GOP National Convention 2012 Thread

Black Swan

This week begins with the Republican National Convention held in Tampa, Florida, lasting approximately 3 days, depending upon weather conditions.

Some interesting points:

• Convention to focus on the economy, unemployment, and swing voters
• Attending will be 2,286 delegates and 2,125 alternate delegates from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and five territories
• Former President GW Bush and VP Dick Cheney are not scheduled to speak
• Former 2008 VP Republican candidate Sarah Palin has been excluded
• A petition is being circulated by TheTeaParty.net objecting that convention organizers are attempting “to silence TEA PARTY voices."

Amerika

I'd suggest watching it on C-SPAN first get the best information with full engagement, then CNN as second pick.

BOHtox

For those of you who want to know who the real Mitt Romney is...

So funny, well worth a watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxch-yi14BE

Amerika

I wonder who will be the mystery speaker at the GOP convention Thursday. Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh’s names keep coming up. Now I’m hearing it might be Nancy Reagan. Douglas Wilder, Colin Powell, Clint Eastwood, Joe Lieberman or Tim Tebow might be interesting choices also. (I personally would like to see George W Bush or Dick Cheney, but I highly doubt that would happen).

Scratch Tim Tebow. Just remembered I'm going to the New York Jets vs Philadelphia Eagles NFL preseason game Thursday night and Tebow is slated to play.

20Cent

Amerika wrote: »

I wonder who will be the mystery speaker at the GOP convention Thursday. Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh’s names keep coming up. Now I’m hearing it might be Nancy Reagan. Douglas Wilder, Colin Powell, Clint Eastwood, Joe Lieberman or Tim Tebow might be interesting choices also. (I personally would like to see George W Bush or Dick Cheney, but I highly doubt that would happen).

Scratch Tim Tebow. Just remembered I'm going to the New York Jets vs Philadelphia Eagles NFL preseason game Thursday night and Tebow is slated to play.

A good few people on twitter predicting a hologram Ronald Reagan for mystery speaker!
Strange Bush and Cheney saying they won't be there is this unusual?

Black Swan

20Cent wrote: »

Strange Bush and Cheney saying they won't be there is this unusual?

It would appear that the Republicans want to distance themselves from the Bush-Cheney Administration, because the Great Recession occurred during their watch, as well as starting 2 increasingly unpopular and expensive wars.

Channel Zero

Black Swan wrote: »

It would appear that the Republicans want to distance themselves from the Bush-Cheney Administration, because the Great Recession occurred during their watch, as well as starting 2 increasingly unpopular and expensive wars.

And let's not forget the election they stole just down the road in Tallahassee. Maybe they're still a bit embarrassed about that, though i doubt it..

matthew8

Just watched Christie's keynote. Fantastic speech. Struck a chord with the base without using any rhetoric frightening to moderates.

20Cent

The twitter machine saying Clint Eastwood is the surprise speaker now.

Seems the Ron Paul fans were not happy

also

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/gop-convention-nuts-throwing-incident-not-a-police-matter-secret-service/2012/08/29/1d92584e-f193-11e1-adc6-87dfa8eff430_blog.html
As reported by TPM, someone attending the Republican National Convention hurled nuts at a black crew person for CNN and said this: “This is how we feed animals.”

Min

I watched a good bit of the convention last night, fell asleep early and woke up and watched Rick Santorum who dealt with social issues.
Artur Davis who seconded Obama at the Democratic convention four years ago who is now on the Republican side.
Ann Romney did a good job with her speech, said she wasn't use to doing speeches but she did a fine job, tellng us about her own background, her grandfather was a coalminer in Wales before emigrating, how herself and Mitt met and it wasn't long before they were married and were having children, and how they worked to get to where they are. She proved herself as first lady material.
Governor Chris Christie looks like a candidate for the future, he gave a good speech and came across well.
I noticed a lot of them were referring to their emigrant background, like Christie referred to his Irish father and Sicilian mother, and basically how they all came from emigrant backgrounds and worked their ways up the ladder, lots of attacks on Obama expanding the social welfare system and increasing the debt without any return for the extra spending, and how this was putting future generations under pressure who will have to pay back all the debt.

Overall i think it was a positive night night for the Republicans, enjoyed the speeches.

