Well balanced: family, values, America, prosperity, defense, and openmindedness. Best lines were about celebrating success, oceans vs. families, and the apology tour reference. I also loved the subtle ways of acknowledging religion while downplaying differences ( church vs. sports teams, going to hell for bankrupting pension funds).
I look forward to the debates. What is interesting is all the levels at which the battle takes place. Part of me thanks that Romney would be best served to come as close to Obama on the right as possible, I order to win over moderate, young, and/or highly educated people. On the other hand, that may be a wasted effort as they tend to vote on the basis of fashion, as you've alluded to before.
27 year old, first-generation American here. Romney's speech pulled all the right heart strings for me. He changed my view of him, from used car salesman, to President. He and Condi Rice delivered the two best speeches. I would love to have a President that makes me feel proud of my country.
1) He does come across as a little bit plastic, but not too much - not as bad as John Kerry; certainly not nearly as pompous.
2) John Kerry was running against George W. Bush and a strong economy. The less abrasive Mitt is running against Obama and a bad economy.
3) Obama is a pompous asshat, too.
4) He got in a few good zingers. It was funny enough.
5) He really opened up about his religion. Totally unexpected, but now the MSM can never claim that he's hiding behind it.
6) Note that he said 'North America would achieve energy independence by 2020 - not the USA. Most of our oil imports already come from Canada and Mexico, anyway.
7) He talked about a guy taking two $9/hour jobs to make ends meet. Has Mitt Romney ever in adulthood held a $9/hour job? This was a mistake, but a minor one.
Overall a good speech. There is nothing Barack Obama can do to win this election. Mitt has to eff it up, and it doesn't look like that's gunna happen.
Consistent with the Eastwood line, Romney is presenting himself as the turnaround CEO, welcoming the contrast with the soaring rhetoric of the Saviour/Dreamer who is running the enterprise into the ground financially. There have to be plenty of independents, Libertarians, and even Republicans who voted for O that feel disappointed, but may be wavering because of the racial thing. This is as good a strategy as any to reach them: "it's not personal, it's just business."
I the less we see of Mitt the better he'll do. He's not a good public speaker. Some people can be complete fakes but come off as genuine, some are the opposite.
Romney's coda was towering: where Ryan's delivery of his finale got boyishly shrill, Romney thundered with real passion, rising measuredly, with sincerity and assurance.
The speech overall, while not full of quotable quotes, was approachably demotic without being stupid. In his presence and intonation, Romney fulfills something like my idea of a 19th Century statesman on the stump.
He's not Cicero in the literary crafting, but his was by no means a strained or nervous delivery. He's handily better at the podium than a McCain or Dukakis. His implicit offer is to be the next Father of the Country, a blend of Reagan and Bush 41. I think the speech served his benign paternal appeal well: Bush 41 with more urgency, and some gravel in his throat. Ryan, the wonkish Theo to his corporate Cliff, reinforces this dynamic.
Eastwood's exhilarating routine, traipsing mischevously around the edges of assumed senility, stretching out a beat long enough to make you think he just might, just might have forgot his line, and then throwing his punch-- here too, there's much amends for all that "single moms" talk. Romney made a fine emotional pitch for why the country needs to return to traditional leadership, leaving the wonkery, which this ticket is preeminently capable of (and swing voters assuredly uninterested in) for later.
I thought it was a good speech and the guy has good personal qualities -- he has helped people he knew in trouble again and again. The President wields enormous power, almost unbound, that's a good thing to think about, what kind of man will be President? One fueled by resentment and pettiness (Obama?) or the desire to help people he knows?
Romney basically presented himself as the turn-around guy who will bring JOBS JOBS JOBS when Obama heals the planet, halts the seas, and apologizes for America. The prominent featuring of all those women were no accident, he's trying to get swing female voters who love the Media-worshiped Obama but are having a hard time at the gas pump and grocery store.
Loved the line to Putin: less flexibility, more backbone.
What is striking is how many lines Romney and others used that Obama himself created. Principally of course "You didn't build that." Obama himself when not monitored 24/7 and even at times on teleprompter creates lines that make all but his truest of believers cringe or get angry. Kotkin's latest about the clerisy rings true, Obama is from the "minder" generation of lawyers, NGOs, media people, college professors, who love a good moral lecture to their lessors, on how to live every aspect of their life.
Romney was like all those TV turn-around guys, the ones from "Bar Rescue" and "Hotel Impossible" and "Restaurant Impossible" and "Kitchen Nightmares" that are blunt, plainspoken, and offer help from looming financial disaster.
Obama has made most White middle class and working class people considerably poorer. With nothing planned to fix things. Even SWPL women have to eat, and pay bills. The argument is compelling.
--Eastwood's schtick may well become the next "Downfall" Hitler's meltdown routine in terms of its touchstone appeal.
The setup is nothing new: an actor addressing a chair as an invisible person? Typical James Lipton-y "ACTING!" stuff.
But it's Clint, the least protean of actors, taking to the stage at the Republican National Convention (so square a venue is inherently "meta"), to portray the invisible incumbent President of the United States doing nothing but telling him to tell another, or just telling himself, to go f**k himself. To which Clint glibly tells him he's crazy, etc.
Aged Clint, undoubtedly getting frail-- and I'll admit, it made me anxious, seeing him so wizened and stuttery--but always managing to pull out his next punchline just in the nick of time, and finally leaving the playacting behind to tell the people "We own this country" and the politicians are just employees-- pulled off a theatrical coup. What can SNL do with this? So deliciously nasty a lampoon, yet so silvery and endearing: it's inimitable. It's like a fragment of an alternate history, where Clint made the Reagan pivot and served two terms. He left a mantle of cool hovering there in Tampa for Romney to wrap up in. And what is more timely than an appeal to abandon "mental masochism"?
Didn't watch it. Don't care. The conventions are nothing but Reality TV - scripted spontaneity, meticulously designed to manipulate people and sell them something.
I heard a little of Rubio's speech - these things could be computer generated: wah wah wah, immigrant parents, wah wah wah, shining city on a hill, wah wah wah, American exceptionalism. I've been hearing the same platitudes for thirty years.
They sure opened their arms wide to hispanics and immigrants, probably to the chagrin of the republican base. The Tea Party is being taken for granted.
Random thoughts...they've really overdone the women's vote thing. At some point it just sounds like what it is: Romney/Ryan/et al as ventriloquists, channelling the obsessions of the RNC's political consultants.
I might have missed it (I was switching back and forth between college football), but I didn't hear one word about the 2nd amendment or gun rights. This might be tied into the emphasis on women, not wanting to scare soccer moms with scary talk about guns, etc., etc., but it's a big mistake. He should have fired up this important part of his base by reminding gun owners that an Obama without another election to check him might well start issuing executive orders about guns just like he did with illegals (among other things). And that Heller decision was 5-4 (and Scalia's 76) after all....
He brought up Bain Capital, and I give him props for that. He should have hammered much harder on what Obama was doing in lieu of founding and building what is today a multi-billion dollar business - "organizing" something or other on Chicago's South Side...he should have hit that one hard. Still, props for bringing it up.
All in all, as these bland things tend to go, I think he did himself no harm. Not much good, perhaps, but no harm.
I liked the Clint Eastwood speech. Dry humor, made a little fun of Obama's pretentiousness. What everyone remembers of any convention speeches is manufactured in the days afterwards by the media. So perhaps in the future it will be remembered for Clint being a decrepit, stuttering fool. But he really wasn't. He looked cool.
I thought he did his best, yet. I've watched him for years now and I didn't know he had it in him. The kids running out was quite a sight.
A big downside to me is the whole grrlpower thing. The Dems seem to have absolutely scared the bejesus out of them. I swear to God I needed to watch some Prince and Billy Idol videos to restore equilibrium or something after what all I saw this week. What?! Are we all bull dykes now?
I took my kids to Tampa today so they could see what all was going on. Before we got there, and I had no idea what we'd see, I explained that it was important to see *with their own eyes* what was going on and then also see for themselves how it contrasted with what they had been hearing.
Something unreported: there was at least one, but there were several dozen people at any rate, Baptist churches (not Westboro) protesting against homosexuality and abortion. Along with that was a truck driving around with a graphic image of an aborted baby. This group was about the same size as the Occupy group at the camp during the week, but smaller than what came out at the park tonight. I have no idea how long they'd been there, how many days, etc. I only know of their existence because we saw them.
Well, the problem with the tea party is that got into too much taxing cutting and budget cuts and against obamacare which means a open borders person like Jeff Flake in Arizona can con them. Hopefully, Flake is better. Tea Party people are against illegal immigration but the leadership of the Tea party nation isn't always.
Mittens' speech was actually better than I expected, unfortunately that does not mean it was good. The guy needs to speak about his family a lot more, and other stuff a lot less. It is the only time he doesn't sound like a cyborg.
So he's going to make America energy dependent in 8 years by mining our natural resources, huh? Oh brother.
As mediocre as M.R's speech was the was BY FAR the best of the Repubs. PX did himself no favors he is stiff, humorless and needs more seasoning. Marco Rubio got his call up to the big leagues, and summarily drew a golden sombrero in his first game, and I don't even know where to start with Clint.
RNC committee leadership must be some of the dumbest people on the planet if they actually thought a stammering, old man not known for his sense of humor was going to create heat...but for some reason, they did.
Eastwood is going to get spun as a crazy old man by the media but that's as far as they can go, and it might have been a good set-up for the rest of the night as a distraction from the sort of fisking Ryan got.
Rubio looks smaller and smaller every time I see and hear him. Yes, he can give a speech without stumbling, but aside from "hispanic" and "Florida," we'd never hear his name.
Mitt came across better than I expected: more human, less wooden. The talk the whole night about family, parents, and children I took as probable subtle digs at Obama. My instinct is that some campaign strategists are looking to get Obama's psychological goat on those points and force him into gaffes.
"They sure opened their arms wide to hispanics and immigrants, probably to the chagrin of the republican base. The Tea Party is being taken for granted."
It's also not going to appeal to white independent voters. It's one of the few issues independents lean strongly conservative on, actually.
He was fine, more appealing than Bush or McCain certainly...comes off as a technocrat and business guy. I never voted for a Republican before but may do so this year. The fact that he was elected in Massachusetts demonstrates crossover appeal. I think hammering on him for running a business is not going to help Obama...everybody knows that businessmen fire people sometimes.
Thing is, how does he win? He needs VA, NC, OH and FL, just for starters. Those all went for Barry. The numbers aren't there for Mitt. Even if he takes Michigan and Wisconsin, those two states don't cancel out Florida. He isn't polling that strongly.
One thing...I think the GOP is taking an intelligent response to Obama's "you didn't build that" line. They are acknowledging that of course there are roads and schools that transport and educate workers, etc., but as Ryan pointed out, that doesn't explain the actual sweat and labor that small businesspeople pour into their businesses.
I say this as a highly lazy person who hasn't built anything, but is honest enough not to pretend that I didn't have the opportunity.
The numbers aren't there for Mitt. Even if he takes Michigan and Wisconsin, those two states don't cancel out Florida. He isn't polling that strongly.
Don't quit your day job - polling analysis is not your strong suit.
While I would not say that Romney is polling "strongly", Obama is polling badly. The incumbent is the known quantity, and it's a bad sign for him when he polls below 50%. Most battleground polls show Romney and Obama in a statistical tie at 47% apiece.
"The guy needs to speak about his family a lot more, and other stuff a lot less. It is the only time he doesn't sound like a cyborg."
Mindless meme regurgitation. What you see as "cyborg" is what people in the real world see as competence. Unfortunately the vast majority of Dem voters do not exist in the real world.
I could not be bothered to waste my time paying attention to Mitt's or Obummer's kabuki-b.s. Tonight I enjoyed watching my DVD of 'The Bridge On The River Kwai.' They don't make great movies anymore the same way they don't make great - or even decent - presidents anymore. So far as I can discern, our entire political class is disloyal to the remnant shreds of our Constitution - and is treacherous to and exploitative of our citizenry.
