Critics across the country believe that President Barack Obama struggled during the first presidential debate this week in Denver, with the win going to Mitt Romney according to some pundits. In an effort to recover from the debate, Obama decided to question the ‘real’ identity of Mitt Romney. He even suggested that Romney was not candid regarding his policy positions during the debate.
“Gov. Romney may dance around his positions but if you want to be president, you owe the American people the truth,” Obama said during a rally.
“I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney. But it couldn’t have been Mitt Romney,” Obama said. “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 on stage last night said he didn’t know anything about that.”
The comments made by Obama about Romney were dismissed by the Romney campaign as damage control for the president. During the debate, Romney said that federal funding to PBS should be trimmed, saying that the country cannot continue to borrow money from China to pay for the network.
“When he was asked what he’d actually do to cut the deficit and reduce spending, he said he’d eliminate funding for public television. That was his answer. I mean thank goodness somebody is finally getting tough on Big Bird. It’s about time,” Obama joked. “We didn’t know that Big Bird was driving the federal deficit. But that’s what we heard last night. How about that? Elmo, too?”
Ryan Williams, a campaign spokesperson for Romney, said that the accusations of dishonesty were false because Romney displayed during the debate why he should be the country’s leader.
“In full damage-control mode, President Obama today offered no defense of his record and no vision for the future,” Williams said. “Rather than a plan to fix our economy, President Obama simply offered more false attacks and renewed his call for job-killing tax hikes.”
David Axelrod, an Obama senior adviser, compared the debate to a sporting event. Axelrod said: “You evaluate after every contest and you make adjustments and I’m sure that we will make adjustments. I don’t see us adding huge amounts of additional prep times. There are some strategic judgments that have to be made and we’ll make them. It was a very vigorous performance, but one that was devoid of honesty,” Axelrod said of Romney.