The Obama Matrix

[Draggingtree]

The Wall Street Journal.:

 

 

Updated October 4, 2012, 7:33 p.m. ET

The Obama Matrix

 

Romney's triumph came from exposing the President's campaign illusions.

 

Liberals and the media are attempting to explain President Obama's anemic debate performance by claiming that he was merely "rusty" and out of practice, or he doesn't watch enough MSNBC, or he was consumed by the burdens of the office. Maybe it was all those security briefings he's not attending between the fundraisers and political rallies.

This may be comforting to his supporters, but our reading is that something far different was on display Wednesday night. For the first time, the carefully crafted campaign illusions that the President has constructed were exposed. Mitt Romney had the audacity to describe Mr. Obama's record and his own agenda in ways that the American public has rarely heard. The Obama Matrix collapsed into bits on the Denver stage.

The most instructive exchange came early, after Mr. Obama had already denounced Mr. Romney's "central economic plan" for the third time. He repeated his lines from the stump about Mr. Romney's $5 trillion tax cut for millionaires and billionaires that "dumps those costs on middle-class Americans" and raises their taxes by $2,000.

Mr. Romney has no such plan. Mr. Obama simply made it up, with an assist from one of his former economists and others at a liberal Washington think tank. Mr. Romney said