Bush 10, Kerry 6 - Bush Gets K.O. In The Last Round

Count him out Bush, 3...4...5...

Bush won this debate hands down, and if you believe the news agencies that say otherwise, read this quote from GOP and the City. “I could not help myself but to watch the spin machine one more time. Are the media insane? Do they really think that John Kerry did well last night? They keep citing these internet polls that had Kerry winning 71% to Bush's 29%. That is an improvement for Bush/Cheney after John Edwards' 99% - 1% win over Cheney, if you want to look at these polls.”
Fox News called it a Bush win with correspondents saying this, “I think Bush knocked Kerry out tonight. He just slaughtered him. I was keeping track of the twenty questions. I don't have Kerry winning any question outright. I think maybe six or seven were tied. And I have Bush winning outright a majority of the questions." – Bill Kristol
“It was clearly President Bush's best debate. He seemed to marshal all the arguments that he wanted on all these domestic issues - many of which are traditional Democratic issues, including health care." – Fred Barnes

Some of my observations of the debate:
Catholic Kerry Watch (see also their post about Kerry’s “respect for life”) says that Kerry claims this about his catholic faith: A life-long Catholic, John Kerry attends Mass regularly. He is a former altar boy who describes himself as a "believing and practicing Catholic." And yet during the debate, leave it to the flip master to change his position when he thinks it best suits him saying, “"I am a Catholic. And I grew up learning how to respect those views. But I disagree with them, as do many." Congratulations Kerry! You just lost the Catholic vote.

This was a real KO blow, and it was at the beginning when everyone was watching intently. “Senator, no one's playing with your votes. You voted to increase taxes 98 times. When they voted — when they proposed reducing taxes, you voted against it 126 times. He voted to violate the budget cap 277 times. You know, there's a main stream in American politics and you sit right on the far left bank. As a matter of fact, your record is such that Ted Kennedy, your colleague, is the conservative senator from Massachusetts.”
Bush again semi hit on the subject of 9/11. He stated that the attacks cost the American economy 1 million jobs. What he should have done along with that was state how as Steve Gill stated here at Tech, that 9/11 cost the American economy $1 TRILLION in a matter of a few hours. That would be an incredible turn around on Kerry’s statement of Bush jacking the budget up.
Also Kerry made a good stand about his Medicare plan, hiding the fact that it would be similar if not identical to Canada’s health care which by the way is pretty much S.O.L. Bush made a come back to end all come backs here. “In all due respect, I'm not so sure it's credible to quote leading news organizations about — oh, never mind. Anyway, let me quote the Lewin report. The Lewin report is a group of folks who are not politically affiliated. They analyzed the senator's plan. It cost $1.2 trillion. The Lewin report accurately noted that there are going to be 20 million people, over 20 million people added to government-controlled health care. It would be the largest increase in government health care ever. If you raise the Medicaid to 300 percent, it provides an incentive for small businesses not to provide private insurance to their employees. Why should they insure somebody when the government's going to insure it for them? It's estimated that 8 million people will go from private insurance to government insurance. We have a fundamental difference of opinion. I think government- run health will lead to poor-quality health, will lead to rationing, will lead to less choice. Once a health-care program ends up in a line item in the federal government budget, it leads to more controls. And just look at other countries that have tried to have federally controlled health care. They have poor-quality health care. Our health-care system is the envy of the world because we believe in making sure that the decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by officials in the nation's capital.”
And on Tax Cuts, Bush finally threw out the figure I’ve been waiting on for all 3 presidential debates, “He talks about middle-class tax cuts. That's exactly where the tax cuts went. Most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans. And now the tax code is more fair. Twenty percent of the upper-income people pay about 80 percent of the taxes in America today because of how we structured the tax cuts.” The decrease in the wealthy’s taxes that Kerry makes seem the root of all evil dropped the taxes from roughly 40% to 36%. That is a 4% decrease for the wealthy (basically 10% off the total of their taxes) and it amounted to $89 Billion. That means that before the bush cuts, the top 1% paid $890 Billion per year in taxes. But they should pay more shouldn’t they John…

Fact Checks: Fox News, George W. Bush.com
Transcript: Courtesy of Fox News

Also: Lynn Cheney Upset At Kerry's Remarks