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On Tuesday night, as I watched Ann Romney, Rick Santorum and Gov. Chris Christie perform their 2012 Republican convention speeches the thought crossed my mind that I was watching a series of episodes of A&E's Lifetime series. That impression didn't leave me on Wednesday or Thursday night either. I was struck by the fact that each orator's soliloquy was more about their family history and themselves instead of spreading a unifying message and a serious plug for Mitt Romney to reach undecided voters in our country.
How many times has little Ricky performed his coal miner grandpa in front of the cameras? Ann Romney tried to humanize her husband by telling their 'love story', but every time the camera cut to Mittens, he sat there unmoving and unresponsive. Chris Christie talked at length about his family, especially his Sicilian mother who took no guff from anyone. I guess he felt the need to explain his bullying style of confronting his constituents. He's usually a great speaker, but appeared rather flat for much of the speech and he didn't mention Romney's name until 1800 words had passed through his lips.
While Ann preached love for everyone, he wondered why Americans wanted people to love them so much. His tag line was respect. The keynote speaker undercuts the candidate's wife that it immediately followed. Who vetted these speeches? (We know it got worse the final night with Clint Eastwood)
I thought Ann was OK, but she purposefully mentioned single dads in a positive light, but not single word on the struggles of single moms. Charles Krauthammer loved Ann, but described Christie's speech as 'marinated'
Krauthammer: The speech by Christie was an interesting one. It was not raw meat it was kind of marinated. It's a tough guy giving a subtle in the speech.
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...a little bit curious that Romney appears at the end, but I think he did the job as the keynote speaker for the party.
Are the Romney people really vetting every word that is spoken? If so, then they should be fired. All they needed to do was give the speakers a template to follow. Something like, after opening statement {insert praise for Mitt Romney}, after 500 words {insert allusion to a Mitt Romney policy} and so on...
On Wednesday, all eyes were focused on the newly selected VP candidate Paul Ryan, but Condi Rice gave the strongest speech by far. She was the ultimate crowd warmer and the crowd would have fawned on anything Ryan said, no matter how far from the truth the content was. As usual for this Republican convention, facts were a rarity and the histories of all the participants were re-written as they went along. Since the Romney camp refuses to omit lies in their campaigning and vilifies the fact checkers, it's become the new GOP standard. Whitewash your congressional record and forget to mention the prominent role you had selling America against an immoral war. Paul Ryan took it to another level of dishonesty though. There are some really good articles (here, here and here) which have broken down the all his lies.
Hey, the VP is supposed to support the candidate and be their attack dog, but when you have a record ,you should at least put some context into the words you speak. Ryan's speechwriter took Romney's advice and ignored all facts in putting together his attack dog speech. His three most odious lies for me (please fill in your own choices in the comments below) were how he railed the president over for dissing Simpson-Bowles, our credit rating disaster and his descriptions of the dismal life of a college graduate.
College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life. Everyone who feels stuck in the Obama economy is right to focus on the here and now. And I hope you understand this too, if you're feeling left out or passed by: You have not failed, your leaders have failed you.
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Listen to the way we're spoken to already, as if everyone is stuck in some class or station in life, victims of circumstances beyond our control, with government there to help us cope with our fate. It's the exact opposite of everything I learned growing up in Wisconsin, or at college in Ohio. When I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life. I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself. That's what we do in this country. That's the American Dream. That's freedom, and I'll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.
Republican policies have put our youth in serious jeopardy of either being criminals or an abuser of substances. They've cut millions and millions of dollars out of our public education system so we can waste more money and the lives of our young on failed DOD projects and unjust wars.
John Richardson outs it this way.
More to the point, during the whole time Paul Ryan was on his own path, his own journey, the American journey where he could think for himself, decide for himself, and define happiness for himself, every rough road was made smooth by his reliance on Social Security survivor's benefits that came to his family upon the death of his father.
At least Chris Christie had the self-awareness to mention the G.I. Bill on Tuesday night, when he was talking about his father. The assistance that young Paul Ryan got from "the central planners" as he rose from Janesville, through Miami of Ohio, and to a career in which he never has had a job that wasn't inside, or very close to, the national government was not even acknowledged. He knows, in his Randian soul, that he once was a moocher, that in many ways he remains a moocher, and perhaps it galls him just a bit.
Another Republican who benefited from a government social program. The ones that he's now trying to destroy.
New York Magazing had this on Ryan and the deficit:
When I wrote my Paul Ryan profile last spring, I argued that nobody, with the possible exception of Grover Norquist, had done more to destroy bipartisan deficit reduction agreements than Paul Ryan. Ryan was a member of the Bowles-Simpson commission and voted against it. The following summer, a large bipartisan coalition of Senators was prepared to unveil a deficit plan when Ryan, as Republican blogger Jennifer Rubin reported at the time, "dropped what one Republican Senate adviser called a 'bomb' on the Gang of Six."
There was a third moment when Democrats and Republicans might have joined together to agree on a long-term fiscal readjustment. President Obama and John Boehner had struck a deal, one that was far more favorable to Republicans than either Bowles-Simpson or the Senate plan — a horrible deal, I would say. Guess who stuck in the knife?
The New York Times reports today:
Mr. Ryan’s enormous influence was apparent last summer when Representative Eric Cantor, the second most powerful House Republican, told Mr. Obama during negotiations over an attempted bipartisan “grand bargain” that Mr. Ryan disliked its policy and was concerned that a deal would pave the way for Mr. Obama’s easy re-election, according to a Democrat and a Republican who were briefed on the conversation.
A spokesman for Boehner says he has "no recollection" of this now. Huh.
Yeah, huh?
And this from TPM:
Ryan said the Obama presidency, “began with a perfect Triple-A credit rating for the United States; it ends with a downgraded America.”
Standard & Poors downgraded the country’s sovereign debt rating in 2011 because congressional Republicans, of which Ryan is a key leader, threatened not to increase the country’s borrowing authority — risking a default on the debt — unless Democrats agreed to slash trillions of dollars from domestic social programs and investments. Ryan even briefly toyed with the idea that the country’s creditors would forgive default for “a day or two or three or four” as long as Democrats ultimately agreed to GOP demands.
Forget about how many pinocchios Ryan will receive from the Washington Post, the gasbags on Andrea Mitchell were saying that he shouldn't have to defend the truth of the speech because he's not talking about his policies, but his boss's. WTF? So we just throw any shred of truth out the window because he shouldn't have to live up to any truthful standard?
Idiots.