Amerika

Black Swan wrote: »

It would appear that the Republicans want to distance themselves from the Bush-Cheney Administration, because the Great Recession occurred during their watch, as well as starting 2 increasingly unpopular and expensive wars.

I believe GW Bush will be speaking tonight to the conference via video. Jimmy Carter will be doing the same at the DNC convention.

Duck Soup

It was as you would have expected - the public personas with the rough edges smoothed off. Ann Romney gave a fairly generic speech about her husband being a great guy (whoda thunk?) and Chris Christie was a semi-defanged pitbull. One of the talking points of the night was that Christie went 16 minutes into a 20 minute speech before mentioning Mitt Romney.

A good night for the Republicans - everything was well received by the base within the hall - but I can't see it moving the dial in either direction. I also wonder if the Mitt-free speech wasn't a deliberate tactic, not by Christie whose camp has been leaking they don't think much of Romney or his chances, but part of a broader Republican strategy to have people rally around Republican values rather than the Republican candidate.

Occasionally they'd cut to Romney and he had almost quizzical look on his face, as though this was foreign to him and WTF were these people doing.

I think over the next few days, rather strangely perhaps, you could see the candidate being effectively put to one side as they hammer home the brand values - independence, hard work, family and faith. You could attach all of those values to Romney, the problem is that he doesn't project them. Effectively, it feels like they're saying "Rally to our cause, not our leader."

It'll be interesting to see how far, hard and fast they go after Obama. That would be largely the job of surrogates, so I wouldn't expect to see too much of it from Romney himself. With Ann Romney's anecdotes-and-personal-insights-free speech you got the feeling of an agreed understanding between the Romneys and the RNC that they jealously guard their privacy, from tax returns to kitchen table. They'll talk about CostCo though.

Amerika

I watched the entire first night of the convention. I primarily watched it on C-SPAN, but often switched over to MSNBC to see how they were covering the GOP convention. For those watching it on MSNBC, anybody else notice they either cut away or talked over every speech by a minority? I guess their refusal to let their audience hear from Ted Cruz, Artur Davis, Brian Sandoval, Mia Love and Luce’ Vela Fortuño is further proof the Republicans hate minorities.

(Mia Love was freakin' awesome by the way. Big big things on the way for her in politics)

matthew8

You must realise this convention isn't all about Mitt Romney. It's about the republicans, and Christie did a great job of promoting his party, while setting him up for 2016/2020 (a bit like Obama 2004).

mike65

Republicans are nuts its turns out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/29/republican-national-convention-race-tampa

dublinman1990

mike65 wrote: »

Republicans are nuts its turns out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/29/republican-national-convention-race-tampa

Mike65, I myself agree 100% with that statement. How can these liars and cheats can declare themselves to there for the people? It is simple, the answer is that they only care about their own self interest, not of those of the poor.

The Huffington Post has outlined some of their party platforms in this article.

To look at it, is simply incomprehensible and laughable. The platforms that are very vague and shocking IMO are in regard to Education, Energy, Immigration, Voter Integrity and Taxation.

Overheal

They're really taking this "You didn't build that" thing way too far. I don't care that Maddow is still playing the "legitimate rape" clip for the 11th time in 2 weeks instead of carrying the convention feed, that's peanuts to the GOP making their entire platform/convention theme about a completely deliberate twist on words.

20Cent

Overheal wrote: »

They're really taking this "You didn't build that" thing way too far. I don't care that Maddow is still playing the "legitimate rape" clip for the 11th time in 2 weeks instead of carrying the convention feed, that's peanuts to the GOP making their entire platform/convention theme about a completely deliberate twist on words.

What Obama said:
"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."

They took as him telling businesses that they didn't build their businesses which is a total distortion of what was said. We built that is even a theme of a day of the convention. A total distortion of the truth. Why do republicans accept being lied to?

Overheal

Because they won't fact check, many of them will just eat up Paul Ryan's speech for instance without a thought to any of it.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/aug/29/night-two-tampa-running-mate-and-more/

They'll hear what they want to hear though.

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/30/paul_ryans_brazen_lies/

Paul Ryan gave a feisty anti-Obama speech that will have fact-checkers working for days. His most brazen lie accused President Obama of “raiding” Medicare by taking the exact same $716 billion that Ryan and the House GOP notoriously voted to slash. It was stunning.