This woman has always seen Romney as a kind-hearted guy. He's not a guy who is good at stadium politics, as I call it, but a guy good with small groups.
I loved his line contrasting Obama as someone who proclaimed that with his election, the oceans would recede and the planet would heal to his wanting to help "you and your family."
Pomposity contrasted with modesty
A man who thinks he's a god contrasted with a man who knows he's only a man
A monarch versus a president
It was a great line, and in conjuction with the empty chair to which Eastwood spoke, a reminder of empty promises and the empty suit, it was magic.
There's one simple little tip that I am surprised no one has ever told Mitt.
Because he's not a "natural" and does appear physically stiff at times (even though he's a very handsome, striking man, tall and fit-looking), he should simply unbutton his suit jacket when on stage waving or when reaching into the crowd to shake hands.
The button left buttoned contricts him and makes him look more rigid.
Mitt wasn't striving for a huge ideas speech, as others all week had spoken of the fruits of less government intrusion into our lives, but I think he knew that most Americans are not only despairing but that they understand Obama's talent is in delivering words and not much else.
Not only would lofty words have not fit him, they would have been only a reminder of the emptiness of such "poetry."
I've been scouring the blogs looking at reactions to Clint.
From the get-go the progressives were outraged that Eastwood dared mock their beloved President, that he was "profane." HA. The idiots at MSNBC, the most profane of all, were the most outraged.
Then, they moved to faux-glee, saying surely the public would recognize Clint's strange and impolite behavior.
However, they seemed to realize what was happening out in the hinterlands....people loved Clint. Like Peggy Noonan suggested in last week's column, the one thing the Dems and Obama can't take is to be made fun of and she pointed out Barry's thin skin.
Clint's voice was weak, and yeah, he rambled, but boy oh boy, did he hit the target anyway.
"The prominent featuring of all those women were no accident"
The women featured in the last two days are women of accomplishment who aren't shrill as are those women the libs always put forth.
Loved Gov. Susana Martinez' line to hubby : "I'll be damn...we're Republicans!"
Got a chuckle out that because I had a similar epiphany over a decade ago only my line to myself was, "Damn. Why the hell am I a Democrat when I hate every damn useless program they force down out throats?"
Robotney or Oblairma? War on Iran or War on YT?* Strychnine or cyanide? You, the People, decide.
Obama is so like Tony Blair it's uncanny. The same narcissism, the same brazen mendacity, the same utter ineptitude, the same Lady MacBeth pushing him on. But the Blairites didn't riot when Blair was pushed out. Something, possibly HBD, tells me the Obamamites might not be so tolerant of such an unjust perversion of the democratic process.
*Well, it's War on YT whatever glass of poison you get, and probably War on Iran too.
This will be the last normal election. After this, race will become much more explicit. The vote will breakdown along racial lines and apparently the term "Anti-White" is getting mainstreamed. The fact that this country will be majority non-White in about a generation, will lead to more polarization.
I don't see it at all. Blair was not a stealth progressive, he was a passionate neocon. Even he was wrong in his support of Bush's war, I admired his outspoken eloquence in making a case for it, as well as in opposing anti-Americanism and anti-Bushism.
Is K&B Toys a representative example of Bain's modus operandi, or was it cherry-picking on Taibbi's part?
It seems like it ought to be pretty easy to refute Taibbi's thesis [if it's false]: Just get out a spreadsheet and calculate before-n-afters for total corporate debt of the Bain holdings and also before-n-afters for employee efficiency [widgets produced per employee total remuneration?].
Vietnamese which the Republicans do the best among the Asians are about 30 percent Roman Catholic
Vietnamese-Americans are among the most likely of asian-americans to be on welfare, to be involved in gangs etc. By contrast the asian-americans most likely to be Democrats are the japanese-americans who are also least likely to be on welfare.
Bringing up Neil Armstrong and his epic walk on the Moon only highlighted the fact that many of the greatest achievements of America were not the products of the free market.
All the speeches were good. Clint's nearly veered off into a senililty train wreck, but he got the job done. Romney's better than I thought it would be. I wished he had spent less time on the bio stuff. We all have personal histories.
Trying to suggest, as I think Rubio did, that Mitt came from a family of immigrants is absurd. His grandfather came back to the US from Mexico.
Amazing how far we've come though: we don't promise balanced budgets anymore. We just say we'll put ourselves on the road to get there. We promise how we'll fix entitlements, not how we'll end them. Sigh.
The powers that be have already decided who's going to be their mouthpiece in the White House, and we will know he is in November.
America effectively IS a one-party state, like the Soviet Union was. The only real difference is that the bolsheviks were brazen enough to drop the pretense of a multi-party state.
America's elite is too media and showbizz oriented to yet relinquish this grand spectacle of an 'election'
Watched about fifteen minutes then switched off the television. Speeches are written by speechwriters and read off the teleprompter. It's not the Gettysburg Address. I'd like to see both barred but that's just a fantasy. He said we haven't been supportive of Israel enough, nor tough enough on Iran. He also threw a mention of Cuba into the mix, an issue which is rather long in the tooth by now. So what does all this gung-ho talk mean? More war? Or is one supposed to mark it all down as just rhetoric, not to be taken too seriously?
I could not be bothered to waste my time paying attention to Mitt's or Obummer's kabuki-b.s. Tonight I enjoyed watching my DVD of 'The Bridge On The River Kwai.'
Featuring:
Mitt Romney as Major Warden.
Barack Obama as Colonel Saito.
Clint Eastwood as Lt. Colonel Nicholson.
And special guest star Steve Sailer, as Major Clipton ("Madness!"..."Madness!").
the mormon stuff was smart - separates him from obama - interesting the mormons used "inclusive" language -- saying congregation for "ward" & pastor for "bishop" etc. LDS normally would never refer to their bishop as a "pastor!"
Most of the speeches had some good lines, but none was great as a standalone. As Michael Savage correctly noted, there was little to no mentioning of the Tea Party, who got the GOP the House and galvanized the party these last few years. The Republican party is as hell-bent on self-destruction as the Dems are of the country's destruction, it would seem.
Paul Ryan's line, "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." will be the most remembered line.
Political hacks are arguing about his analogy with the plant that closed and promised, unmaterialized jobs, but everyone knows a twenty-something who hasn't left or a thirty or forty-something who's back at mom and dad's.
Mitt's line about how his father gave his mother a rose every day, and when one was missing she knew something was wrong, was the one I remember most.
I think it is hard for people who are deeply interested in politics and public policy, like many of us who regularly read Steve Sailer, to analyze how low and moderate information swing voters will react to Romney's speech. For what it worth (not much, sample size of one), my relatively apolitical wife (58 year old school nurse) liked the speech, and thought it made Romney seem likeable. We will have to wait for the polls to see how much of a bounce Romney gets, but I would be quite surprised if he got no bounce at all. My guess would be a 3% or 4% bounce in the polls, but we'll all find out soon. It was clearly not an A+ convention for the Republicans, like 1992 was for Clinton or 1988 was for George H.W. Bush, but it went fairly well; I'd give their overall performance a B+. But I am a political junkie who's a strong Republican, so my intuition might be very wrong.
Lawrence Auster wonders if a nation that requires such over-the-top gestures to women deserves to survive.
While I think the Republicans miscalculated on the question of what women want, I had similar thoughts to Auster as I watched it, especially the lauding of the goal for women at the top ranks that is congruent with their numbers in the overall population.
There was also this: a "conservative" American, as Romney is, means being more anti-Putin.
Putin is the greatest leader any people have and is the closest thing anyone has to a traditionalist. Being a defender of our system means being anti-Putin, pro-oligarch and a total ignorance of the realities of gender and people.
He warned Russia but Russia has done really nothing outside of their own backyard to provoke us. They are involved in Syria but Syria has been an ally of thiers. Why can't they just let the cold war die?
I thought Romney was effective. Leave the partisan red meat to Ryan and work on being the likable, trustworthy CEO. Basically the Rs have two aces in the hole: 1) everything sucks and the only response available is to switch presidents, and 2) a 2-1 funding advantage, thanks to Citizens United and corporate money. All they need to do is be likable, not too hard edged, and not screw things up. Well on the way to doing that.
You think that Obama is not smarmy, untrustworthy, and plastic?
Obama does not do well on likability among the white racist demographic, heavily overrepresented on this blog, but generally he is very likable. It's actually astounding he's been able to keep his personal favorability ratings so high in such a bad economy.
I was a very early supporter of Mitt posting on this board at the beginning of the primaries that Mitt was the only reasonable alternative.
I had lived in Mass when Mitt was governor and I thought he did a decent job given that the legislature was overwhelmingly Democrat.
However, one of the posters an Steve's blog a couple of threads back (sorry can't remember your name) made a good point that made me think.
Basicially, he wondered that because Mitt has that 1950s aura if there is a tendency to project our fantaises onto him --- in short, that he will be a return to Eisenhower normalcy.
A lot of conservative voters are turned off by NeoCon war mongering, huge military spending, multicult pandering, and open borders cheap labor advocacy.
None of these are "conservative" positions if the "American family" is the most important thing to Mitt as he claims.
On the one hand, I did like Mitt's emphasis on the importance of family and the part where Mitt mentioned unconditional love as the most important gift a parent can give to their child and that "who they are" is more important than "what they do." As someone who did not recieve it I can attest that it creates a lot of problems for the person later in life. I thought that mentioning it was a nice touch.
On the other hand, Mitt's pandering to Israel on Iran during the speech made me think that he is maybe ACTUALLY comitted to a strong agressive foreign policy and not just pandering to Jews for money and votes. I hope that it is just pandering... but I wonder.
Overall, Mitt didn't blow me away... and though I still think he will be better than Obama (who seems more and more to be be Anti-White and doesn't really understand economics) my enthusiasm has begun to cool a little bit (choice of Paul Ryan a career politician who approaches government like an accountant didn't help much either though I am not sure who would have been a better choice).
I guess I wonder, like some of the other posters, if it is all just Kabuki theatre and more of the same old same old NeoCon RHINO BS.
Romney would win in a walk if the didn't have the rest of the party dragging him down. A Massachusetts Conservative is just what the country wants; but they don't want an Alabama conservative or Wall Street libertarian, which is who still pulls the strings within the Republican party.
I think the Reps are too optimistic about what it will take to win. They're acting as though "This election is ours, so we'll put forth the policies we want," instead of "We can win by not turning people off." If they lose, they're going to wrongly blame Romney, when the problem is Haley Barbour and Sheldon Adelson.
One very last comment and it's about Marco Rubio whom Steve has written about a number of times.
My intuition tells me that he is a man of conviction and decent, and like the Pauls, he was gently chastising some of the Republicans rather than talking to the Democrats.
He was the most conservative speaker and I got the sense that he was pushing back against the hyper-individualism and materialism displayed so much, as David Brooks pointed out, out of genuine belief.
For example, he said our rights came from God almighty and I sensed that the way it was punctuated, not hacknied, etc., that he was rebuking Paul Ryan whom said our rights came from God and nature.
The GOP is trying to shake off the image of being just a bunch of tired old white guys by having Clint Eastwood come out on stage, and in a fit of senility, debate an imaginary person.
"Romney would win in a walk if the didn't have the rest of the party dragging him down. A Massachusetts Conservative is just what the country wants; but they don't want an Alabama conservative or Wall Street libertarian, which is who still pulls the strings within the Republican party. "
If you think Alabamans control the Republican party, I don't know what you've been smoking. When was the last time an Alabama Republican became a national star in the party? I guess you could count Huckabee but I wouldn't suggest he runs the party either. The Republican party doesn't do anything for the deep south other than pandering with social issues to get their votes. Basically just throwing bones out there, that is it.
Sadly if the GOP was all about "Alabama Republicans" then perhaps they would take a stronger position on border security and immigration.
"I might have missed it (I was switching back and forth between college football), but I didn't hear one word about the 2nd amendment or gun rights."
