Dan McCarthy at The American Conservative writes:

…Romney, meanwhile, minimized the policy differences between himself and Obama: he won’t cut taxes on the rich; he says, “you can’t have a free market without regulation”; and he insists that his repeal-and-replace alternative to Obamacare won’t keep Americans with pre-existing conditions from getting health insurance. Romney’s pitch to Ohio was more coal, part of a broader pitch for “energy independence” (an idea that doesn’t hold up any better than “green energy”), while Obama channeled Pat Buchanan in the first half hour by calling for “economic patriotism” and damning tax breaks for sending jobs abroad.

I read reactions on Twitter before I saw the debate itself. And I noticed a disconnect: while Romney certainly gained much more from the debate than Obama did, the Twitter chatter led me to think Obama must have really imploded. But he didn’t, he was just boring. Romney did himself a world of good in the first half hour by stressing jobs and the middle class, and his greater vim and assertiveness — as well as his facility with numbers and policy — won the fight over the media’s perceptions by a knockout. Obama displayed the same laid-back attitude and lack of urgency that characterized his convention speech, a baffling approach for an endangered incumbent. He kept his eyes on Ohio, though, underscoring the auto bailout toward the end of his remarks. It’s clear he’s decided against a national strategy: for him its all about the Buckeye State. Romney, who until now had focused nigh exclusively on appealing to Republicans, has suddenly switched tracks, and the results speak for themselves.

Read “The Mix-and-Match Candidates.”