Gary Pearce posted on September 02, 2012 10:40
Mitt was Mitt, Clint was crazy, and Paul Ryan did the most to damage himself of any speaker at the Republican convention. Let’s review the main players.
Romney had a good line: “I want to help your family.” But he didn’t shed the label Obama’s ads have stuck on him: Rich, stiff and out of touch with your family.
Ann Romney got the traditional break we give candidates’ wives. She was warm, she did well and she made him sound like an actual human being. We hold wives to different standards, and she met them. But neither did she shed the rich label.
Chris Christie was the Lead Zeppelin of the convention: full of hot air and ego, he crashed and burned.
Clint Eastwood went from Dirty Harry to Crazy Harry. You know it’s bad when Romney advisers denied it was their idea and, on background, blamed Romney himself for letting an egomaniacal 82-year-old Hollywood actor loose on the stage before your big moment.
Two words for Marco Rubio: rising star.
And Ryan: When he was picked, the Washington political-media establishment slobbered all over him for being a facts-oriented truth-teller. So much for that. His speech stretched the truth beyond the already-invisible standards of this campaign.
He blamed President Obama for a plant closing that came under President Bush. He attacked Obama for $700 billion in Medicaid cuts, when Ryan’s own supposedly courageous budget plan also proposes $700 billion in Medicaid cuts. And he attacked Obama for not doing enough to pass Bowles-Simpson, when Ryan was on the Bowles-Simpson commission and voted against it.