1) they didn't need to bring it up because they have THOSE votes
2) it WAS brought up to great applause the night before by the funny speech of Gov. Susana Martinez of NM, telling of her parents' opening a small business, which they grew, and of her as a young girl working security for them at a bingo game...and carrying a .357 Magnum.
The crowd roared and I laughed my head off at all the lilly-livered progressive males who wouldn't know where the trigger was on a gun.
"Thing is, how does he win? He needs VA, NC, OH and FL, just for starters."
He'll win NC, no problem, but VA is the greatest problem, I do believe--all those government employees who live there, worried about any POTUS who speaks of smaller governement. That, of course, is our problem in California--people on the dole, government workers who don't produce wealth or jobs, and not enough of the population as workers....and those who are damn mad that they see themselves supporting able-bodied people who have no intention of ever going off the dole.
"Obama does not do well on likability among the white racist demographic, heavily overrepresented on this blog, but generally he is very likable."
I guess this is where I am out of touch. I'm a woman and I've always found Obama to be a guy who knows he can get away with a lot with the nice smile. I have never liked guys going on women's talk shows and gabbing with the ladies, smiling, and showing them how "sensitive" he is.
From my years of living, all politics aside, I perceive all kinds of evidence that the man much more likely to be sentimental and gentle is Romney--that's one reason a lot of men don't like to indulge pubclically in "revealing their feelings," because they ARE sentimental and tear and choke up easily, which, you probably noticed, Romney did last night when he said he and his wife missed the days of little boys crawling all over their bed in the morning. He barely got through that.
Obama has never choked up over anything...he has well-planned pauses.
The problem is, I follow politics and most Americans don't, so they "saw" Romney for the first time last night.
I'm becoming prone to conspiracy thinking lately. Forgive me if what follows is loony.
It seems to me that the whole mantra of Obama being a nice guy was a bit overdone. Ryan, Rubio and then Romney went to some lengths to establish that they personally like Obama and thought he was a good father. Why so much repetition?
Obama objectively isn't a very nice guy. We saw some of that early with the police incident and the Joe the Plumber incident. His wife is positively nasty. He does not give much to charity and does have a record of kindness to neighbors or strangers. He seems to be motivated by abstract (but simpleminded) ideological notions. He doesn't seem to be motivated by real personal feelings. Romney is accused of being robotic but it is Obama who seems to be acting out a program. He seems "cool". He does not seem "warm".
So why all the fulsome praise for Obama's niceness? I suspect an October surprise.
Romney's team also presented an awful lot of material about his love for his wife. When Ann Romney told Mitt how sick she was, she must have felt lucky that her husband wasn't John Edwards. But why keep pounding on that point?
I suspect that the October surprise will be about Obama's domestic arrangements. There are a slew of Web rumors that Obama is a homosexual and that Reverend Wright's church provided a service that matched gay black men with ambitious black women.
Maybe the question should never have been ""Who was Obama's real father?" But "Who is the real father of Obama's children?
I'm probably not alone in wondering how anyone could possibly love Michelle Obama. She's so unlovable. And Obama's love life towards women seems strangely muted. When I was young I was always chasing women. Like any normal man if I were to write an autobiography there would be anecdotes about love and sex on every other page. The whole Obama nuclear family looks a little artificial.
So maybe the RNC is sitting on some evidence that Obama isn't so wholesome domestically. What better way to capitalize on the contrast with straight arrow Romney than to go on record as approving of Obama as a father and a "nice guy". Where was Obama when he wasn't at Columbia and who was he with?
Loved the line to Putin: less flexibility, more backbone.
Why did you love this? With all the problems we have, the demographic time bomb, the debt time bomb, the loss of our industrial base, etc., how can anyone rank Russia as a problem or concern to the US?
If the GOP thinks Russia is enough of a problem to mention, but ignores immigration and the third worldization of the USA, then why on Earth should anyone on this blog vote for them?
Well, some of the Alabamian conservatives are good on illegal immigration, its the Texaians and Floridians conservatives with Rick Perry and Jeb Bush types that ruin the Republican Party not Jeff Sessions as much. Mitt and Ryan were not from border states but having the convention in Hispanic Florida brought all of this stuff up. At one time they were thinking of Phoenix Hispanics yes but that is Jan Brewer's area so they would not have been so much pushed for ger the hispanic vote. The Republican party has too much ties to border states, in the old days it was California, then Texas and now Florida which isn't a border state but has a lot of Hispanic connections to make it as worst.
Well, I saw one of the Russia Today shows and they had as guest Mr Webb head of the USA Communist party and all those rhetoric how great socialism says and the support of the Occupy bunch. So, Putin and company may not be as great as some on the right think.
"Romney wants to come over as the guy you'd like to have a drink with, but it's more like drinking with the boss at the office picnic." That drink would be KoolAid (and not just because of Romney's Mormonism).
Saw this on another blog. Hope that person doesn't care I am quoting it, but it hits the spot in how the MSM is knocking Clint:
" Eastwood asked that empty chair better/tougher questions than the MSM has asked the President of the United States through 2 campaigns for President and 4 years of failing at being President."
Now, that is a line that both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan should use on the trail.
I wasn't paying much attention to what was said - it's all boilerplate anyway. Though I liked the line about not getting the Mormon pension fund to invest in Bain. What I found interesting was the crowd reactions. I was listening to the last half in my car. The "sanctity of life" line got a distinctly different cheer than most of the applause lines. The "energy jobs" line got a different-sounding cheer, too.
Unfortunately for the fans of a less aggressive foreign policy, his lines there got the strongest crowd reaction of anything he said - I think more than he anticipated.
I liked Romney more after watching the speech and video. I admire him. Of course like everybody I wonder about how socially positive Bain Capital was, but to me he just came across as a really good, really competent guy.
Obama does not do well on likability among the white racist demographic, heavily overrepresented on this blog, but generally he is very likable. It's actually astounding he's been able to keep his personal favorability ratings so high in such a bad economy.
I guess it helps if your friends in the media never actually mention the bad economy and constantly portray Obama in a fashion which the old Soviet leaders would have envied.
It all helps Obama that his base of blacks, Jews, and white liberals are racist to the core and could not care less about his job performance as long as his skin color remains dark.
"Vietnamese-Americans are among the most likely of asian-americans to be on welfare"
In the UK, Vietnamese pretty much run the home hydroponic marijuana cultivation industry, in that they 'babysit' the plants, feeding and watering them, maybe visiting several rented houses a day, and they get caught quite often.
Whether it's they who fund the enterprise, set up the hydroponics and lights, and sell the product I'm not sure.
I've gained respect and enthusiasm for Romney during his campaign; his acceptance speech was solid but not electric.
I was inspired by his character , religion, family, and reference to founding liberties. I appreciated his framing Obama as a disappointment; success as an admirable thing. I loved the oceans recede/heal the planet reference vrs. "help your family".
Romney and the entire RNC speakers were too try hard to woo the women's votes.
I heard that Clint Eastwood asked if he could appear at the Republican National Convention. They got back and said "sure, to talk to the Chair of the RNC." His hearing aid was broken and he thought that they said "talk to A chair at the RNC." The rest is history! Budum bump!
Vapid attempt to act and look Reganesque. I'm irritated with the continued bland, nutless RHINO males who are scared of their own shadows and pander to P.C. and so want someone such as a Barry Goldwater clone-- a MAN -- to tell it like it is. Not a dime's worth of difference between the parties once in office has been the song before Obama came along, but still it's either a Sunday drive over the cliff or a Volt speeding over it is the choice. The guys behind the curtain will make whomever they select do their bidding, one world control is the goal.
I'm irritated with the continued bland, nutless RHINO males who are scared of their own shadows and pander to P.C. and so want someone such as a Barry Goldwater clone-- a MAN -- to tell it like it is.
Goldwater was a RINO - an open-borders socially liberal Republican. Not very different from Bush, really.
I agree wholeheartedly. It's become clear to me that he's an arrogant prick who tells himself incessant fairytales about how virtuous and insightful he is.
I'm probably not alone in wondering how anyone could possibly love Michelle Obama. She's so unlovable.
Come on, Pat. You don't know any straight men married to women who have aged into viragos? It's common, even in an age of easy divorce. The marriage just evolves into more of a business partnership and less of a romance.
"Did Truth really call Romney Mittens? I always thought he had some semblance of a sense of humor. Disappointing. His full name is Mitthew."
Actually his name is (are you sitting down?) Willard!
Mittens is actually a double entendre; Every time Mitt's not talking about his wife, he has this curious look on his face, like a rich white man who's Mercedes Limo somehow broke down outside of a dirty Kuala Lumpur truckstop, and he badly needs to take a shit, so he goes in and tries to #2 without touching anything.
PX Ryan, also, double entendre, he was Paul "the X-factor" Ryan, but that image of him flexing his 148 lb. muscles in a tank top is seared into my memory for ever.
"When I was young I was always chasing women. Like any normal man if I were to write an autobiography there would be anecdotes about love and sex on every other page."
A clear case of Romney being the lesser of two evils. In other words, this election is another case of the evil of two lessers.
A clear case of America sending Obama home as a giant shit-test to libtards. I really want to hear the rending of the clothes, the gnashing of the teeth, the wailing.
That chair could beat Mitt Romney in a Presidential election.
I'm not sure why the Republicans with a creditable chance sat this primary out, but they did. I could make some reasonable speculations, starting with it is difficult to beat a sitting President, though some signs of vulnerability are there.
But Mitt Romney...
He might have beaten Michael Dukakis in a Presidential race.
Maybe.
His only hope is the power of money, but I don't think it is humanly possible to spend enough to put him over the top.
You guys are telling yourself what you want to hear. Hilary Clinton would have wiped the floor with him.
I and others have said it before, but it will be interesting to see what direction the Republican party goes in.
My belief is that this election will be pointed to by future generations of political scholars as akin to the 64' Goldwater election, only instead of heralding the birth of a new direction of a standing party, it is the destruction of a version of a party.
I'm not going to quibble words here. I think that the faux populism will go out the window, and some new constituency will be developed.
As far as the new Republican party, whatever that will be, is concerned there nothing to worry about.
The true core values won't be compromised, because those core values are shared by the opposition party.
And heck, they won't lose much of the white vote. It may not be as excited, as much of a turnout in elections, but in the end where are the non-elite whites gonna go anyway?
The Republican party has them on the hook as surely as the Democratic party has blacks.
Mark my words, by 2016 the Tea Party will be passe, and you are going to see a whole new marketing campaign (for want of a better word).
And to be blunt, what choice do they have? The prospects are poor in 2016 for this version of the Republican party, and impossible by 2020.
So let me get this straight. Clint Eastwood represents the old WASP guard, the kind that is disappointed with the way America is being run over by colored retards.
And yet, here he is being a coward and talking to an empty chair? I mean is this an example of one of the famous WASP values that are being lost? Shouldn't a guy like 'Dirty Harry' do nothing less than look someone in the eye, man to man, when he accusing him of something? Looked quite silly, I must say.
Every istever willing to shamelessly admit in public that watching an empty suit read a pre-rehearsed speech written for him by some kid made him "like Romney more" or any some such idiocy should forever be banned from this forum. The convention show - indeed elections in general - are for idiots.
It's all a friggin etch-a-sketch and you bozos are too goddamn stupid to remember that every two years.
Romney is the most competent and accomplished man to run for President since maybe Bush 41, and he has more impressive private sector experience than 41 did. Last night's speech was solid.
The problem isn't Romney so much as it is the incredibly ridiculous tailwind Obama gets from the media and the liberal elite. If we had a Republican president now and there were 42 straight weeks of 8%+ unemployment, there would be stories about that on the news every night. Same with our KIA in Afghanistan ticking over 2000 (two thirds of those on Obama's watch). Obama gets a complete pass on it, and Silicon Valley exclaims about how great it is that the POTUS sat for an "ask me anything" on Reddit.
