Many people who know me will say that Romney winning my vote isn’t earth shattering news.  They will say that I am closed minded, a racist and that I never would have voted Obama.  Part of that is true – I would never vote for Obama because I’m against big government and some of the major staples of his platform.  What you didn’t know is that Romney had ALSO lost my vote along his campaign.  In fact – I was planning on voting green party… until the debate last night.

The issue I had with Romney is that he catered too far to the right in his primary.  I hate that about politics – he never would have won the primary if he didn’t do that, and in theory, he’s never going to win the election if he swings middle of the road because the media will call him on his flip flopping.  Apparently, for the debate last night, Romney showed his true colors – a middle of the road conservative who can get things done.

One of the things that probably went largely unnoticed during the debate was the amount of times that Romney mentioned he had worked with both parties during his governorship - and that is true.  There is no one who can look at his record and say that Romney didn’t bring both parties to the table to come up with progressive solutions to the problems the state was facing… and I think that is Romney’s true strength.

Last night in the debate he admitted that Obama had many good ideas – and it’s true – he does.  In fact, most of the great ideas of ObamaCare (which apparently Obama now likes the name) come directly from Romney’s version.  The fact of the matter is, sometimes the guy with great ideas isn’t really the guy who should be implementing them.  How many times have you seen it in real life – someone who has great ideas at your company but absolutely no idea how to put together a team to implement them?  That’s Obama to me – great ideas and a fail on the follow through.  He can’t reach across party lines – he can’t make the Republicans come to the table and be reasonable.

The quote that everyone should be paying attention to, instead of the 5 zingers that are being shown on every news site is:

ROMNEY: We — as president, I will sit on day one — actually, the day after I get elected — I’ll sit down with leaders — the Democratic leaders, as well as Republican leaders, and continue — as we did in my state — we met every Monday for a couple hours, talked about the issues and the challenges in the — in the — in our state in that case. We have to work on a collaborative basis, not because we’re going to compromise our principle, but because there’s common ground.

And the challenges America faces right now — look, the reason I’m in this race is there are people that are really hurting today in this country. And we face — this deficit could crush the future generations. What’s happening in the Middle East, there are developments around the world that are of real concern.

LEHRER: All right.

ROMNEY: And Republicans and Democrats both love America. But we need to have leadership — leadership in Washington that will actually bring people together and get the job done and could not care less if — if it’s a Republican or a Democrat. I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again.

He has been proven to be able to do that.  And I believe Mitt Romney can do it again.

What were your thoughts on the debate?