be Mitt Romney, because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy. The fellow onstage last night said he didn’t know anything about that.”

He said the Mr. Romney of the debate wanted to put more teachers in classrooms and claimed not to know companies get tax breaks for outsourcing jobs. “The man onstage last night, he does not want to be held accountable for the real Mitt Romney’s decisions and what he’s been saying for the last year,” the president said. “And that’s because he knows full well that we don’t want what he’s been selling for the last year.”

The vigorous assault on Mr. Romney suggested just how worried Mr. Obama’s campaign has become. The president’s advisers concluded that he had lost his first debate by not pressing Mr. Romney enough. After a series of late-night and early-morning consultations, the Obama team decided to try to correct that Thursday with a more aggressive stance, including the rally rhetoric, a new television ad and a conference call questioning Mr. Romney’s truthfulness.

David Axelrod, the president’s strategist, called Mr. Romney an “artful dodger” whose debate comments were “devoid of honesty,” “rooted in deception,” “untethered to the truth” and “well delivered but fraudulent.”

“Not surprisingly, what we learned is he’ll say anything,” Mr. Axelrod said. “That makes him effective in the short term but vulnerable in the long term.” He added, “He may win the Oscar for his performance last night but he’s not going to win the presidency.”

The Romney team, feeling rejuvenated, fired back. “In full damage-control mode, President Obama today offered no defense of his record and no vision for the future,” said Ryan Williams, a Romney spokesman. “Rather than a plan to fix our economy, President Obama simply offered more false attacks and renewed his call for job-killing tax hikes.”

Democrats also spent a lot of time focusing on Romney's comments about PBS and tried to convince people that Romney would kill off Big Bird and Sesame Street.

2. College Students Still Love Obama (link)

52% of college students thought Mitt Romney won Wednesday night's debate, but 60% of college students polled actually agreed with Obama.

Thousands of American college students participated in real-time polling while watching the first presidential debate, and their views were dramatically different from those featured in other instant-reaction polls.

The results showed young people are more likely to agree with President Barack Obama and have mixed opinions toward Mitt Romney.

According to the results from React Labs, an online polling app developed by University of Maryland Professor Phillip Resnik, much stronger “disagree” responses were registered for Romney than for Obama among the 3,767 people who reacted during the debate on Wednesday night.

Sixty percent of participants said they plan to vote for Obama, while just 24 percent plan to vote for Romney, despite the fact that 52 percent said they believed the Republican challenger won the first debate.

You can check out charts and move in the link above. There is no doubt that college students still support Obama, but the big question is, will they turn out to vote. I tend to think not. We are about a month away from the election and I just don't see the enthusiasm from them or other Democrats that I did in 2008.

3. Dallas Morning News Slams Cruz-Sadler Debate (link)

The Dallas Morning News says that Ted Cruz and Paul Sadler blew their debate on WFAA in Dallas.

If you like your political debates with a strong dash of personal insults, barking candidates and canned sound bites, Tuesday’s skirmish between Ted Cruz and Paul Sadler was the event for you. But if you prefer a forum in which candidates present a complete and clear vision, you probably found the square-off between the two U.S. Senate candidates a giant disappointment. This newspaper certainly did.

Democrat Sadler let his ego get the best of him during the Belo Debate and constantly talked over Republican Cruz, calling him a liar and dismissing him with facial looks reminiscent of an exasperated Al Gore. You may recall that Gore lost a 2000 debate with George W. Bush by dismissively — and repeatedly — sighing during their meeting.

We understand that Sadler needed to take a bold approach in distinguishing himself from Cruz. After all, the Democrat is the underdog. But you don’t win debates by trying to pulverize your opponent. Instead, Sadler should have stepped back and let Cruz put more of his extremism on center stage. That would have allowed viewers to see that some of Cruz’s answers won’t work for the state.

The editorial then went on to criticize Cruz for not having enough details for his plans.

Substance like that, though, wasn’t central to the evening, which was wasted on fare that’s best left to reality shows featuring dysfunctional families. Before their Oct. 19 debate, Sadler and Cruz would be wise to rethink how they present themselves. Some Texans may like political brawls, but most of us are interested in levelheaded and detailed accounting by the candidates on the critical challenges facing our country.

Personally, I thought that Sadler did much worse than Cruz. Did you watch the debate? If so, what did you think?

4. Joe Biden Speaks (link)

After President Obama's terrible debate performance, the last thing the Democrats needed was for Joe Biden to talk. Well he did and somehow the campaign allowed. Not that I'm complaining. According the Weekly Standard, Joe Biden admitted to wanting to raise your taxes.

"On top of the trillions of dollars of spending that we have already cut, we’re gonna ask – yes – we’re gonna ask the wealthy to pay more," said Biden. "My heart breaks, come on man. You know the phrase they always use? Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars. Guess what? Yes we do in one regard. We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn’t have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super wealthy. That’s not a tax raise, that’s called fairness where I come from."

If a tax cut expires and taxes goes up a trillion dollars, how is that not raising taxes? What planet is this guy from?

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These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of The Chad Hasty Show. Tune in mornings 8:30-11 am on NewsTalk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard online in our podcast section after the show at kfyo.com.