"It is an abiding mystery why the US, after leading the west to the greatest strategic victory in the history of the nation state in the cold war and the triumph of democracy in most of the world, has been for about 15 years, in public policy terms, an almost unrelievedly stupid country. America’s enemies could scarcely have devised a more suicidal programme than the one that was followed: outsourcing nearly 50m jobs while admitting 20m unskilled aliens; throwing American lives and $2tn after nation-building in the Middle East; and inundating the world with trillions of dollars of worthless real estate-backed debt, certified as investment-grade by the palsied lions of Wall Street. In comparison, even the hare-brained miscues that have endangered the eurozone seem Solomonic."
Lots of hostile comments by lefty FT readers there.
"The problem isn't Romney so much as it is the incredibly ridiculous tailwind Obama gets from the media and the liberal elite. If we had a Republican president now and there were 42 straight weeks of 8%+ unemployment, there would be stories about that on the news every night"
I've begun calling the networks PRAVDA.
My best friends watch NBC news every night, and they had no idea what "Fast and Furious" referred to. There was a vague idea that they had heard the phrase. They subscribe to the SF Chronicle, and I thought they read it, so it strikes me the Chron, a very liberal rag, must have buried the story on the back page.
I really believe that R&R can only win this race by attacking the media, ala George Bush/Dan Rather.
"Hilary Clinton would have wiped the floor with him."
No one in modern politics is a worse speech giver, is more stiff in public, more awkward, than Hilary Clinton.
However, the media has built her up to be Maggie Thatcher, dontcha know?
See, that's the point: whether it's MSM or SNL (who'll never go low on Obama or Hilary--unless she's pitted against Obama), the people with the power of the camera and the power of the word see to it that they put forth the Dem's talking points.
My sister saw Mitt Romney 4+ years ago in a Presidential primary debate, and she said she never thought of him as anyone other than a good looking, articulate guy who was once governor of MA and who lead the OLympics.
This year, she said she expected Gordon Gecko with fangs to appear based on what she had heard for months-----from the media.
"If we had a Republican president now and there were 42 straight weeks [I assume you mean months?] of 8%+ unemployment, there would be stories about that on the news every night."
Bingo. I can still remember back in 1992 seeing the CBS News segment "The Money Crunch," designed to remind you every single night that we're in a recession!. The ran it right up through the 1992 election, iirc.
Bingo. I can still remember back in 1992 seeing the CBS News segment "The Money Crunch," designed to remind you every single night that we're in a recession!. The ran it right up through the 1992 election, iirc."
Much like "homelessness", which was a pressing national problem and a national disgrace, starting in about 1982 and running right up until January 20th, 1993, when it just solved itself somehow. I even heard the establishment media (other than FOX) attempt to trot out the whole homeless problem again when GW took office. It never seemed to gain much traction, however, and they just dropped it.
Okay, just some teeny tiny evidence that the media, in this case PBS' achorwoman, Gwen Ifill, who just happens to have been chosen as one of the debate "moderators" tweeted these the other day:
gwen ifill@pbsgwen
Welcome, new twitter detractors. Here's a good read via @ron_fournierhttp://bit.ly/SS1L04 ____________________________
29 Auggwen ifill@pbsgwen
One mistake does not change this. @DavidChalian is God's gift to political journalism. #IStandwithDavid _______________________________
So, in the first tweet, Ms Ifill suggests her readers check out the "good read": an article in which the writer, some guy named Fournier, maintains that Romney is uber playing the race card...yeah, Romney, not Obama and the Chicago 7, but Romney. (We do know Ms Ifill is black, do we not?)
In the second tweet, she sticks up for Yahoo's David Chalian (formerlyu of ABC) whose voice was caught off camera laughing as he saw Mitt Romney and his wife walking somewhere, answering a reporter's question and semi-laughing, "There they are--republicans laughing while black people drown."
Yahoo fired him immediately as audience members called in, but so what? The media is loaded with his type, progressives who don't even care to countenance a fair, unbiased appearance, as Ms Ifill so well demonstrates.
If assuming he was biased because of his profession is just too much for anyone, they can listen to the video clip that got him fired and guess what else he is. I mean, most guys don't have voices like that. But, we're not surprised, are we?
The WNs must have gotten heartburn on learning that Paul Ryan had a black girlfriend for 5 years, and on seeing that Clint Eastwood has a mixed race brown wife.
A Mormon prayer started the proceedings on the final day, and a Catholic cardinal gave the closing prayer.
A Sikh gave the opening invocation on day two.
In his speech Romney, the founder of his american religion was lynched by fundamentalist protestants, emphatically declared: As president, I will protect the sanctity of life. I will honor the institution of marriage. And I will guarantee America’s first liberty: the freedom of religion.
The WNs must have gotten heartburn on learning that Paul Ryan had a black girlfriend for 5 years, and on seeing that Clint Eastwood has a mixed race brown wife.
I'm an ethno-patriot, not a WN, but I couldn't care less who Ryan or Eastwood marry or shack up with. I will point out that Eastwood seemed to have a strong unconscious urge to procreate with women closely matched to his own genetic stock, and now that he's out to pasture it doesn't much matter who he's married.
Bringing up Neil Armstrong and his epic walk on the Moon only highlighted the fact that many of the greatest achievements of America were not the products of the free market.
Right; it highlighted the fact that they were the products of mulattoes.
Much like "homelessness", which was a pressing national problem and a national disgrace, starting in about 1982 and running right up until January 20th, 1993, when it just solved itself somehow. I even heard the establishment media (other than FOX) attempt to trot out the whole homeless problem again when GW took office. It never seemed to gain much traction, however, and they just dropped it.
Don't forget gas prices. It was a steady litany until 0bama.
"In his speech Romney, the founder of his american religion was lynched by fundamentalist protestants, emphatically declared: As president, I will protect the sanctity of life. I will honor the institution of marriage. And I will guarantee America’s first liberty: the freedom of religion.'
yeah, well, that's what freedom of speech assures we can do...and then there are those millions of tolerant progressives who've been trying to portray him as weird (in fact, POTUS' major domo, Axelrod, goes on the Sunday shows regularly to remind folks of the stranger among us) and making jokes about magic underwear.
Ah, humanity: Bible thumpers and progressives have so much in common after all.
I don't know if you are one, but you *sound* like one of those ignorant people who think Tea Party people beat up minorities, carry shotguns to the rallies, and eat nothing but beef.
And, you're sadly misinformed. Ever been to a town hall with a Congressional rep and sat there listening to people who call themselves Tea Partiers?
Ever been to a rally?
No, didn't think so.
YOu see, most are Boomers or their adult children who've kids of their own; a high percentage are those with very small businesses or those who work for such businesses, people who've never so much as had a run-in with the law other than a speeding ticket or two over their lives; they revere friendly, clean and safe neighborhoods and schools...and they don't understand why people like you hate them.
Republicans claim they will check the growth of the parasitic entitlment class but there is a snowball's chance of that happening without revoking single women's right to vote.
"The WNs must have gotten heartburn on learning that Paul Ryan had a black girlfriend for 5 years, and on seeing that Clint Eastwood has a mixed race brown wife."
What a remarkably ignorant comment. Conservatives have long since resigned themselves to the fact that GOP is the Democratic Lite party. Most dislike thinking of themselves or being thought of as Republicans.
They will not be voting for Romney so much as voting for whichever not-Obama they believe has the best chance of winning. Some of the purists will sit this one out altogether, the pragmatists among them will hold their noses and do what they must.
One of the anonymussels above actually said Mitt wasn't from a border state. You're kidding, right? Harper Hospital, where he was born, isn't even two miles from the border.
As for one large and important voting bloc-- those who can no longer go back to their old neighborhood-- Mitt Romney is the poster child.
Republicans claim they will check the growth of the parasitic entitlment class but there is a snowball's chance of that happening without revoking single women's right to vote. --anonymous
New Jersey actually did this in 1804. A long story, but fascinating.
I really believe that R&R can only win this race by attacking the media, ala George Bush/Dan Rather.
Preferrably, Ryan should do it in the debates.
Nobody has ever won an election by doing that. Sure its good red meat for the base. But to everyone else the candidate looks like a serial whiner who avoids real issues by crying foul. Bush was never an enemy of the MSM. In fact his guys manipulated it like absolute pros to drum up support for the invasions.
"The current head of NASA, a former Commander of the Space Shuttle, is a mullato."
This would be the NASA that's without a way to get men into space for the first time since...1962?
The same administrator who said that one of his top jobs as head of NASA would be 'to help the Muslim world feel better about their contributions to science'?
Smarmy, untrustworthy, plastic. Obama will win because this guy is not all that likable. He's the John Kerry of 2012.
ReplyDeleteWell balanced: family, values, America, prosperity, defense, and openmindedness. Best lines were about celebrating success, oceans vs. families, and the apology tour reference. I also loved the subtle ways of acknowledging religion while downplaying differences ( church vs. sports teams, going to hell for bankrupting pension funds).
ReplyDeleteI look forward to the debates. What is interesting is all the levels at which the battle takes place. Part of me thanks that Romney would be best served to come as close to Obama on the right as possible, I order to win over moderate, young, and/or highly educated people. On the other hand, that may be a wasted effort as they tend to vote on the basis of fashion, as you've alluded to before.
Zzzzzzzzzz.
ReplyDelete27 year old, first-generation American here. Romney's speech pulled all the right heart strings for me. He changed my view of him, from used car salesman, to President. He and Condi Rice delivered the two best speeches. I would love to have a President that makes me feel proud of my country.
ReplyDelete1) He does come across as a little bit plastic, but not too much - not as bad as John Kerry; certainly not nearly as pompous.
ReplyDelete2) John Kerry was running against George W. Bush and a strong economy. The less abrasive Mitt is running against Obama and a bad economy.
3) Obama is a pompous asshat, too.
4) He got in a few good zingers. It was funny enough.
5) He really opened up about his religion. Totally unexpected, but now the MSM can never claim that he's hiding behind it.
6) Note that he said 'North America would achieve energy independence by 2020 - not the USA. Most of our oil imports already come from Canada and Mexico, anyway.
7) He talked about a guy taking two $9/hour jobs to make ends meet. Has Mitt Romney ever in adulthood held a $9/hour job? This was a mistake, but a minor one.
Overall a good speech. There is nothing Barack Obama can do to win this election. Mitt has to eff it up, and it doesn't look like that's gunna happen.
P.S. Loved his mention of Obama's pledge to 'stop the oceans from rising and heal the world.'
ReplyDeleteIt made Obama look as silly and small.
Romney is White, Obama is Black...
ReplyDeleteConsistent with the Eastwood line, Romney is presenting himself as the turnaround CEO, welcoming the contrast with the soaring rhetoric of the Saviour/Dreamer who is running the enterprise into the ground financially. There have to be plenty of independents, Libertarians, and even Republicans who voted for O that feel disappointed, but may be wavering because of the racial thing. This is as good a strategy as any to reach them: "it's not personal, it's just business."
ReplyDeleteClint Eastwood was a bit of a disappointment.
ReplyDeleteI the less we see of Mitt the better he'll do. He's not a good public speaker. Some people can be complete fakes but come off as genuine, some are the opposite.
ReplyDeleteMitt belongs in the 2nd camp.
it looked like he lightened his eyes or something. my girlfriend said he looked like a vampire. going for the women vote probably.
ReplyDeleteWhite, heterosexual, energetic, driven, smart, better man than me, kisses to Israel, watch out Russia. He might win.
ReplyDeleteI think Romney scored when he talked about Bain Capital.
ReplyDeleteNot when he tried to ride the coattails of Steve Jobs, a Democrat. Silicon Valley, like Hollwood, is Obama's turf.
Romney's coda was towering: where Ryan's delivery of his finale got boyishly shrill, Romney thundered with real passion, rising measuredly, with sincerity and assurance.
ReplyDeleteThe speech overall, while not full of quotable quotes, was approachably demotic without being stupid. In his presence and intonation, Romney fulfills something like my idea of a 19th Century statesman on the stump.
