Tonight's Presidential Candidate Debate...

WASHINGTON -- Former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Sunday lit into Mitt Romney's recent debate performance, calling the Republican presidential nominee's claims "fundamentally dishonest" and "absolutely crazy."

"The underpinnings and foundations of that performance were fundamentally dishonest," Gibbs said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "He walked away from the central tenet of his economic theory by saying he had no idea what the president was talking about. Ten minutes after the debate, even his own staff is walking back his answers on health care and preexisting conditions."

During the debate on Wednesday, Romney insisted that there is no tax break for corporations sending jobs offshore. In fact, there are several tax perks associated with offshoring. Moving costs can be explicitly deducted from a company's tax bill, and corporations do not have to pay tax on revenues earned overseas in tax havens until they bring the money back to the United States -- giving businesses an incentive to move work abroad and keep money offshore.

Romney's own campaign adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, also quickly walked back Romney's debate claim that the former Massachusetts governor's health care proposal will guarantee affordable insurance for people with pre-existing conditions.

President Barack Obama, in a performance that was widely panned, failed to correct Romney on the distortions he presented during the debate. The Obama campaign has been doing damage control in the days since, belatedly challenging Romney's assertions and highlighting lies he told.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), a top Obama surrogate, blasted Romney's tax and budget proposal during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday."

"We saw Big Bird meet the big lie," O'Malley said, noting that Romney has voiced his support for expensive tax rate deductions, while refusing to specify loopholes and other tax breaks that he would end to pay for the new perks. "There are costs to those tax cuts … Governor Romney has not said what his secret plan is for paying for these $5 trillion in tax cuts. Just like he will not talk about where his tax returns have been or how much money he has offshore."

A non-partisan analysis from the Tax Policy Center found that there is no way to pay for the tax rate reductions Romney has proposed without raising taxes on the middle class. Those rate reductions would cost $5 trillion, according to the analysis, and Obama characterized Romney's plan as a $5 trillion tax cut during the debate. That statement that has drawn fire from conservatives who note that Romney has also proposed closing loopholes and ending deductions in the tax code, and the Romney campaign is currently running a television ad accusing Obama of misrepresenting Romney's plan by using the $5 trillion figure.

Romney adviser Ed Gillespie, appearing on "This Week," repeated Romney's debate claim that six other studies back up his contention that he can pay for the tax cuts without eliminating benefits for the middle class. As HuffPost reported in mid-September, however, three of the so-called studies are blog posts or opinion columns, and others say that Romney would have to eliminate perks for those making $100,000 a year in order to pay for his plan. Romney, meanwhile, supports extending the Bush-era tax cuts for those who make over $250,000 a year, which means he would have to raise taxes on people making between $100,000 and $250,000 while explicitly maintaining tax breaks for people making more than $250,000.

Gibbs echoed the idea that the numbers don't work out.

You cannot lower tax rates as much as Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan propose to do and keep all the existing tax expenditures for middle class Americans and still end up with the same total amount of tax revenue.

As the Tax Policy Center demonstrated, cutting individual income tax rates by 20 percent from today’s levels would reduce tax burdens by $251 billion per year (in 2015) among households with income above $200,000.

If you leave preferential tax rates for savings and investing (e.g., long-term capital gains and dividends) untouched, as Mr. Romney has said he would do, that leaves only $165 billion of available tax expenditures that can be eliminated from this same group of high-income earners once their marginal tax rates fall.

That means there’s an $86 billion shortfall — the difference between $251 billion in tax cuts and $165 billion in potential tax increases on this high-income group — that needs to be accounted for somewhere.

By process of elimination that somewhere must be the rest of the population, the 95 percent of households earning less than about $200,000 annually.

The taxes for this group, which Mr. Romney has called “middle income,” would have to go up. The only ways to get the taxes collected from this group to go up would be to raise their rates (which Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan have already ruled out) and/or eliminate the major tax preferences they enjoy.

