Republican Convention - Days 2 & 3

I also got to watch the better part of the last two evenings of the Republican convention last week.  With the exception of Rand Paul's rousing speech early in the evening in which gave a surprisingly strong endorsement of Romney, the only speeches of the second evening that stood out to me were the final three -- Condoleezza Rice, Susana Martinez, and Paul Ryan.  I was only half paying attention at the beginning of Rice's speech, but started listening more closely when I realized that she was giving a very eloquent speech that was dazzling the crowd.  She spoke more about domestic policy, including energy and education policy, than I expected.  She spoke movingly of the incredible story of her life, rising from her childhood in segregated Mississippi to become Secretary of State of the United States.  Among her best lines were these:

Ours has never been a narrative of grievance and entitlement. We have not believed that I am doing poorly because you are doing well. We have not been envious of one another and jealous of each other’s success. Ours has been a belief in opportunity and a constant battle — long and hard — to extend the benefits of the American dream to all — without regard to circumstances of birth.
 

Susana Martinez, governor of New Mexico and the first female Hispanic governor in the U.S., spoke next and had the crowd and me cracking up with this story:

Before I ran for District Attorney, two Republicans invited my husband and me to lunch. And I knew a party-switch was exactly what they wanted.

So, I told Chuck, we'll be polite, enjoy a free lunch and then say goodbye.

But we talked about issues-they never used the words Republican, or Democrat, conservative or liberal.

We talked about many issues, like welfare - is it a way of life, or a hand-up?

Talked about the size of government -- how much should it tax families and small businesses?

And when we left that lunch, we got in the car and I looked over at Chuck and said, "I'll be damned, we're Republicans!"
 

But I thought the best speech, not just of the night, but of the entire convention, was Paul Ryan's acceptance speech for nomination for Vice President.  It was a brilliantly written and substantive speech and was delivered masterfully.  It was one of the most devastating critiques of Obama's first term that I have ever heard -- certainly the most effective attack on Obama's record that I heard during the entire convention.  Ryan cut through all the noise and explained simply and clearly why Obama has been a failure.  And he did so without coming across as nasty or angry.  He also managed to sound optimistic about our future and sincere about seeking to address the big problems we face, and he managed to weave in some very personal moments about his family and background as well as some lines that had me laughing out loud.  After so many years of having lackluster speakers on the Republican presidential and vice-presidential tickets, it is so refreshing to have someone on the 2012 ticket who can communicate conservative ideas effectively!  If you have not had the opportunity to watch Ryan's acceptance speech yet, I highly recommend watching it below:

One sign of the effectiveness of Ryan's speech was the fact that Obama and the media immediately began attacking Ryan for the supposed lies in his speech.  A sample media hit job on Ryan is this Yahoo article.  Not surprisingly, Yahoo was wrong and Ryan was right.  On every one of these points:

1. Ryan claimed ObamaCare took $716 billion out of Medicare.  That is TRUE.  Of course the cuts "do not affect Medicare recipients directly," if by directly you mean that ObamaCare doesn’t literally pull cash out of people’s wallets.  ObamaCare takes money away from the Medicare program, which means lower payments to insurance plans and health providers, which means seniors’ health coverage will be directly affected.  This is an actual cut to Medicare.  The budget endorsed by the Romney-Ryan ticket eliminates those cuts to Medicare.  So this cut by Obama would be reversed by Romney.


2. Ryan claimed that that the stimulus was political patronage and cronyism that did nothing to get the economy going.  That is TRUE.  Even Obama was forced to admit those "shovel ready" jobs weren’t so shovel ready after all.  Ryan opposed the stimulus bill and voted against it.  AFTER IT WAS ALREADY PASSED, he tried to make sure his district wasn’t left out.  That doesn’t disprove what Ryan said about the stimulus.  It just means that if the stimulus money was going to be spent anyway, he didn’t want his district to be left out.  But he didn’t want it to be passed in the first place.


3. That plant in Janesville, WI that Ryan mentioned was partially shut down in December 2008, before Obama took office, but it continued production on a much smaller scale until April 2009, when it was permanently and fully closed.  Obama made campaign promises about saving the plant, but it was shut down on his watch and never re-opened.  Obama made promises he couldn’t keep.  What Ryan said was accurate.


