The Flip-Flopper

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Created on Tuesday, 30 October 2012 15:44

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U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about preparations for Hurricane Sandy during a briefing at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Monday, October 29, 2012. (Pool photo by Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg via Abaca Press/MCT)(Courtesy to MCT Campus)

Opinion

By Juan Jaimez

In the past four weeks, the world has witnessed President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt "The Flip-Flopper" Romney exchange punches and blows in the three national debates.

Aside from Romney's unexpected and surprisingly strong performance in the first debate in Denver, Obama nonetheless easily cruised to two consecutive victories in the debates in New York and Florida.

I have to admit that in the first debate, Obama did not perform as expected from his fellow Democrats. He seemed to have been caught off guard by Romney's seldom-seen calm, cool, and confident persona that he exhibited that night. Obama, on the other hand, appeared tepid, passive, and lacked the passion and flair that he is known for.

It appears that Romney produced a device using his billions of untaxed dollars that he made in his shell companies in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda that enabled him to switch personalities with Obama prior to the debate. A mixture of that and his beginner's luck sufficed to edge one over Obama.

Too bad Romney's investment went to waste because after his first little triumph, Obama went back to being the same confident, passionate, and strong leader he is praised for. Obama came out on the offensive, taking jabs at Romney's indecisiveness and his inability to mention any methods he has in mind in order to cut the national deficit besides removing funding for PBS and Planned Parenthood. Romney seemed uncomfortable with Obama's remarks and intimidating interruptions and tried his best to overcome Obama's attacks, but failed.

Romney attempted to take a swing at the President when Libya was the topic, saying that the President had called the Benghazi attacks on the U.S consulate an "act of terrorism," but Obama abruptly shut him down, stating that "...this [the Benghazi attacks] was an act of terror... we're going to hunt down those who committed the crime." The president then said "...[suggesting] that anybody in my team... would play politics or mislead when we've lost four of our own, governor, is offensive. That's not what we do. That's not what I do as president, that's not what I do as Commander in Chief."

Obama ended the debate with a devastating blow to Romney, bringing up Romney's infamous "47 percent" comment in which he says calmly that "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what... These are people who pay no income tax... My job is not to worry about these people." Romney does not have "to worry" about 47 percent of the population? And why is that? Oh, that's right, because 47 percent of the population believe they are entitled to "...to health care, to food, to housing."

In Romney's language, 47 percent of the population, approximately 146,640,000 Americans, is unimportant, insignificant, nothing in Romney's eyes. But wait, I thought Romney's campaign was focused on the "100 percent in America" as his ads illustrate. False advertisement? No, this is nothing but Romney's habitual flip-flopping, quite prolific throughout his presidential campaign and his career, as a matter of fact.

Using the momentum from the last debate, Obama effortlessly sailed through the last debate in Florida. He was so successful that most of Romney's responses and rebuttals started off with phrases such as "I agree with the President..." The main focus on the debate was foreign policy and affairs; something Romney only has some, if any, knowledge on. He said that Russia is the biggest foreign threat to the United States for crying out loud!

In this debate, Romney said that he supports the President's total troop withdrawal from Iraq by 2014, although he had previously criticized Obama's plan. He seemed much more calm when Iran was brought up, saying that going to war with Iran would be a last option in order for to stop them from making nuclear weapons, contradictory to his claims prior to the third debate where he advocated doing "whatever it takes" to stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons.

The Flip-Flopper is in his prime. Obama did a superb job making Romney seem even more awkward by attacking Romney's criticism of the U.S Navy, which has "fewer ships than it did in 1916." Obama stated that the Navy also has less bayonets and horses, and that there are "these things called ‘aircraft carriers,’ and planes land on them," portraying Romney as an outdated and uninformed candidate.

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Editor: Sierra Lopez

Posted by: Briana Keck

Final Editor: Madison Rice