Quote Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name View Post
The only thing that politicians do when challenging each others principles is rhetoric. This isn't a university class where they are using logical arguments to come to conclusions about why the opponents views on X are bad. What good came out of Romney's attacks on Obama's principles (since Obama didn't do the same in return)? We had more talking points, "death panels" came up again, and some blatant lies in regards to Medicare. How is this a good purpose for debates?
Obama didn't do the same in turn because he couldn't. That was what was shown and that's the good that came out of it and that's why Romney won.

Obama's bland and sweeping "there's a choice between Republicans who are anti-regulation, and me who thinks that some regulation is good" is shallow and doesn't hold up to contact with reality. Romney doesn't have to say much to counter that, all he has to do is say that he supports some regulation, but that x,y,z of such and such are a failure, and that he knows how to have regulations without failures like that. He actually started with that and then Obama came in with his standard bit as a (non) response. Romney's challenge of Obama is claiming that Obama views regulations in a vague way as a cure all without having the know how to see how they play out--and Obama feeds right into that with his bit of narrative history, with his self-congratulatory "toughest reforms since the 1930's" etc.

It's not "just rhetoric" it's rhetoric getting shown up.