He's not Cicero in the literary crafting, but his was by no means a strained or nervous delivery. He's handily better at the podium than a McCain or Dukakis. His implicit offer is to be the next Father of the Country, a blend of Reagan and Bush 41. I think the speech served his benign paternal appeal well: Bush 41 with more urgency, and some gravel in his throat. Ryan, the wonkish Theo to his corporate Cliff, reinforces this dynamic.
Eastwood's exhilarating routine, traipsing mischevously around the edges of assumed senility, stretching out a beat long enough to make you think he just might, just might have forgot his line, and then throwing his punch-- here too, there's much amends for all that "single moms" talk. Romney made a fine emotional pitch for why the country needs to return to traditional leadership, leaving the wonkery, which this ticket is preeminently capable of (and swing voters assuredly uninterested in) for later.
I thought it was a good speech and the guy has good personal qualities -- he has helped people he knew in trouble again and again. The President wields enormous power, almost unbound, that's a good thing to think about, what kind of man will be President? One fueled by resentment and pettiness (Obama?) or the desire to help people he knows?
ReplyDeleteRomney basically presented himself as the turn-around guy who will bring JOBS JOBS JOBS when Obama heals the planet, halts the seas, and apologizes for America. The prominent featuring of all those women were no accident, he's trying to get swing female voters who love the Media-worshiped Obama but are having a hard time at the gas pump and grocery store.
Loved the line to Putin: less flexibility, more backbone.
What is striking is how many lines Romney and others used that Obama himself created. Principally of course "You didn't build that." Obama himself when not monitored 24/7 and even at times on teleprompter creates lines that make all but his truest of believers cringe or get angry. Kotkin's latest about the clerisy rings true, Obama is from the "minder" generation of lawyers, NGOs, media people, college professors, who love a good moral lecture to their lessors, on how to live every aspect of their life.
Romney was like all those TV turn-around guys, the ones from "Bar Rescue" and "Hotel Impossible" and "Restaurant Impossible" and "Kitchen Nightmares" that are blunt, plainspoken, and offer help from looming financial disaster.
Obama has made most White middle class and working class people considerably poorer. With nothing planned to fix things. Even SWPL women have to eat, and pay bills. The argument is compelling.
Mitt is a closeted mo...Rubio was impressive. Loved Clint. 82. Didn't embarrass himself....
ReplyDelete--Eastwood's schtick may well become the next "Downfall" Hitler's meltdown routine in terms of its touchstone appeal.
ReplyDeleteThe setup is nothing new: an actor addressing a chair as an invisible person? Typical James Lipton-y "ACTING!" stuff.
But it's Clint, the least protean of actors, taking to the stage at the Republican National Convention (so square a venue is inherently "meta"), to portray the invisible incumbent President of the United States doing nothing but telling him to tell another, or just telling himself, to go f**k himself. To which Clint glibly tells him he's crazy, etc.
Aged Clint, undoubtedly getting frail-- and I'll admit, it made me anxious, seeing him so wizened and stuttery--but always managing to pull out his next punchline just in the nick of time, and finally leaving the playacting behind to tell the people "We own this country" and the politicians are just employees-- pulled off a theatrical coup. What can SNL do with this? So deliciously nasty a lampoon, yet so silvery and endearing: it's inimitable. It's like a fragment of an alternate history, where Clint made the Reagan pivot and served two terms. He left a mantle of cool hovering there in Tampa for Romney to wrap up in. And what is more timely than an appeal to abandon "mental masochism"?
Didn't watch it. Don't care. The conventions are nothing but Reality TV - scripted spontaneity, meticulously designed to manipulate people and sell them something.
ReplyDeleteI heard a little of Rubio's speech - these things could be computer generated: wah wah wah, immigrant parents, wah wah wah, shining city on a hill, wah wah wah, American exceptionalism. I've been hearing the same platitudes for thirty years.
"my girlfriend said he looked like a vampire. going for the women vote probably."
ReplyDeleteLOL it's still too soon for Camacho muscles.
So Whiskey thought it was good.
ReplyDeleteThat settles it. You guys are doomed.
They sure opened their arms wide to hispanics and immigrants, probably to the chagrin of the republican base. The Tea Party is being taken for granted.
ReplyDeleteRandom thoughts...they've really overdone the women's vote thing. At some point it just sounds like what it is: Romney/Ryan/et al as ventriloquists, channelling the obsessions of the RNC's political consultants.
ReplyDeleteI might have missed it (I was switching back and forth between college football), but I didn't hear one word about the 2nd amendment or gun rights. This might be tied into the emphasis on women, not wanting to scare soccer moms with scary talk about guns, etc., etc., but it's a big mistake. He should have fired up this important part of his base by reminding gun owners that an Obama without another election to check him might well start issuing executive orders about guns just like he did with illegals (among other things). And that Heller decision was 5-4 (and Scalia's 76) after all....
He brought up Bain Capital, and I give him props for that. He should have hammered much harder on what Obama was doing in lieu of founding and building what is today a multi-billion dollar business - "organizing" something or other on Chicago's South Side...he should have hit that one hard. Still, props for bringing it up.
All in all, as these bland things tend to go, I think he did himself no harm. Not much good, perhaps, but no harm.
I liked the Clint Eastwood speech. Dry humor, made a little fun of Obama's pretentiousness. What everyone remembers of any convention speeches is manufactured in the days afterwards by the media. So perhaps in the future it will be remembered for Clint being a decrepit, stuttering fool. But he really wasn't. He looked cool.
ReplyDeleteWhiskey wrote: Loved the line to Putin: less flexibility, more backbone.
ReplyDeleteWhy does that not surprise anyone on this blog?
I thought he did his best, yet. I've watched him for years now and I didn't know he had it in him.
ReplyDeleteThe kids running out was quite a sight.
A big downside to me is the whole grrlpower thing. The Dems seem to have absolutely scared the bejesus out of them. I swear to God I needed to watch some Prince and Billy Idol videos to restore equilibrium or something after what all I saw this week.
What?! Are we all bull dykes now?
I took my kids to Tampa today so they could see what all was going on. Before we got there, and I had no idea what we'd see, I explained that it was important to see *with their own eyes* what was going on and then also see for themselves how it contrasted with what they had been hearing.
Something unreported: there was at least one, but there were several dozen people at any rate, Baptist churches (not Westboro) protesting against homosexuality and abortion. Along with that was a truck driving around with a graphic image of an aborted baby.
This group was about the same size as the Occupy group at the camp during the week, but smaller than what came out at the park tonight.
I have no idea how long they'd been there, how many days, etc. I only know of their existence because we saw them.
Well, the problem with the tea party is that got into too much taxing cutting and budget cuts and against obamacare which means a open borders person like Jeff Flake in Arizona can con them. Hopefully, Flake is better. Tea Party people are against illegal immigration but the leadership of the Tea party nation isn't always.
ReplyDeleteKotkin's latest about the clerisy rings true
ReplyDeleteRegular Kotkin reader, eh Whiskey?
Loved the line to Putin: less flexibility, more backbone.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you have against Putin?
Mittens' speech was actually better than I expected, unfortunately that does not mean it was good. The guy needs to speak about his family a lot more, and other stuff a lot less. It is the only time he doesn't sound like a cyborg.
ReplyDeleteSo he's going to make America energy dependent in 8 years by mining our natural resources, huh? Oh brother.
As mediocre as M.R's speech was the was BY FAR the best of the Repubs. PX did himself no favors he is stiff, humorless and needs more seasoning. Marco Rubio got his call up to the big leagues, and summarily drew a golden sombrero in his first game, and I don't even know where to start with Clint.
RNC committee leadership must be some of the dumbest people on the planet if they actually thought a stammering, old man not known for his sense of humor was going to create heat...but for some reason, they did.
Really, really puzzling.
Eastwood is going to get spun as a crazy old man by the media but that's as far as they can go, and it might have been a good set-up for the rest of the night as a distraction from the sort of fisking Ryan got.
ReplyDeleteRubio looks smaller and smaller every time I see and hear him. Yes, he can give a speech without stumbling, but aside from "hispanic" and "Florida," we'd never hear his name.
Mitt came across better than I expected: more human, less wooden. The talk the whole night about family, parents, and children I took as probable subtle digs at Obama. My instinct is that some campaign strategists are looking to get Obama's psychological goat on those points and force him into gaffes.
Redneck Scare sillier than Red Scare.
ReplyDeleteSmarmy, untrustworthy, plastic. Obama will win because this guy is not all that likable.
ReplyDeleteYou think that Obama is not smarmy, untrustworthy, and plastic? Did your just return from a several year long space voyage, Major Tom?
'War on Women'. This from liberals who bitch about the 'anti-communist hysteria' of the 50s.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you don't support 'gay marriage', you are suffering from a PHOBIA.
How do you like that for hysteria?
"They sure opened their arms wide to hispanics and immigrants, probably to the chagrin of the republican base. The Tea Party is being taken for granted."
ReplyDeleteIt's also not going to appeal to white independent voters. It's one of the few issues independents lean strongly conservative on, actually.
He was fine, more appealing than Bush or McCain certainly...comes off as a technocrat and business guy. I never voted for a Republican before but may do so this year. The fact that he was elected in Massachusetts demonstrates crossover appeal. I think hammering on him for running a business is not going to help Obama...everybody knows that businessmen fire people sometimes.
ReplyDeleteThing is, how does he win? He needs VA, NC, OH and FL, just for starters. Those all went for Barry. The numbers aren't there for Mitt. Even if he takes Michigan and Wisconsin, those two states don't cancel out Florida. He isn't polling that strongly.
One thing...I think the GOP is taking an intelligent response to Obama's "you didn't build that" line. They are acknowledging that of course there are roads and schools that transport and educate workers, etc., but as Ryan pointed out, that doesn't explain the actual sweat and labor that small businesspeople pour into their businesses.
ReplyDeleteI say this as a highly lazy person who hasn't built anything, but is honest enough not to pretend that I didn't have the opportunity.
The numbers aren't there for Mitt. Even if he takes Michigan and Wisconsin, those two states don't cancel out Florida. He isn't polling that strongly.
ReplyDeleteDon't quit your day job - polling analysis is not your strong suit.
While I would not say that Romney is polling "strongly", Obama is polling badly. The incumbent is the known quantity, and it's a bad sign for him when he polls below 50%. Most battleground polls show Romney and Obama in a statistical tie at 47% apiece.
"The guy needs to speak about his family a lot more, and other stuff a lot less. It is the only time he doesn't sound like a cyborg."
ReplyDeleteMindless meme regurgitation. What you see as "cyborg" is what people in the real world see as competence. Unfortunately the vast majority of Dem voters do not exist in the real world.
I could not be bothered to waste my time paying attention to Mitt's or Obummer's kabuki-b.s. Tonight I enjoyed watching my DVD of 'The Bridge On The River Kwai.' They don't make great movies anymore the same way they don't make great - or even decent - presidents anymore. So far as I can discern, our entire political class is disloyal to the remnant shreds of our Constitution - and is treacherous to and exploitative of our citizenry.
ReplyDeleteThis woman has always seen Romney as a kind-hearted guy. He's not a guy who is good at stadium politics, as I call it, but a guy good with small groups.
ReplyDeleteI loved his line contrasting Obama as someone who proclaimed that with his election, the oceans would recede and the planet would heal to his wanting to help "you and your family."
Pomposity contrasted with modesty
A man who thinks he's a god contrasted with a man who knows he's only a man
A monarch versus a president
It was a great line, and in conjuction with the empty chair to which Eastwood spoke, a reminder of empty promises and the empty suit, it was magic.
There's one simple little tip that I am surprised no one has ever told Mitt.
ReplyDeleteBecause he's not a "natural" and does appear physically stiff at times (even though he's a very handsome, striking man, tall and fit-looking), he should simply unbutton his suit jacket when on stage waving or when reaching into the crowd to shake hands.
The button left buttoned contricts him and makes him look more rigid.
