Oct 12, 2012 No Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Excerpted from Joel Pollak’s piece in Big Government: Rep. Paul Ryan won a tough debate on Thursday evening against Vice President Joe Biden–but Biden was not the biggest loser–who was, once again, President Barack Obama.
Biden, in fact, surpassed (low) expectations and played to his Democratic base–though not to independent voters–by interrupting, smirking, and chuckling.
Yet Biden hardly bothered to defend President Barack Obama’s record, focusing instead on (often false) flaws in Ryan’s and Gov. Mitt Romney’s past.
In fact, Biden may have dug Obama some deeper holes, particularly on the Libya scandal and on budget issues.
Biden barely mentioned President Obama at all, as if he were ashamed of him. The word “Obama” appears 30 times in the debate transcript. Ryan mentioned Obama 25 times (10 times as “Obamacare”), while moderator Martha Raddatz used the word only four times, and Biden only once.
In contrast, Ryan referred to Romney 22 times, promoting the top of the Republican ticket as well as defending Romney from Biden’s repeated attacks. For his part, Biden referred to Romney 26 times, and moderator Raddatz used the word “Romney” six times.
