The Republican Convention

"I want to talk to you tonight about that one great thing that unites us … Tonight I want to talk to you about love," Ann Romney said.

Minutes later, in the headline speech of the convention, Christie took on the same theme, with a very different twist.




"I believe we have become paralyzed by our desire to be loved," Christie said.

Rachel Maddow tore into Chris Christie's speech immediately after the New Jersey governor wrapped up the keynote address at the Republican national convention on Tuesday night.

Christie gave the last political speech of the evening, and went on at length before making a major reference to Mitt Romney. Maddow began her analysis by saying that she was a big fan of his, and had been looking forward to hearing him speak because he brought a certain "looseness to his political conversation."

Then, she changed her tone and let loose on his address, saying, "This speech not only was a bad speech. I think this was one of the most remarkable acts of political selfishness I have ever seen." She said that his words were "shocking" and "opposite to what I expected."

Panelist Steve Schmidt said that the speech failed to sell Mitt Romney. Maddow remarked that Chris Christie gave a speech about himself.

"He waited 1800 words into a 2600 word speech to even bring [Romney] up," she pointed out.

A Pacific Time Convention in an Eastern Time Election
James Joyner · Wednesday, August 29, 2012



Despite the Republican convention being truncated to three days, they managed to lose my interest last night within the first ten minutes of prime time and hadn’t gotten to the headliners yet before I went to bed. With all of the swing states in either the Eastern or Central time zones, why is this thing being staged for those on Pacific time?

Even having lopped off the opening night, it’s not as if the remaining schedule was action-packed. Here’s the line-up up speakers for prime time (all times Central):

7:00 p.m. Reconvene
Remarks by Speaker John Boehner
Remarks by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus
Video and remarks by Mayor Mia Love (Saratoga Springs, UT), U.S. congressional candidate
Remarks by Janine Turner
Remarks by former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum
Remarks by Host, U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers
8:00 p.m. Remarks by U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte (NH), accompanied by Jack Gilchrist
Remarks by Governor John Kasich (OH)
Remarks by Governor Mary Fallin (OK)
Remarks by Governor Bob McDonnell (VA), accompanied by Bev Gray
Remarks by Governor Scott Walker (WI)
9:00 p.m. Remarks by Governor Brian Sandoval (NV)
Remarks by Sher Valenzuela (small business owner, candidate for DE Lt. Governor)
Remarks by Senate Republican Candidate Ted Cruz (TX)
Remarks by Artur Davis
Remarks by Governor Nikki Haley (SC)
10:00 p.m. Remarks by Mrs. Luce’ Vela Fortuño
Remarks by Mrs. Ann Romney
Remarks by Governor Chris Christie (NJ)
Benediction by Sammy Rodriguez
Adjournment

I follow politics much, much more closely than most and I don’t know who half those people are. Now, okay, a lot of them are from swing states. That makes some sense. But the candidate for lieutenant governor of Delaware?! A congressional candidate from Saratoga Springs, Utah, where the Republican nominee automatically wins?

Let’s stipulate that I’m an unusual case. It’s a good night for me if I get awakened only once, and I’m seldom up much past 10 accordingly. But I nonetheless tuned in at 8 to CNN’s coverage (I’ll be tuning in to C-SPAN from now on) and was treated to the Oak Ridge Boys singing “Amazing Grace” and several other annoying time-wasters as the prime time opener. Fifteen minutes in, they still hadn’t gotten to anything interesting and I decided to watch the season finale of “The Newsroom” via DVR-delay instead. And it’s not even a particularly good show. (The characters are getting better but the idyllic “news” program that’s at the heart of the show remains farcical.)

The RNC has been given three hours of prime time for three nights to target their message to undecided voters and they give us . . . the Oak Ridge Boys? At precisely whom is this being aimed? How many voters in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia were thinking to themselves, “If they start right in with the speechifying, I’m voting for Obama! Give me some of that old time Gospel music!” And how better to send a subliminal message about the Grand Old Party than using a singing group whose last hit was the year Ronald Reagan was inaugurated?

Anyway, after my DVR interlude, I flipped back to the convention. Rick Santorum was on, so I hit mute and went to check email. After a while, I went up to read before turning in and flipped it on to see if Ann Romney was on yet; I was instead treated to a fellow with a high-pitched voice and an MC Hammer haircut called Artur Davis, who’s actually a rather impressive fellow but not much of a speechmaker. I went back to ESPN the Magazine for a bit and turned up to see Nikki Haley who, while a nice looking lady, wasn’t worth staying up for and I turned off the TV.