4. What Ryan said about Obama doing nothing with regard to the debt commissions is ABSOLUTELY TRUE.  Ryan voted no on the final findings of the debt commission – that is also true.  That was because the commission kept ObamaCare, and Ryan is opposed to ObamaCare.  However, Ryan did work with the commission on various ideas and he did propose an alternate budget that incorporated many elements of the Simpson-Bowles commission.  His alternate solution was actually praised by Erskine Bowles, the Democratic co-chair of the commission.  Obama, by contrast, completely ignored his own debt commission and proposed another completely unserious budget that did nothing about the debt at all.  It got zero votes in both the House and the Senate.  While Ryan disagreed with the debt commission’s conclusion, he worked hard to come up with alternate solutions even though he is only one out of 435 House members.  Obama is the president with more responsibility than anyone else, and yet did nothing to come up with any serious solutions.  Ryan’s attack was not only true, it was also completely fair.

This is why people need to stop letting the media do their thinking for them.  The press's latest tactic is to use the objective-sounding term "fact checking" to disguise their ideologically driven attacks against Republicans. 

I also watched most of the final night of the convention, which mostly featured a series of tributes from individuals who know Romney personally or who have worked with him professionally.  While I do not accept Mormonism as a legitimate form of Christianity, I couldn't help but be impressed by several individuals from Romney's church who movingly described the kindness, compassion, and love which Romney displayed in helping them through some incredibly tragic circumstances.  Those testimonies convinced me that Romney is not just a successful businessman, but also a deeply caring person who has spent his life helping others.  I was more familiar with Romney's experience founding and growing Bain Capital, turning around the Salt Lake City Olympics, and governing Massachusetts, but still found myself more impressed than I expected with the full weight of Romney's experiences and accomplishments throughout his life.  There is no doubt that Romney is a man who is eminently qualified to be president.

In between these tributes and Romney's acceptance speech were wedged two very different speakers: Clint Eastwood (!) and Senator Marco Rubio.  Eastwood's "speech" was actually more of an unscripted comedic routine which seemed a bit confused at times but got in some very effective shots at Obama.  Eastwood dared to do what no one else at the convention would or could: make fun of Obama (and Biden of course).  Despite a couple of crude allusions, I enjoyed the routine and would guess it played much better outside of the beltway than it did with professional pundits.  Rubio's speech was somewhat overshadowed by Eastwood but completely met my high expectations.  Among the most effective moments of his speech were his comment that "Obama was not a bad person, just a bad president" and his list of Obama's tax-and-spend, socialistic policies followed by the statement that "these are tired and old big government ideas. Ideas that people come to America to get away from."  (This last was especially effective coming from the son of Cuban immigrants.)

There was nothing really wrong with Romney's acceptance speech, but I can't say that it excited me very much.  Many pundits seemed genuinely impressed with Romney's delivery and even stated that it was the best speech of his career.  I guess I have mostly heard Romney speak in debate forums rather than straight speeches, but I didn't find his delivery very impressive.  He seemed stiff and out-of-sync with the audience for at least the first half of the speech.  He seemed like he was rushing through the speech too much and failing to articulate his words clearly and pause appropriately, although he seemed to relax and did much better in the second half of his remarks.  Also, the speech was clearly designed to soften and humanize Romney, which may have appealed to independent and undecided voters but wasn't really what I was looking for.  The first half to two-thirds of the speech was pretty non-ideological, but he did finally get more into specifics about his beliefs and policies toward the end of the speech.  It was all from 30,000 feet, of course, but you generally don't get too specific in a convention speech anyway.  Anyway, I did think Romney drew some effective contrasts between himself and Obama, especially when he contrasted Obama's grandiose promises from 2008 about slowing the rise of the oceans and healing the planet with his simple, workman-like promises to "help you and your family" by getting the economy moving again.

Although Romney's speech wasn't overly exciting to a staunch partisan like myself, I expect it helped Romney quite a bit with those all-important independent and undecided voters.  (He's already convinced me to vote for him.)  I don't know how anyone who is not already a hardened partisan could watch the tributes to Romney from people who have known and worked with him and then the speech from Romney himself and conclude that he is anything other than a decent, compassionate, hard-working, trustworthy, and successful man.  Certainly it would be hard to conclude he was anything close to that monstrous caricature the Obama campaign has been pushing of a cold, ruthless businessman who destroyed businesses and individuals for the fun of it at Bain Capital while committing felonies and murdering people.  If the bar is whether this guy is a reasonable alternative to Obama, he more than crossed that hurdle.  If people are looking for someone who is likable and trustworthy, someone they can feel comfortable with on a personal level, I think Romney helped himself significantly with the last night of his convention. 

I plan to watch at least a little bit of the Democratic convention this week -- or at least as much of it as I can stomach.  I want to try to compare the themes and emphases of the two conventions, as well as the speakers themselves.  I already know what I think of the Democratic Party, but I'm interested to see whether they are going to provide any kind of positive case for Obama whatsoever and also how much of an effort they are going to make to appeal to the center.  I certainly have seen little of either a positive case or a centrist appeal from this president's campaign so far.