Mitt kills (with add-ons from John and Paul)

Governor Romney spoke tonight at the annual Alfred E. Smith Dinner, followed by President Obama. I thought Obama was good, but Mitt was great. He had excellent material and the audience was incredibly receptive. He is feeling it (and Obama is feeling the heat).

As the Right Scoop has it, Romney “delivered line after line, mostly about the president. In fact he landed some pretty hard blows on the president, namely one where in using the Sesame Street reference he said that President Obama’s remarks ‘are brought to you by the letter O and the number 16 Trillion.’ Ouch! And there’s a lot more where that came from.”

JOHN adds: What a great performance. It must have pained Obama, but he joined in the standing ovation for Mitt. We can only hope that Romney is our next president and that, as Mitt said tonight, we are in the last months of Obama’s disastrous administration–“so little time, so much to redistribute.”

PAUL adds: Here are a few of Romney’s jokes:

A campaign can require a lot of wardrobe changes — blue jeans in the morning, perhaps, suits for a lunch fundraiser, sport coat for dinner — but it’s nice to finally relax and wear what Ann and I wear around the house.

Romney, of course, was wearing formal attire.

[New York governor Andrew Couomo is] a very impressive fellow, but he may be getting a little ahead of himself. I mean, let me get this straight: The man has put in one term as a governor, he has a father who happened to be a governor and he thinks that’s enough to run for president?”

Romney, of course is a one-term governor and the son of a governor.

But most of Romney’s humor was pointed, rather than self-effacing:

I wish Joe Biden were here tonight. He’ll laugh at anything.

And

President Obama and I are very lucky to have one person who’s always in our corner, someone who we can lean on and someone who is a comforting presence without whom we wouldn’t be able to go another day. I have my beautiful wife, Ann; he has Bill Clinton.

Romney also took well-deserved shots at the MSM, including this one:

I have already seen early reports from tonight’s dinner. Headline: ‘Obama Embraced by Catholics, Romney Dines with Rich People.’

Obama was more into self-effacement, which in a way is to his credit. But he rubbed his nose in his performance during the first debate more times than I would have done, even in this context. I don’t think he can stop kicking himself over that outing.

Obama was good, as Scott says. But his timing wasn’t nearly as sure as Romney’s, and he didn’t seem to relish the occasion to the same degree.

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