By this point, it was well past 10 pm on the East Coast. Granted, people have been known to stay up well past that. Once football season mercifully rolls around this weekend, I’ll stay up past midnight occasionally for a game involving my Crimson Tide or Cowboys. But what percentage of the people who might have been interested in hearing Ann Romney’s speech—much less Chris Christie’s keynote, which presumably ended after 11—had given up by the time they came up?

Of course, people living out in California were still at work during “Amazing Grace” and the boring speeches. But I don’t think they even bother holding elections out there, since a Republican hasn’t won an electoral vote from that time zone in a quarter century.

Fact checking the GOP Convention’s opening night
Posted by Glenn Kessler at 06:02 AM ET, 08/29/2012

“I can tell you Mitt Romney was not handed success. He built it.”

— Ann Romney, Aug. 28, 2012

Can an entire convention be built around a grammatical error?

We wondered about that as we watched the first night of Republican Convention. From House Speaker John Boehner to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus to Ann Romney, speaker after speaker made reference to Obama’s statement that “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

When Ann Romney declared that her husband “was not handed success — he built it,” the delegates even began chanting “We built it” — which in fact was the official theme for the convention on Tuesday. As our former colleague Peter Baker tweeted, “If Obama had a nickel for every time a Republican quoted his “didn’t build it” line, that would take care of the whole national debt problem.”

We originally gave Romney’s use of the phrase Three Pinocchios, a ruling that did not seem to please anyone, with Democrats complaining that Obama’s words were clearly taken out of context and Republicans arguing that even in context, his words exposed a philosophy that was deeply suspicious of — even hostile to — the private sector.

As we have often said, a gaffe can become an effective attack when it reinforces an existing stereotype about a politician. Democrats would have a stronger case for a complaint if they did not also yesterday release two videos that made ample use of gaffes by Romney that reinforced the stereotype of the GOP nominee being an uncaring corporate executive.

For readers who have not read Obama’s remarks in full context, here is the complete quote. It is often truncated in campaign ads

“There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”

The key question is whether the “that” refers to “roads and bridges” — as the Obama campaign contends — or to a business. Yes, it’s a bit of a judgment call, but the clincher for us was Obama’s concluding line: “The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”

Obama appears to be making the unremarkable point that companies and entrepreneurs often benefit in some way from taxpayer support for roads, education and so forth. In other words, he is trying to make the case for higher taxes, and for why he believes the rich should pay more, which as we noted is part of a long Democratic tradition. He just did not put it very eloquently. So we believed Three Pinocchios was a reasonable compromise, given the ungrammatical nature of Obama’s phrasing.

However, in light of the GOP’s repeated misuse of this Obama quote in speech after speech, we feel compelled to increase the Pinocchio rating to Four. (Warning to Democrats: You will get the same scrutiny of out-of-context Romney quotes next week. It’s really a silly thing on which to base a campaign.)

Another misguided assertion on the first night was the Four-Pinocchio claim that President Obama waived the work requirement for welfare. Both former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and former Rep. Artur Davis made variations of this claim. As Santorum put it, “This summer he [Obama] showed us once again he believes in government handouts and dependency by waiving the work requirement for welfare. I helped write the welfare reform bill; we made the law crystal clear — no president can waive the work requirement.”

This is a gross simplification of a complex issue. As we wrote in our original column on this issue, the Obama administration certainly appears to have committed a process foul in the way that it said it would consider waivers for worker participation targets, made in response to a request from GOP and Democratic governors. Santorum would be correct to suggest there is something fishy about the administration’s legal reasoning. But one cannot make the rhetorical leap that Santorum does and conclude that this means that Obama believes in government handouts and dependency.

There has been no dispute among fact checkers on this question, with PolitiFact awarding the claim “Pants on Fire” and FactCheck.Org also saying it was incorrect. Interestingly, Romney pollster Nell Newhouse dismissed the complaints of fact-checking organizations after a Romney ad executive said that an ad based on this assertion was “our most effective ad.”

“Fact checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers,” he told BuzzFeed.

We know readers will forever question our “thoughts and beliefs” — pick a day and we are either tagged as a liberal or conservative, depending on whose ox is being gored that morning. But the Romney campaign would have a stronger case for ignoring fact checkers if it did not repeatedly cite our work in TV advertisements and news releases. See, for instance, this ad:

Meanwhile, this release from last month, “The Obama Campaign’s Top Ten Lies & Exaggerations,” is based almost entirely on citations of fact-checking organizations, including seven of this column, nine of FactCheck.Org and four of PolitiFact.

The Romney campaign may not want to be dictated by fact checkers, but campaign officials certainly like to quote us when it serves their purposes. It was ever thus.

Facts like Sarah Palin didn't give birth to her youngest son?