Mitt wasn't striving for a huge ideas speech, as others all week had spoken of the fruits of less government intrusion into our lives, but I think he knew that most Americans are not only despairing but that they understand Obama's talent is in delivering words and not much else.
ReplyDeleteNot only would lofty words have not fit him, they would have been only a reminder of the emptiness of such "poetry."
I've been scouring the blogs looking at reactions to Clint.
ReplyDeleteFrom the get-go the progressives were outraged that Eastwood dared mock their beloved President, that he was "profane." HA. The idiots at MSNBC, the most profane of all, were the most outraged.
Then, they moved to faux-glee, saying surely the public would recognize Clint's strange and impolite behavior.
However, they seemed to realize what was happening out in the hinterlands....people loved Clint. Like Peggy Noonan suggested in last week's column, the one thing the Dems and Obama can't take is to be made fun of and she pointed out Barry's thin skin.
Clint's voice was weak, and yeah, he rambled, but boy oh boy, did he hit the target anyway.
A US commentator on BBC Radio 4 this morning :
ReplyDelete"Romney wants to come over as the guy you'd like to have a drink with, but it's more like drinking with the boss at the office picnic".
A more assertive foreign policy. Sounds like fun.
When did iSteve turn into NRO?? I can't read any more praise of Mitt's vacuous inanities.
ReplyDelete"it looked like he lightened his eyes or something. my girlfriend said he looked like a vampire. going for the women vote probably."
ReplyDeleteSounds like something is wrong with your tv. Check the color or brightness.
"The prominent featuring of all those women were no accident"
ReplyDeleteThe women featured in the last two days are women of accomplishment who aren't shrill as are those women the libs always put forth.
Loved Gov. Susana Martinez' line to hubby : "I'll be damn...we're Republicans!"
Got a chuckle out that because I had a similar epiphany over a decade ago only my line to myself was, "Damn. Why the hell am I a Democrat when I hate every damn useless program they force down out throats?"
"When did iSteve turn into NRO?? I can't read any more praise of Mitt's vacuous inanities."
ReplyDeleteThen don't.
Robotney or Oblairma? War on Iran or War on YT?* Strychnine or cyanide? You, the People, decide.
ReplyDeleteObama is so like Tony Blair it's uncanny. The same narcissism, the same brazen mendacity, the same utter ineptitude, the same Lady MacBeth pushing him on. But the Blairites didn't riot when Blair was pushed out. Something, possibly HBD, tells me the Obamamites might not be so tolerant of such an unjust perversion of the democratic process.
*Well, it's War on YT whatever glass of poison you get, and probably War on Iran too.
This will be the last normal election. After this, race will become much more explicit. The vote will breakdown along racial lines and apparently the term "Anti-White" is getting mainstreamed. The fact that this country will be majority non-White in about a generation, will lead to more polarization.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is true in most White countries.
"Obama is so like Tony Blair it's uncanny."
ReplyDeleteI don't see it at all. Blair was not a stealth progressive, he was a passionate neocon. Even he was wrong in his support of Bush's war, I admired his outspoken eloquence in making a case for it, as well as in opposing anti-Americanism and anti-Bushism.
I think Romney scored when he talked about Bain Capital.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone else here read Matt Taibbi's latest on Bain?
How fair is it?
Is K&B Toys a representative example of Bain's modus operandi, or was it cherry-picking on Taibbi's part?
It seems like it ought to be pretty easy to refute Taibbi's thesis [if it's false]: Just get out a spreadsheet and calculate before-n-afters for total corporate debt of the Bain holdings and also before-n-afters for employee efficiency [widgets produced per employee total remuneration?].
Vietnamese which the Republicans do the best among the Asians are about 30 percent Roman Catholic
ReplyDeleteVietnamese-Americans are among the most likely of asian-americans to be on welfare, to be involved in gangs etc. By contrast the asian-americans most likely to be Democrats are the japanese-americans who are also least likely to be on welfare.
Bringing up Neil Armstrong and his epic walk on the Moon only highlighted the fact that many of the greatest achievements of America were not the products of the free market.
ReplyDeleteAll the speeches were good. Clint's nearly veered off into a senililty train wreck, but he got the job done. Romney's better than I thought it would be. I wished he had spent less time on the bio stuff. We all have personal histories.
ReplyDeleteTrying to suggest, as I think Rubio did, that Mitt came from a family of immigrants is absurd. His grandfather came back to the US from Mexico.
Amazing how far we've come though: we don't promise balanced budgets anymore. We just say we'll put ourselves on the road to get there. We promise how we'll fix entitlements, not how we'll end them. Sigh.
Did Truth really call Romney Mittens? I always thought he had some semblance of a sense of humor. Disappointing. His full name is Mitthew.
ReplyDeleteDan in DC
Great speech maybe, but it's all for show.
ReplyDeleteThe powers that be have already decided who's going to be their mouthpiece in the White House, and we will know he is in November.
America effectively IS a one-party state, like the Soviet Union was. The only real difference is that the bolsheviks were brazen enough to drop the pretense of a multi-party state.
America's elite is too media and showbizz oriented to yet relinquish this grand spectacle of an 'election'
Watched about fifteen minutes then switched off the television. Speeches are written by speechwriters and read off the teleprompter. It's not the Gettysburg Address. I'd like to see both barred but that's just a fantasy.
ReplyDeleteHe said we haven't been supportive of Israel enough, nor tough enough on Iran. He also threw a mention of Cuba into the mix, an issue which is rather long in the tooth by now. So what does all this gung-ho talk mean? More war? Or is one supposed to mark it all down as just rhetoric, not to be taken too seriously?
I could not be bothered to waste my time paying attention to Mitt's or Obummer's kabuki-b.s. Tonight I enjoyed watching my DVD of 'The Bridge On The River Kwai.'
ReplyDeleteFeaturing:
Mitt Romney as Major Warden.
Barack Obama as Colonel Saito.
Clint Eastwood as Lt. Colonel Nicholson.
And special guest star Steve Sailer, as Major Clipton ("Madness!"..."Madness!").
the mormon stuff was smart - separates him from obama - interesting the mormons used "inclusive" language -- saying congregation for "ward" & pastor for "bishop" etc. LDS normally would never refer to their bishop as a "pastor!"
ReplyDeleteMost of the speeches had some good lines, but none was great as a standalone. As Michael Savage correctly noted, there was little to no mentioning of the Tea Party, who got the GOP the House and galvanized the party these last few years. The Republican party is as hell-bent on self-destruction as the Dems are of the country's destruction, it would seem.
ReplyDeletePaul Ryan's line, "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." will be the most remembered line.
ReplyDeletePolitical hacks are arguing about his analogy with the plant that closed and promised, unmaterialized jobs, but everyone knows a twenty-something who hasn't left or a thirty or forty-something who's back at mom and dad's.
Mitt's line about how his father gave his mother a rose every day, and when one was missing she knew something was wrong, was the one I remember most.
I think it is hard for people who are deeply interested in politics and public policy, like many of us who regularly read Steve Sailer, to analyze how low and moderate information swing voters will react to Romney's speech. For what it worth (not much, sample size of one), my relatively apolitical wife (58 year old school nurse) liked the speech, and thought it made Romney seem likeable. We will have to wait for the polls to see how much of a bounce Romney gets, but I would be quite surprised if he got no bounce at all. My guess would be a 3% or 4% bounce in the polls, but we'll all find out soon. It was clearly not an A+ convention for the Republicans, like 1992 was for Clinton or 1988 was for George H.W. Bush, but it went fairly well; I'd give their overall performance a B+. But I am a political junkie who's a strong Republican, so my intuition might be very wrong.
ReplyDeleteOne final comment.
ReplyDeleteLawrence Auster wonders if a nation that requires such over-the-top gestures to women deserves to survive.
While I think the Republicans miscalculated on the question of what women want, I had similar thoughts to Auster as I watched it, especially the lauding of the goal for women at the top ranks that is congruent with their numbers in the overall population.
There was also this: a "conservative" American, as Romney is, means being more anti-Putin.
Putin is the greatest leader any people have and is the closest thing anyone has to a traditionalist. Being a defender of our system means being anti-Putin, pro-oligarch and a total ignorance of the realities of gender and people.
He warned Russia but Russia has done really nothing outside of their own backyard to provoke us. They are involved in Syria but Syria has been an ally of thiers. Why can't they just let the cold war die?
ReplyDeleteI thought Romney was effective. Leave the partisan red meat to Ryan and work on being the likable, trustworthy CEO. Basically the Rs have two aces in the hole: 1) everything sucks and the only response available is to switch presidents, and 2) a 2-1 funding advantage, thanks to Citizens United and corporate money. All they need to do is be likable, not too hard edged, and not screw things up. Well on the way to doing that.
ReplyDeleteYou think that Obama is not smarmy, untrustworthy, and plastic?
Obama does not do well on likability among the white racist demographic, heavily overrepresented on this blog, but generally he is very likable. It's actually astounding he's been able to keep his personal favorability ratings so high in such a bad economy.
Mixed feelings.
ReplyDeleteI was a very early supporter of Mitt posting on this board at the beginning of the primaries that Mitt was the only reasonable alternative.
I had lived in Mass when Mitt was governor and I thought he did a decent job given that the legislature was overwhelmingly Democrat.
However, one of the posters an Steve's blog a couple of threads back (sorry can't remember your name) made a good point that made me think.
Basicially, he wondered that because Mitt has that 1950s aura if there is a tendency to project our fantaises onto him --- in short, that he will be a return to Eisenhower normalcy.
A lot of conservative voters are turned off by NeoCon war mongering, huge military spending, multicult pandering, and open borders cheap labor advocacy.
None of these are "conservative" positions if the "American family" is the most important thing to Mitt as he claims.
On the one hand, I did like Mitt's emphasis on the importance of family and the part where Mitt mentioned unconditional love as the most important gift a parent can give to their child and that "who they are" is more important than "what they do." As someone who did not recieve it I can attest that it creates a lot of problems for the person later in life. I thought that mentioning it was a nice touch.
On the other hand, Mitt's pandering to Israel on Iran during the speech made me think that he is maybe ACTUALLY comitted to a strong agressive foreign policy and not just pandering to Jews for money and votes. I hope that it is just pandering... but I wonder.
Overall, Mitt didn't blow me away... and though I still think he will be better than Obama (who seems more and more to be be Anti-White and doesn't really understand economics) my enthusiasm has begun to cool a little bit (choice of Paul Ryan a career politician who approaches government like an accountant didn't help much either though I am not sure who would have been a better choice).
I guess I wonder, like some of the other posters, if it is all just Kabuki theatre and more of the same old same old NeoCon RHINO BS.
Romney would win in a walk if the didn't have the rest of the party dragging him down. A Massachusetts Conservative is just what the country wants; but they don't want an Alabama conservative or Wall Street libertarian, which is who still pulls the strings within the Republican party.
ReplyDeleteI think the Reps are too optimistic about what it will take to win. They're acting as though "This election is ours, so we'll put forth the policies we want," instead of "We can win by not turning people off." If they lose, they're going to wrongly blame Romney, when the problem is Haley Barbour and Sheldon Adelson.
This season is cardboard vs particleboard.
ReplyDeleteOne very last comment and it's about Marco Rubio whom Steve has written about a number of times.
ReplyDeleteMy intuition tells me that he is a man of conviction and decent, and like the Pauls, he was gently chastising some of the Republicans rather than talking to the Democrats.
He was the most conservative speaker and I got the sense that he was pushing back against the hyper-individualism and materialism displayed so much, as David Brooks pointed out, out of genuine belief.
For example, he said our rights came from God almighty and I sensed that the way it was punctuated, not hacknied, etc., that he was rebuking Paul Ryan whom said our rights came from God and nature.
The GOP is trying to shake off the image of being just a bunch of tired old white guys by having Clint Eastwood come out on stage, and in a fit of senility, debate an imaginary person.
