He didn't want to appear as though he was beating a horse. Fox News and Drudge will keep the story alive by themselves and since he is ahead in the polls, and doing well in all the battleground states, why take a debate road that backfired last time when Candy backed up the President?

Any independents following the story will see how it unfolds and read about the emails. Romney stayed focused on the economy, which is what everyone cares the most about.

Romney is a prudent guy. He's a Mormon. As I mentioned before, I know a lot of Mormons now. They go in to something prepared. If they are not prepared, they don't go in. The debates served him well and now he just has to keep those six points of the electorate that wobble around. The damage from the e-mails will intensify by itself over the next weeks and will probably sway at least 3 percent of those on the fence.

Obama has his 47%. The e-mails wont change 45% of those people's votes. Perhaps a maximum of one or two percent might actually be put off enough by the outright lies, to just abstain from voting. However, most won't care if he lied or even care about Libya at all. That they even know where Libya is, is already statistically unlikely for most of the electorate.

For the past 2 weeks the poll numbers bounce around and Romney has different quantities of that 8 percent of voters in play. Historically though, that 3-7 percent he has been holding is enough to win it, especially at this late date.

So my take is that Romney just is not taking any chances whatsoever. If he can win without the risk, why not do that? Women voters also didn't like to see him aggressive. So he hung that burden of "mean guy" on Obama for the 3rd debate and score some more women voters.

I now just hope he really is good at bipartisanship and does declare China a currency manipulator on the first day and kills Obamacare ASAP.

I have high hopes he will be a better steward of the US economy and protecting our economy than Bush was. Bush was influenced by bad financial advisors, who steered him wrong.