A defective man leading with his chin

I'll say this for Mitt Romney: after the first debate in which, like Clint Eastwood, he debated an empty chair, Mitt has been going out of his way to get clipped. In the second debate he exhibited his first case of Romnesia when he claimed that Obama hadn't mentioned terrorism in remarks made after the assassination of our ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi. Then, to end that debate, he stuck out his chin again by saying he'd be president of 100% of Americans, thus enabling Obama to clip him with the "47%" rap as the last word.

Last night was even worse for the Mittster. He delivered up this utterly stupid comparison of our current Navy with that of 1916:

MR. ROMNEY: Our Navy is older — excuse me — our Navy is smaller now than any time since 1917.

Did he think that this line, which he has been using for weeks, would catch Obama unaware? What could he have been thinking? He got clipped again very neatly by a line that I'm sure the President must have wished many times in his dreams he could have been set up for so neatly:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets — (laughter) — because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.

One other moment also comes to mind. Romney chided the president:

MR. ROMNEY: Mr. President, the reason I call it an apology tour is because you went to the Middle East and you flew to — to Egypt and to Saudi Arabia and to — to Turkey and Iraq. And — and by way, you skipped Israel, our closest friend in the region, but you went to the other nations. And by the way, they noticed that you skipped Israel.
 

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  ... when I went to Israel as a candidate, I didn’t take donors, I didn’t attend fundraisers, I went to Yad Vashem, the — the Holocaust museum there, to remind myself the — the nature of evil and why our bond with Israel will be unbreakable. 

And then I went down to the border towns of Sderot, which had experienced missiles raining down from Hamas. And I saw families there who showed me where missiles had come down near their children’s bedrooms, and I was reminded of — of what that would mean if those were my kids, which is why, as president, we funded an Iron Dome program to stop those missiles. 

(All quotes from the offical transcript of the debate.)

This would have been even better if Obama could have reminded the viewers that the "donors" Romney took to Israel consisted mainly of the infamous Sheldon Adelson,  the casino magnate who has given millions to the Republicans. A Romney victory is about all that stands between Adelson  and prison -- for using his casinos in a money-laundering operation. I suspect that Romney was too busy baptizing dead Jews to take in the significance of visiting Yad Vashem. "And by the way", I think some of the residents of Florida may also know something about this. We'll see.

Mitt Romney once again shows that he is a defective human being.