But that’s not all. He attacked Obama for failing to keep open a Janesville GM plant that closed under Bush in 2008. He hit him for a credit-rating downgrade that S&P essentially blamed on GOP intransigence. He claimed that all taxpayers got from the 2009 stimulus was “more debt,” when most got a tax cut (and the stimulus is known to have saved between 1.4 and 3.3 million jobs). He derided the president for walking away from the Simpson Bowles commission deficit-cutting recommendations when Ryan himself, a commission member, voted against those recommendations.

He blamed Obama for a deficit mostly created by programs he himself voted for – from two wars, tax cuts, new Medicare benefits and TARP.

And of course, he riffed on the tired central lie of the GOP convention: that the president said “government gets the credit” for small businesses, not the business owners themselves.

Other than that, it was a great speech.

Interestingly, for all his lies, Ryan didn’t repeat the Romney camp’s false claim that Obama did away with the welfare system’s work requirements. Maybe he ran out of time.

Ryan got off a few good zingers: “College grads shouldn’t have to live out their 20s in childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters.” He didn’t mention that he opposed legislation to keep student loan rates from doubling. His remarks about his childhood were slightly moving. He talked about losing his father at 16, and he called his mother, who went back to school and to work after that, his role model. But he never mentioned the Social Security death benefits that let him go to an out-of-state school. Occasionally he seemed to be going after swing voters, rather than his hard-right base, taking a more in sorrow than anger tone about Obama’s failings. Then he’d mix things up with nastiness and lies.

And when Ryan riffed on the handful of jobs he briefly held, his Ayn Randian roots were clear. “When I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life, he said. [Perhaps that's because he wasn't; he grew up in a wealthy family.] I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself. That’s what we do in this country. That’s the American Dream. That’s freedom, and I’ll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.” That’s straight out of Rand, and ’50s anti-Communist paranoia.

Finally, the man chided by the Catholic Bishops for his anti-poor budget had the audacity to say, “The greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak. The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.” Ryan’s budget decimates programs for “those who cannot defend or care for themselves.”

The sanctimonious V.P. nominee seems to have forgotten the Ninth Commandment: “Thou shalt not lie.” Ryan believes he can say anything and get away with it

Amerika

Sometimes the "fact checkers" need fact checkers of their own when they need to utilize biases and assumptions in order to refute Ryan.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/30/fact-checking-the-factcheckers-on-ryans-speech/

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2012/08/30/obama_camp_melts_down_over_ryans_speech

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Mjollnir

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

So, tell me, where is Obama advocating that goods and services 'have to be' provided by the gov't?

And where has Obama advocated central planning of the US economy?

But however you look at it, Obama's words (especially "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen") are damning, because they go much too far in shifting the balance from the entrepreneur to the infrastructures upon which he or she depends. Obama appears to be suggesting that the state (because, naturally, he only acknowledges the existence of state-provided infrastructure and services) can ultimately be credited with creating everything, while the individual business owner's role can be reduced to nothing.

Speaking of a 'total distortion'! Obama doesn't appear to be suggesting what you've stated whatsoever. Any rational review of his statements and actual record shows that to be utterly and transparently false.

If a Republican had said something analogously stupid, Democrats would be jumping all over it. So, if Obama's words have become a central theme of the Republican convention (and I'll have to take your word for it because I haven't been following it personally), the president only has himself to blame.

* facepalm *

20Cent

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

So then you go and quote the bit without the context again!!!
You also have a habit of putting words in other peoples mouths, when did he say the business owners role is nothing and that he only acknowledges state provided infrastructure!
Each day at the convention has a theme, yesterday was We built it. There were business people talking about how they built their businesses, ignoring grants, gov contracts, stimulus money and other help they received. All in a convention center mostly built by public funds. You couldn't make it up.

Duck Soup

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

You make a decent argument about the primacy of the individual entrepreneur and the wider role of the invisible hand.

Unfortunately, that is not the argument the GOP is making.

Obama said "You didn't build the infrastructure that supports your business." Republicans are saying he said "You didn't build your business." That's a straight up and down, 100%, finest-kind lie.