ReplyDelete"Romney would win in a walk if the didn't have the rest of the party dragging him down. A Massachusetts Conservative is just what the country wants; but they don't want an Alabama conservative or Wall Street libertarian, which is who still pulls the strings within the Republican party. "
ReplyDeleteIf you think Alabamans control the Republican party, I don't know what you've been smoking. When was the last time an Alabama Republican became a national star in the party? I guess you could count Huckabee but I wouldn't suggest he runs the party either. The Republican party doesn't do anything for the deep south other than pandering with social issues to get their votes. Basically just throwing bones out there, that is it.
Sadly if the GOP was all about "Alabama Republicans" then perhaps they would take a stronger position on border security and immigration.
"I might have missed it (I was switching back and forth between college football), but I didn't hear one word about the 2nd amendment or gun rights."
ReplyDelete1) they didn't need to bring it up because they have THOSE votes
2) it WAS brought up to great applause the night before by the funny speech of Gov. Susana Martinez of NM, telling of her parents' opening a small business, which they grew, and of her as a young girl working security for them at a bingo game...and carrying a .357 Magnum.
The crowd roared and I laughed my head off at all the lilly-livered progressive males who wouldn't know where the trigger was on a gun.
"Thing is, how does he win? He needs VA, NC, OH and FL, just for starters."
ReplyDeleteHe'll win NC, no problem, but VA is the greatest problem, I do believe--all those government employees who live there, worried about any POTUS who speaks of smaller governement. That, of course, is our problem in California--people on the dole, government workers who don't produce wealth or jobs, and not enough of the population as workers....and those who are damn mad that they see themselves supporting able-bodied people who have no intention of ever going off the dole.
"Obama does not do well on likability among the white racist demographic, heavily overrepresented on this blog, but generally he is very likable."
ReplyDeleteI guess this is where I am out of touch. I'm a woman and I've always found Obama to be a guy who knows he can get away with a lot with the nice smile. I have never liked guys going on women's talk shows and gabbing with the ladies, smiling, and showing them how "sensitive" he is.
From my years of living, all politics aside, I perceive all kinds of evidence that the man much more likely to be sentimental and gentle is Romney--that's one reason a lot of men don't like to indulge pubclically in "revealing their feelings," because they ARE sentimental and tear and choke up easily, which, you probably noticed, Romney did last night when he said he and his wife missed the days of little boys crawling all over their bed in the morning. He barely got through that.
Obama has never choked up over anything...he has well-planned pauses.
The problem is, I follow politics and most Americans don't, so they "saw" Romney for the first time last night.
I'm becoming prone to conspiracy thinking lately. Forgive me if what follows is loony.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the whole mantra of Obama being a nice guy was a bit overdone. Ryan, Rubio and then Romney went to some lengths to establish that they personally like Obama and thought he was a good father. Why so much repetition?
Obama objectively isn't a very nice guy. We saw some of that early with the police incident and the Joe the Plumber incident. His wife is positively nasty. He does not give much to charity and does have a record of kindness to neighbors or strangers. He seems to be motivated by abstract (but simpleminded) ideological notions. He doesn't seem to be motivated by real personal feelings. Romney is accused of being robotic but it is Obama who seems to be acting out a program. He seems "cool". He does not seem "warm".
So why all the fulsome praise for Obama's niceness? I suspect an October surprise.
Romney's team also presented an awful lot of material about his love for his wife. When Ann Romney told Mitt how sick she was, she must have felt lucky that her husband wasn't John Edwards. But why keep pounding on that point?
I suspect that the October surprise will be about Obama's domestic arrangements. There are a slew of Web rumors that Obama is a homosexual and that Reverend Wright's church provided a service that matched gay black men with ambitious black women.
Maybe the question should never have been ""Who was Obama's real father?" But "Who is the real father of Obama's children?
I'm probably not alone in wondering how anyone could possibly love Michelle Obama. She's so unlovable. And Obama's love life towards women seems strangely muted. When I was young I was always chasing women. Like any normal man if I were to write an autobiography there would be anecdotes about love and sex on every other page. The whole Obama nuclear family looks a little artificial.
So maybe the RNC is sitting on some evidence that Obama isn't so wholesome domestically. What better way to capitalize on the contrast with straight arrow Romney than to go on record as approving of Obama as a father and a "nice guy". Where was Obama when he wasn't at Columbia and who was he with?
Albertosaurus
Loved the line to Putin: less flexibility, more backbone.
ReplyDeleteWhy did you love this? With all the problems we have, the demographic time bomb, the debt time bomb, the loss of our industrial base, etc., how can anyone rank Russia as a problem or concern to the US?
If the GOP thinks Russia is enough of a problem to mention, but ignores immigration and the third worldization of the USA, then why on Earth should anyone on this blog vote for them?
"Wall Street libertarian"
ReplyDeleteThere is no such thing.
Well, some of the Alabamian conservatives are good on illegal immigration, its the Texaians and Floridians conservatives with Rick Perry and Jeb Bush types that ruin the Republican Party not Jeff Sessions as much. Mitt and Ryan were not from border states but having the convention in Hispanic Florida brought all of this stuff up. At one time they were thinking of Phoenix Hispanics yes but that is Jan Brewer's area so they would not have been so much pushed for ger the hispanic vote. The Republican party has too much ties to border states, in the old days it was California, then Texas and now Florida which isn't a border state but has a lot of Hispanic connections to make it as worst.
ReplyDeleteWell, I saw one of the Russia Today shows and they had as guest Mr Webb head of the USA Communist party and all those rhetoric how great socialism says and the support of the Occupy bunch. So, Putin and company may not be as great as some on the right think.
ReplyDelete"Romney wants to come over as the guy you'd like to have a drink with, but it's more like drinking with the boss at the office picnic."
ReplyDeleteThat drink would be KoolAid (and not just because of Romney's Mormonism).
Saw this on another blog. Hope that person doesn't care I am quoting it, but it hits the spot in how the MSM is knocking Clint:
ReplyDelete" Eastwood asked that empty chair better/tougher questions than the MSM has asked the President of the United States through 2 campaigns for President and 4 years of failing at being President."
Now, that is a line that both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan should use on the trail.
The family part choked me up. About his parents and the roses. But the proposition nation bs was there also about immigration I the beginningart.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't paying much attention to what was said - it's all boilerplate anyway. Though I liked the line about not getting the Mormon pension fund to invest in Bain. What I found interesting was the crowd reactions. I was listening to the last half in my car. The "sanctity of life" line got a distinctly different cheer than most of the applause lines. The "energy jobs" line got a different-sounding cheer, too.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately for the fans of a less aggressive foreign policy, his lines there got the strongest crowd reaction of anything he said - I think more than he anticipated.
I liked Romney more after watching the speech and video. I admire him. Of course like everybody I wonder about how socially positive Bain Capital was, but to me he just came across as a really good, really competent guy.
ReplyDeleteObama does not do well on likability among the white racist demographic, heavily overrepresented on this blog, but generally he is very likable. It's actually astounding he's been able to keep his personal favorability ratings so high in such a bad economy.
ReplyDeleteI guess it helps if your friends in the media never actually mention the bad economy and constantly portray Obama in a fashion which the old Soviet leaders would have envied.
It all helps Obama that his base of blacks, Jews, and white liberals are racist to the core and could not care less about his job performance as long as his skin color remains dark.
"Vietnamese-Americans are among the most likely of asian-americans to be on welfare"
ReplyDeleteIn the UK, Vietnamese pretty much run the home hydroponic marijuana cultivation industry, in that they 'babysit' the plants, feeding and watering them, maybe visiting several rented houses a day, and they get caught quite often.
Whether it's they who fund the enterprise, set up the hydroponics and lights, and sell the product I'm not sure.
I've gained respect and enthusiasm for Romney during his campaign; his acceptance speech was solid but not electric.
ReplyDeleteI was inspired by his character , religion, family, and reference to founding liberties. I appreciated his framing Obama as a disappointment; success as an admirable thing. I loved the oceans recede/heal the planet reference vrs. "help your family".
Romney and the entire RNC speakers were too try hard to woo the women's votes.
I heard that Clint Eastwood asked if he could appear at the Republican National Convention. They got back and said "sure, to talk to the Chair of the RNC." His hearing aid was broken and he thought that they said "talk to A chair at the RNC." The rest is history! Budum bump!
ReplyDeleteVapid attempt to act and look Reganesque. I'm irritated with the continued bland, nutless RHINO males who are scared of their own shadows and pander to P.C. and so want someone such as a Barry Goldwater clone-- a MAN -- to tell it like it is. Not a dime's worth of difference between the parties once in office has been the song before Obama came along, but still it's either a Sunday drive over the cliff or a Volt speeding over it is the choice. The guys behind the curtain will make whomever they select do their bidding, one world control is the goal.
ReplyDeleteA clear case of Romney being the lesser of two evils. In other words, this election is another case of the evil of two lessers.
ReplyDeleteIf his goal was to seem more human and less slick, I think he succeeded. The clumsiness actually helped in that regard.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of content, it seemed a lot like a low-octane version of Ryan's speech from the night before.
But personally, I am totally over placing any value on a president's public-speaking ability. Been there, done that. And look what it got us.
I'm irritated with the continued bland, nutless RHINO males who are scared of their own shadows and pander to P.C. and so want someone such as a Barry Goldwater clone-- a MAN -- to tell it like it is.
ReplyDeleteGoldwater was a RINO - an open-borders socially liberal Republican. Not very different from Bush, really.
Obama objectively isn't a very nice guy.
ReplyDeleteI agree wholeheartedly. It's become clear to me that he's an arrogant prick who tells himself incessant fairytales about how virtuous and insightful he is.
I'm probably not alone in wondering how anyone could possibly love Michelle Obama. She's so unlovable.
Come on, Pat. You don't know any straight men married to women who have aged into viragos? It's common, even in an age of easy divorce. The marriage just evolves into more of a business partnership and less of a romance.
"Did Truth really call Romney Mittens? I always thought he had some semblance of a sense of humor. Disappointing. His full name is Mitthew."
ReplyDeleteActually his name is (are you sitting down?) Willard!
Mittens is actually a double entendre; Every time Mitt's not talking about his wife, he has this curious look on his face, like a rich white man who's Mercedes Limo somehow broke down outside of a dirty Kuala Lumpur truckstop, and he badly needs to take a shit, so he goes in and tries to #2 without touching anything.
PX Ryan, also, double entendre, he was Paul "the X-factor" Ryan, but that image of him flexing his 148 lb. muscles in a tank top is seared into my memory for ever.
"When I was young I was always chasing women. Like any normal man if I were to write an autobiography there would be anecdotes about love and sex on every other page."
ReplyDeleteYes Wilt, you've made that one quite clear.
A clear case of Romney being the lesser of two evils. In other words, this election is another case of the evil of two lessers.
ReplyDeleteA clear case of America sending Obama home as a giant shit-test to libtards. I really want to hear the rending of the clothes, the gnashing of the teeth, the wailing.
http://moneymorning.com/ob/economist-richard-duncan-civilization-may-not-survive-death-spiral/
ReplyDeleteMebbe rommer should lose.
That chair could beat Mitt Romney in a Presidential election.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why the Republicans with a creditable chance sat this primary out, but they did. I could make some reasonable speculations, starting with it is difficult to beat a sitting President, though some signs of vulnerability are there.
But Mitt Romney...
He might have beaten Michael Dukakis in a Presidential race.
Maybe.
His only hope is the power of money, but I don't think it is humanly possible to spend enough to put him over the top.
You guys are telling yourself what you want to hear. Hilary Clinton would have wiped the floor with him.
I and others have said it before, but it will be interesting to see what direction the Republican party goes in.
My belief is that this election will be pointed to by future generations of political scholars as akin to the 64' Goldwater election, only instead of heralding the birth of a new direction of a standing party, it is the destruction of a version of a party.
I'm not going to quibble words here. I think that the faux populism will go out the window, and some new constituency will be developed.
As far as the new Republican party, whatever that will be, is concerned there nothing to worry about.
The true core values won't be compromised, because those core values are shared by the opposition party.
