It easy to make a claim. Harder to back it up with facts.
By Brad Friedman on 10/6/2004, 12:39pm PT  

It occurs to me that on the day after Election Day, the Bush/Cheney sycophants may well acknowledge a Kerry/Edwards landslide but then try to tell us "Bush/Cheney, however, actually won the election on substance."

Now I realize each partisan side is more likely to believe their candidate won whichever debate on the substance since they likely agree with what their candidate said. But in the two debates so far where Republicans have been unable to claim a clear victory with a straight face (obviously, even less so in the first Presidential Debate), they keep falling back on this "but he won on substance" canard.

Given that Bush, in the first debate, seemed almost devoid of actual "substance", even proving to have a difficult time explaining many of his Administration's own policies, and Cheney's demonstrable twisting of facts and logic in his debate, how can Republicans even suggest that either Bush or Cheney won either of those debates on "substance"?

In order to do so, they are required to twist, turn, remove context, and otherwise prevaricate on just about every point which was made in both debates. So on which points, in either of the first two debates, did Bush/Cheney manage to make a "substantive" point that Kerry/Edwards was unable to effectively rebut? I am unable to think of any off-hand, but I look forward to being proven wrong. Please try and do so using "substance" in your comments if you have any...not style, twisted logic or out-of-context and/or inaccurate quotes. Please stick to what was actually said. Here's the transcripts from Debate #1 and the V.P. Debate for reference.

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