Republican Debate in Florida–Perry’s campaign Tweeted, Romney Barked

Sigh… The Republican Debate on Fox News last night, in my opinion, was filled with bickering and no real winner.

Yes, Mitt Romney came out fighting against Rick Perry. Unfortunately, Mitt Romney’s rhetorical delivery turned me off from his message. I will say Rick Perry was calmer and brought out some good points that I think have been missed because of Romney’s uber aggressive delivery. In all honesty, I think the secondary players actually won the debate last night such as Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Gary Johnson. These three candidates stood out because they didn’t play into the bickering. In fact, Newt Gingrich was brilliant in some of his answers. I kept thinking, “Hey Obama, call Newt up if you want the country up and running again!”

Ad Hominem-Romney’s Aggressive Rhetoric

What turned me off from Romney was his ad hominem delivery on Perry. He seemed to always mention Perry in his answers. Why? The other candidates told us what they would do. But, Romney and Perry kept fighting about what is in each other’s books. We could scrutinize each and every line of every book ever written by a presidential candidate and find discrepancies. Obama’s book, before he was a candidate for president, has a lot of disturbing material we, as American’s, should have been more aware of.

When Perry asked Romney why he deleted a line from his hardback book in his paperback version, Romney did not answer the question. Romney skirted around the question and failed to explain his reason. Again, the American people were left with questions. Between Perry and Romney, I still have a lot of questions. However, Perry and his @PerryTruthTeam tweets helped me answer those questions as well as other debate fact checking web sites.

Social Media Debate–Where’s Romney?

As always, I went to Twitter to see who won the social media debate.  @PerryTruthTeam actively tweeted as well as @TeamRickPerry. Mitt Romney’s campaign stayed silent. I had to find out from other fact checking sites to see where Romney was wrong and right. I encourage everyone to check out Politifact.com .

I find it ironic how Romney’s virtual campaign stayed silent when Google sponsored the debate and Fox News encouraged tweeting and online participation. Other candidates’ campaigns were actively tweeting.

Here are tweets from candidates’ campaigns DURING the debate:

Romney’s campaign did not take part in the tweet debate, which I thought was as interesting.  I think the campaign activity online is good. All these candidates are expanding the soundbite. When you are in a high pressured debate the message gets spinned by others such as Romney’s and Perry’s battle of the one liners. At the end of the debate, the audience did not get clear answers from the key players. As a viewer I came away with this:  Romney really does not like Perry and vice versa.

I felt Romney’s overt aggression turned his message into a failed message. His silence on the web disturbs me because I rely on the backend debate to really get to know the overall campaign messages. Romney is ignoring a huge part of his rhetorical available means during the debates.

Bachmann and HPV: Bye Bye Bachmann

As for the Bachmann vs. Perry’s  HPV debate, Bachmann had the chance to redeem herself. Unfortunately, she blamed the woman who told her the story rather than admit she was wrong to retell an unverified story. Bachmann needs to learn to fact check. The best answer Perry gave all night was that he “erred on the side of life.”  The HPV vaccine is like any other vaccine that parents can opt out on, such as the mumps, whooping cough, etc. Parents always have the choice and to tell you the truth, lobbyists will always have a political candidate’s ear. That’s what lobbyists and contributors do! We can debate this issue over and over again, but you may want to ask yourself this question– who has Bachmann’s ear?

Don’t ask Don’t Tell, but Don’t Boo–

What I found sad are the boo’s during a question asked about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell by a homosexual male serviceman. The man is serving our country. We should be cheering for him no matter his sexual orientation. I thank him and I never want to see DADT to be a hinderance for anyone to serve our country again. I found one tweet by Gary Johnson during the debate over DADT.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think the American people will get tired of the Romney and Perry bickering debate.  I encourage both candidates to please put the books aside and start running for the President of the United States. It was clear that both candidates read each other’s books and had analyzed each and every word. The books have been printed and the world has changed within the months that the books were written. Policy changes and what was said in a book six months ago could be null and void in the present. A person can still hold on to the foundational beliefs, but a candidate who wrote a book during a certain time and circumstance may have found that the present rhetorical situation has changed. I like when candidates have found ways to change. I do not appreciate candidates spinning the contents of another candidate’s book without giving the context of the meaning behind such rhetoric. This is where I rely on social media to fill in the gaps.

In fact, it is sad when you learn more from the campaign tweets than you do from the debate itself. I liked the calmness to Perry and disliked Romney’s aggression. I agree, Perry was not at his best last night, but I liked Perry’s, Bachmann’s, Santorum’s, Paul’s, Johnson’s and Cain’s tweets. I did not like Romney’s online silence, especially when this debate was co-sponsored by Google AND online participation was encouraged throughout the debate.

To me, Romney may have been the strongest “mouth” out there, but he was definitely not the strongest candidate expanding his soundbite to create an online dialogical interaction with his potential supporters. Romney needed to create a more intimate relationship through his online campaign and to create a less aggressive attack strategy so the electorate can make a wise decision based on clear messages, not muddy ones. Romney also had the chance to discuss his policy stance after the debate with Sean Hannity, but again, he kept attacking Perry’s policy. I learned more about Perry than I did about Romney in the interview. I found Romney’s aggressive delivery (Rhetoric has 5 canons, Invention, Arrangement, Style, Delivery, and Memory) overwhelming and less polished than in other debates. Romney was “grasping for straws.” The secondary players in the debate surpassed both Romney and Perry who let their bickering cloud their message and allowed for the lesser known candidates like Herman Cain, whose campaign tweeted,  stand out because his answers were not about proving Romney or Perry wrong, but about the American people.