Thursday, October 16, 2008

Robinson - Tiberi Debate Video Online

If you missed the first showing on Monday night, you can still catch David Robinson giving a very strong showing against a clearly peeved and surprisingly petty Pat Tiberi (and an amusingly befuddled Libertarian candidate). You can watch it or Tivo it Sunday at 1pm, or you can see it in its entirety on ONN's website.

Now, I'm not the most unbiased observer (ya think?), but I have to believe that it's a surprise to many people watching that Pat has turned into a blame-Pelosi-first and smear-your-opponent-with-reckless-plagiarism-charges type of candidate. He's always been that kind of legislator, but the lack of credible opposition and cover from a friendly majority in Congress have let him play the part of a bi-partisan nice guy in campaigns past.

By the way, for a guy whose idea of 'all of the above' is the noxious "No Excuses' bill, Pat's certainly willing to make a bunch of them himself. Most of them have to do with his growing Senate Envy. Why can't Congress get anything done on energy? Pat says that it's the crummy old Senate's fault. Why can't Congress do something about healthcare costs? It's the Senate's fault! Why did Pat vote against Children's Health Insurance before he voted for it? Because the crummy House had a bad bill and it was up to the great and powerful Senate to fix it before he could vote for it. Why did Pat vote against stabilizing the credit and banking industry before he voted for it? Because he was waiting for the god-like Senate to fix the rescue package.

A nice diary over on the Big Orange contained a newsclip I had missed, which I've embedded below. During the debate, Pat tried to make it out like David Robinson had focused his entire campaign in an anti-Tiberi rather than Pro-Robinson mode. There's a small grain of truth in this. Pat's entire campaign is based on the idea that the district "knows him" and "knows his record." They don't. And while papers like the Dispatch base their endorsements on explicit agendas, others like the Newark Advocate have endorsed the incumbent because, despite their obvious respect for David Robinson, they treat the election like a referendum, and they don't believe that the district should terminate Pat (although their readers on both the left and the right are pretty consistent in their disagreement). Under these conditions, where many actually do view the election as a yea-or-nay vote on Tiberi, and where many are quite misinformed about his views and values, the campaign would be nuts not to point out to the public exactly what Pat does stand for. On the other hand, people are not going to vote against Pat without a viable alternative. Which brings me to the video clip:



Robinson is clearly comfortable making the positive case for himself, in part because it's one of the better one's you'll hear among challengers. This guy belongs in Congress. IMHO, the DCCC really does need to get a coordinated Kilroy-Robinson-Neuhardt ad up in Columbus. In the meantime, watch the debate. If you think someone else needs to see it when you're done, email the link.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Its about the money. The DCCC is looking at how much money Robinson raised and thats it. Neuhardt in the 7th had raised over $360,000 by the end of June: however Robinson had raised only around $80,000.....that is the reason Neuhardt went Red to Blue with the DCCC. As to the debate Tiberi knew were Robinson was going to hit him. How you may ask? All he had to do was read Robinson's web page to see what was coming from the Robinson side. I did check out the web page for Robinson this morning and I see they have taken a lot of the Tiberi stuff off.....I feel it came a little to late. Maybe if the Robinson team works a litte harder they may do better in the next debate. If I were to pick a winner from Mondays debate I would have to give the edge to Tiberi over Robinson because of the smoothness of Pat Tiberi.

Anonymous said...

Ike,

I think you are mistaken that the Robinson site has taken down any info about Tiberi. As to the reason it is on the site in the first place... that would be to help voters become informed about Pat, his voting record and his historic, untruthful, campaign tactics. Tiberi touts himself as a moderate who is looking out for the middle-class citizens of the 12th district. This is simply not the truth and all David Robinson is trying to do is to get the facts out to the voters so they can decide.

Not sure how you could believe that Tiberi won. All he did was whine about how he can't get anything done because of Pelosi and the rest of her democratic co-horts. My advice to Mr. Tiberi would be ... if you can't get anything done, maybe it is time to step aside and let someone in there that can - someone that might be able to reach across the aisle and collaborate.

Anonymous said...

Michelle,

Point taken. But You have to say there was a lot of information on the Robinson web page that Tiberi used to learn how Robinson would come after him and to my feeling, Pat Tiberi was ready and got ready by reading the web page of Robinson. You should never show your cards at the table before the last bet.