And heck, they won't lose much of the white vote. It may not be as excited, as much of a turnout in elections, but in the end where are the non-elite whites gonna go anyway?
The Republican party has them on the hook as surely as the Democratic party has blacks.
Mark my words, by 2016 the Tea Party will be passe, and you are going to see a whole new marketing campaign (for want of a better word).
And to be blunt, what choice do they have? The prospects are poor in 2016 for this version of the Republican party, and impossible by 2020.
Like any normal man if I were to write an autobiography there would be anecdotes about love and sex on every other page.
ReplyDeleteWell, that, and when they dress up in school-girl outfits and lean over Mr. Principal's knee for a nice hard spanking.
So let me get this straight. Clint Eastwood represents the old WASP guard, the kind that is disappointed with the way America is being run over by colored retards.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, here he is being a coward and talking to an empty chair? I mean is this an example of one of the famous WASP values that are being lost? Shouldn't a guy like 'Dirty Harry' do nothing less than look someone in the eye, man to man, when he accusing him of something? Looked quite silly, I must say.
Every istever willing to shamelessly admit in public that watching an empty suit read a pre-rehearsed speech written for him by some kid made him "like Romney more" or any some such idiocy should forever be banned from this forum. The convention show - indeed elections in general - are for idiots.
ReplyDeleteIt's all a friggin etch-a-sketch and you bozos are too goddamn stupid to remember that every two years.
Romney is the most competent and accomplished man to run for President since maybe Bush 41, and he has more impressive private sector experience than 41 did. Last night's speech was solid.
ReplyDeleteThe problem isn't Romney so much as it is the incredibly ridiculous tailwind Obama gets from the media and the liberal elite. If we had a Republican president now and there were 42 straight weeks of 8%+ unemployment, there would be stories about that on the news every night. Same with our KIA in Afghanistan ticking over 2000 (two thirds of those on Obama's watch). Obama gets a complete pass on it, and Silicon Valley exclaims about how great it is that the POTUS sat for an "ask me anything" on Reddit.
Related, a good piece in the FT by Conrad Black, "Republicans can end 15 years of US stupidity". Brief excerpt:
ReplyDelete"It is an abiding mystery why the US, after leading the west to the greatest strategic victory in the history of the nation state in the cold war and the triumph of democracy in most of the world, has been for about 15 years, in public policy terms, an almost unrelievedly stupid country. America’s enemies could scarcely have devised a more suicidal programme than the one that was followed: outsourcing nearly 50m jobs while admitting 20m unskilled aliens; throwing American lives and $2tn after nation-building in the Middle East; and inundating the world with trillions of dollars of worthless real estate-backed debt, certified as investment-grade by the palsied lions of Wall Street. In comparison, even the hare-brained miscues that have endangered the eurozone seem Solomonic."
Lots of hostile comments by lefty FT readers there.
"The problem isn't Romney so much as it is the incredibly ridiculous tailwind Obama gets from the media and the liberal elite. If we had a Republican president now and there were 42 straight weeks of 8%+ unemployment, there would be stories about that on the news every night"
ReplyDeleteI've begun calling the networks PRAVDA.
My best friends watch NBC news every night, and they had no idea what "Fast and Furious" referred to. There was a vague idea that they had heard the phrase. They subscribe to the SF Chronicle, and I thought they read it, so it strikes me the Chron, a very liberal rag, must have buried the story on the back page.
I really believe that R&R can only win this race by attacking the media, ala George Bush/Dan Rather.
Preferrably, Ryan should do it in the debates.
"It's all a friggin etch-a-sketch"
ReplyDeleteHey, bud, the least you could do is coin your own phrase to show your independence and brilliance in recognizing the defects of democracy by media.
"Hilary Clinton would have wiped the floor with him."
ReplyDeleteNo one in modern politics is a worse speech giver, is more stiff in public, more awkward, than Hilary Clinton.
However, the media has built her up to be Maggie Thatcher, dontcha know?
See, that's the point: whether it's MSM or SNL (who'll never go low on Obama or Hilary--unless she's pitted against Obama), the people with the power of the camera and the power of the word see to it that they put forth the Dem's talking points.
My sister saw Mitt Romney 4+ years ago in a Presidential primary debate, and she said she never thought of him as anyone other than a good looking, articulate guy who was once governor of MA and who lead the OLympics.
This year, she said she expected Gordon Gecko with fangs to appear based on what she had heard for months-----from the media.
"If we had a Republican president now and there were 42 straight weeks [I assume you mean months?] of 8%+ unemployment, there would be stories about that on the news every night."
ReplyDeleteBingo. I can still remember back in 1992 seeing the CBS News segment "The Money Crunch," designed to remind you every single night that we're in a recession!. The ran it right up through the 1992 election, iirc.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteBingo. I can still remember back in 1992 seeing the CBS News segment "The Money Crunch," designed to remind you every single night that we're in a recession!. The ran it right up through the 1992 election, iirc."
Much like "homelessness", which was a pressing national problem and a national disgrace, starting in about 1982 and running right up until January 20th, 1993, when it just solved itself somehow. I even heard the establishment media (other than FOX) attempt to trot out the whole homeless problem again when GW took office. It never seemed to gain much traction, however, and they just dropped it.
Right, 42 straight months, not weeks. Thanks for catching that.
ReplyDeleteOkay, just some teeny tiny evidence that the media, in this case PBS' achorwoman, Gwen Ifill, who just happens to have been chosen as one of the debate "moderators" tweeted these the other day:
ReplyDeletegwen ifill@pbsgwen
Welcome, new twitter detractors. Here's a good read via @ron_fournierhttp://bit.ly/SS1L04
____________________________
29 Auggwen ifill@pbsgwen
One mistake does not change this. @DavidChalian is God's gift to political journalism. #IStandwithDavid
_______________________________
So, in the first tweet, Ms Ifill suggests her readers check out the "good read": an article in which the writer, some guy named Fournier, maintains that Romney is uber playing the race card...yeah, Romney, not Obama and the Chicago 7, but Romney. (We do know Ms Ifill is black, do we not?)
In the second tweet, she sticks up for Yahoo's David Chalian (formerlyu of ABC) whose voice was caught off camera laughing as he saw Mitt Romney and his wife walking somewhere, answering a reporter's question and semi-laughing, "There they are--republicans laughing while black people drown."
Yahoo fired him immediately as audience members called in, but so what? The media is loaded with his type, progressives who don't even care to countenance a fair, unbiased appearance, as Ms Ifill so well demonstrates.
If assuming he was biased because of his profession is just too much for anyone, they can listen to the video clip that got him fired and guess what else he is. I mean, most guys don't have voices like that. But, we're not surprised, are we?
What we saw at the Republican Convention:
ReplyDeleteThe party is over for the Tea Party...
No one is listening to the southern evangelical preachers anymore....
The immigrant bashers were treated as outcasts...
Girl Power...
The WNs must have gotten heartburn on learning that Paul Ryan had a black girlfriend for 5 years, and on seeing that Clint Eastwood has a mixed race brown wife.
ReplyDeleteA Mormon prayer started the proceedings on the final day, and a Catholic cardinal gave the closing prayer.
ReplyDeleteA Sikh gave the opening invocation on day two.
In his speech Romney, the founder of his american religion was lynched by fundamentalist protestants, emphatically declared: As president, I will protect the sanctity of life. I will honor the institution of marriage. And I will guarantee America’s first liberty: the freedom of religion.
The WNs must have gotten heartburn on learning that Paul Ryan had a black girlfriend for 5 years, and on seeing that Clint Eastwood has a mixed race brown wife.
ReplyDeleteI'm an ethno-patriot, not a WN, but I couldn't care less who Ryan or Eastwood marry or shack up with. I will point out that Eastwood seemed to have a strong unconscious urge to procreate with women closely matched to his own genetic stock, and now that he's out to pasture it doesn't much matter who he's married.
Bringing up Neil Armstrong and his epic walk on the Moon only highlighted the fact that many of the greatest achievements of America were not the products of the free market.
ReplyDeleteRight; it highlighted the fact that they were the products of mulattoes.
Much like "homelessness", which was a pressing national problem and a national disgrace, starting in about 1982 and running right up until January 20th, 1993, when it just solved itself somehow. I even heard the establishment media (other than FOX) attempt to trot out the whole homeless problem again when GW took office. It never seemed to gain much traction, however, and they just dropped it.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget gas prices. It was a steady litany until 0bama.
"In his speech Romney, the founder of his american religion was lynched by fundamentalist protestants, emphatically declared:
ReplyDeleteAs president, I will protect the sanctity of life. I will honor the institution of marriage. And I will guarantee America’s first liberty: the freedom of religion.'
yeah, well, that's what freedom of speech assures we can do...and then there are those millions of tolerant progressives who've been trying to portray him as weird (in fact, POTUS' major domo, Axelrod, goes on the Sunday shows regularly to remind folks of the stranger among us) and making jokes about magic underwear.
Ah, humanity: Bible thumpers and progressives have so much in common after all.
"What we saw at the Republican Convention:
ReplyDelete"The party is over for the Tea Party..."
I don't know if you are one, but you *sound* like one of those ignorant people who think Tea Party people beat up minorities, carry shotguns to the rallies, and eat nothing but beef.
And, you're sadly misinformed. Ever been to a town hall with a Congressional rep and sat there listening to people who call themselves Tea Partiers?
Ever been to a rally?
No, didn't think so.
YOu see, most are Boomers or their adult children who've kids of their own; a high percentage are those with very small businesses or those who work for such businesses, people who've never so much as had a run-in with the law other than a speeding ticket or two over their lives; they revere friendly, clean and safe neighborhoods and schools...and they don't understand why people like you hate them.
Republicans claim they will check the growth of the parasitic entitlment class but there is a snowball's chance of that happening without revoking single women's right to vote.
ReplyDelete"The WNs must have gotten heartburn on learning that Paul Ryan had a black girlfriend for 5 years, and on seeing that Clint Eastwood has a mixed race brown wife."
ReplyDeleteWhat a remarkably ignorant comment. Conservatives have long since resigned themselves to the fact that GOP is the Democratic Lite party. Most dislike thinking of themselves or being thought of as Republicans.
They will not be voting for Romney so much as voting for whichever not-Obama they believe has the best chance of winning. Some of the purists will sit this one out altogether, the pragmatists among them will hold their noses and do what they must.
Oh stop it Kylie, you know you still have PX Ryan's shirtless picture taped up inside your locker.
ReplyDeleteOne of the anonymussels above actually said Mitt wasn't from a border state. You're kidding, right? Harper Hospital, where he was born, isn't even two miles from the border.
ReplyDeleteAs for one large and important voting bloc-- those who can no longer go back to their old neighborhood-- Mitt Romney is the poster child.
Republicans claim they will check the growth of the parasitic entitlment class but there is a snowball's chance of that happening without revoking single women's right to vote. --anonymous
ReplyDeleteNew Jersey actually did this in 1804. A long story, but fascinating.
Right; it highlighted the fact that they were the products of mulattoes.
ReplyDeleteThe current head of NASA, a former Commander of the Space Shuttle, is a mullato.
"Oh stop it Kylie, you know you still have PX Ryan's shirtless picture taped up inside your locker."
ReplyDeleteNope, not that.
This:
Shirtless Pin-Up
I really believe that R&R can only win this race by attacking the media, ala George Bush/Dan Rather.
ReplyDeletePreferrably, Ryan should do it in the debates.
Nobody has ever won an election by doing that. Sure its good red meat for the base. But to everyone else the candidate looks like a serial whiner who avoids real issues by crying foul. Bush was never an enemy of the MSM. In fact his guys manipulated it like absolute pros to drum up support for the invasions.
"The current head of NASA, a former Commander of the Space Shuttle, is a mullato."
ReplyDeleteThis would be the NASA that's without a way to get men into space for the first time since...1962?
The same administrator who said that one of his top jobs as head of NASA would be 'to help the Muslim world feel better about their contributions to science'?