It’s arithmetically possible to achieve some subset of the main principles that the Romney-Ryan tax plan aims for: cutting current marginal income tax rates by 20 percent; preserving/enhancing incentives for saving and investment; eliminating the alternative minimum tax; eliminating the estate tax; maintaining revenue neutrality; and not raising the tax burden on the middle class.

But not all of those principles can coexist so long as basic arithmetic survives.

Well, that clinches if Robert Gibbs and Martin O'Malley say Romney lied, he must have.

Both of those guys have never failed to expose Obama's lies when they heard them, so we know we can trust them.

And Ed Gillespie, he's just a partisan hack (unlike Gibbs The Uh Man, and Oily O'Malley), of course he'll just repeat Mitt's lies.

"I know you are but what am I?"

That childish retort may be unique to American children,and so you may not recognize it's similarity to your response, but trust me, it's spot on.

but even if Mitt did lie as much as you think, it was only fair considering how often Obama does,

Washington (CNN) – A new national poll suggests Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney got a bounce out of last week's first presidential debate.

According to Gallup's latest seven-day tracking poll, President Barack Obama has a slight 49%-46% edge over Romney among registered voters nationwide, which is within the survey's sampling error. But Gallup breaks down their poll into pre- and post- debate figures.

Mitt Romney campaign surrogate Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) admitted that the GOP presidential candidates was changing his positions and moving towards the middle in order to win over voters, during an appearance on CNN’s Starting Point on Friday morning. Gingrey’s comments, reminiscent of Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom’s claim that Romney would “Etch-A-Sketch” his positions after the GOP primary, came in response to the candidate’s recent claim that his 47% remarks were “completely wrong.”

“[T]he Republican, the conservative candidate in the primary, is always going to lean right and come back to the center for the general, the opposite for the Democrat,” Gingrey explained. “That’s all you are seeing here. It is very typical. We strong conservatives understand that. There are a lot of undecideds in this country…we want those votes too. So, this is campaign strategy.”

ll: Romney and Obama tied after first debate

Mitt Romney campaign surrogate Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) admitted that the GOP presidential candidates was changing his positions and moving towards the middle in order to win over voters, during an appearance on CNN’s Starting Point on Friday morning. Gingrey’s comments, reminiscent of Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom’s claim that Romney would “Etch-A-Sketch” his positions after the GOP primary, came in response to the candidate’s recent claim that his 47% remarks were “completely wrong.”

“[T]he Republican, the conservative candidate in the primary, is always going to lean right and come back to the center for the general, the opposite for the Democrat,” Gingrey explained. “That’s all you are seeing here. It is very typical. We strong conservatives understand that. There are a lot of undecideds in this country…we want those votes too. So, this is campaign strategy.”

Whenever a conservative performs well, liberals credit it to their moving left.

Obama and Romney are now tied in both the Ras and Gallup tracking polls - that's down from Obama being up for the last few days in Gallup by 3, and Romney being ahead in Ras by 2, but this is all margin-of-error stuff so that's not that weird.

LOS ANGELES – Now even President Obama is making fun of his Denver debate performance.

Speaking to a concert crowd at the Nokia Theater here, Obama said the musical acts that performed for his campaign – the likes of Katy Perry, Earth, Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder, among others – “just perform flawlessly, night after night.”

A beat passed. Then the president made himself the punch line.

“I can’t always say the same,” he said.

What I'd love to see is a break from the scripted, practiced stuff next time, saying something like,

Last debate I was not at my best. To be really frank, I was thrown by the outright lies you were telling, Governor Romney [eye contact and a slightly forward posture here]. I will admit -- I didn't expect that. I expected to debate the issues, and I welcome that debate. I did not expect my opponent to completely reverse his positions and make utterly untrue statements time and time again. [responding to some sort of demurral from Romney], I'm not the only one who thinks that, Governor Romney. [Picks up a stack of index cards, reads a quote from each one, throwing it down with some disgust afterwards.] Factcheck.org said: (quote) Politifact said: (quote). [etc. Have four or five really strongly-worded ones.]

[Looks back at Romney] Now, nothing can surprise me. Let's go.