Wow!  I’m giddy.  I was surprised and thrilled by Gov. Romney’s performance in last night’s debate (Oct. 3).  I watched the debate with 7 other Conservatives, time-delayed by a Tivo box so that we could halt the action and toss in our own comments.

Several of us were apprehensive at the outset, but by the end of the debate we had worked ourselves into a frenzy of excitement, shouting “Yes! Yes! Yes!” as he pounded home those key points that free-market, limited-government, fiscal-responsibility Conservatives have been trumpeting for years.

Now I have to confess.  I had no idea that Gov. Romney had this in him.  Sure, he’d had some brief flashes on the campaign trail, and his style turned for the better after naming Paul Ryan as his VP.  But like many Conservatives, I feared the Governor was just the next-in-line Establishment Republican candidate — doomed to be another gracious loser.

I’m still absorbing what I saw & heard, and I’ll have to go through the whole debate again, but I do remember Romney’s first home run of the evening (for me) when he pointed out the immorality of the debt we are piling on the backs of our children.  As I’ve written in the past (here, here, and here for example), we are effectively selling them into a modern-day version of debt bondage.  At last we have a candidate who leads with that point against all those “compassionate” Democrats, the people who supposedly “care”.

As for Obama’s own performance, a repeated interjection among my friends was “He’s flailing, he’s flailing!”.  Time and again he reached back for his standard campaign talking points, sometimes well off-topic, and he was visibly shell-shocked when Romney put them down emphatically, with compelling refutation points, nicely bulleted and driven home like nails in a coffin (puns intended).

If you can watch the debate again, keep an eye on Obama’s upper jaw near his left ear as he stares down at his podium.  One of our friends spotted it first.  You’ll see a light spot come and go as he visibly clenches and unclenches his teeth. This man is used to adulation and acquiescence, not reasoned confrontation.  Bound up in his Leftist ideology and surrounded 24/7 by sycophants and a fawning, collaborative media, he was totally unprepared to defend his indefensible record. He spent much of the evening staring down at that podium as if being scolded by his school master.

Obama will be better prepared at the next debate, and Romney will have to guard against over-confidence.  But I’m no longer worried.  Obama’s hand is incredibly weak — almost everywhere, he’s holding a pair of deuces against Romney’s full house.  And Romney’s better at the game — much better.

Of course, the election ain’t over ’til it’s over, and the Obama machine, the Great American Left, and the Democrat Media Complex won’t go gently into the night.  But we have ourselves a candidate in Mitt Romney, and I have a new-found confidence that he and his staff might just run this campaign right across the finish line going away, and leading by several lengths.

Then, the long hard path to recovery begins.

[This article cross-posted from WesternFreePress.com]