With the dogwhistle Romney welfare ads also having been independently judged to be similarly blissfully truth-free, this appears to be a pattern. Something about "if you repeat a lie long enough" springs to mind.

Overheal

Amerika wrote: »

Sometimes the "fact checkers" need fact checkers of their own when they need to utilize biases and assumptions in order to refute Ryan.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/30/fact-checking-the-factcheckers-on-ryans-speech/

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2012/08/30/obama_camp_melts_down_over_ryans_speech

Didn't promise the plant would say open. He actually said, "if the government is there to back you, this plant will be open for 100 years."

Worthy of noting however, the GM plant's parent company, -erm, GM - actually received a government bailout. One that was supported by both Obama and by Paul Ryan, who voted for it. Chrysler and GM received $15bn. That vote occurred - wait for it - in December 2008.

From there, decisions were made by GM about their own future. From your own article:

What’s more, the administration actually did consider keeping the Janesville plant alive after it nationalized GM by commandeering the bankruptcy process. According to Shepardson’s story:

In June 2009, GM considered three sites to locate a small car: its Orion plant in Michigan; Janesville, Wis.; and a Spring Hill, Tenn., plant slated to close in November. GM picked Orion and later reopened Spring Hill.

You also have this from politifact:

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2012/aug/29/paul-ryan/did-barack-obama-break-promise-keep-gm-plant-open/

By December 2008, when President George W. Bush authorized nearly $14 billion [ontheissues.org says $15bn] in loans to General Motors and Chrysler, both of which were near financial collapse, GM had already warned it might close the Janesville plant because of sagging sport-utility vehicle sales. The plant was effectively shut down on Dec. 23, 2008, when GM ceased production of SUVs there and laid off 1,200 workers. (Several dozen workers stayed on another four months to finish an order of small- to medium-duty trucks for Isuzu Motors.) [April, to you and me]

So, the plant closed while Bush was still in office, about a month before Obama was inaugurated.

There was nothing the Obama administration could really do about it by that time. A month before he was Inaugurated those 1200 or so workers were laid off and the resources pushed elsewhere to locations like Tennessee. "several dozen workers" out of ~1200, isn't really equivalent to saying the plant was in the process of winding up. It "fully" closed in April 2009, but we're splitting hairs when the primary point is the new administration had no means of reversing the shutdown.

Duck Soup

Watching Gingrich repeat the 'gutting'-the-work-requirement-for-welfare lie without missing a beat. I know it's a party political platform, but surely somewhere those silly little fact things have to creep in somewhere?

I now have two concrete and immovable opinions. 1. The Republicans are going all out for the white vote and damn the rest. 2. There is a deliberate policy of repeating outright lies because a fact-checker's correction can't compete with a multi-million dollar ad buy or coast-to-coast multi-network convention coverage.

Duck Soup

The Romney speech was cookie cutter. The Eastwood thing was a mixture of bizarre and sad.

southsiderosie

Romney's speech was all over the place. You could almost follow along with the consultant checkpoints: "Say something nice about women. Say something nice about Cubans! Say something nice about families!"

As for Clint Eastwood: WTF? :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
It tool all of 20 minutes for someone to set up an @invisibleobama twitter account.

Brian?

Romney's speech was hilarious. From sabre rattling against Russia and Iran to claiming he wants to build an America that protects the sick, poor and elderly.

What is this 1984? Has the cold war restarted while I had my back turned?

I'll give Ryan one thing, his speech was so bad it made Romney look like JFK.

Duck Soup

Apparently, the Romney speech was deliberately slower than usual, presumably to give the effect of a more statesman-like performance. Unfortunately, that, combined with the strange thin-lipped pauses, gave the effect of a disapproving father telling a younger son "Henry, we're very disappointed in you."

The most touching (if that's the right word in the context of a Romney speech) anecdote was his mother going searching for his father when her daily morning bedside rose wasn't there, only to find him dead. Combine that with Ann Romney's reference to her MS and breast cancer and you have glimpses of personal moments from all those around Romney and none from the candidate himself.

It's almost as if he's willing to give nothing away personally - from tax returns to anything that's happened in his life, ever - in his pursuit of the White House. Even humanizing him has now been outsourced to his family.

None of this would matter if he had a substantial argument to make, but his policies are as obscure and undefined as he is. Eastwood was lucid and to-the-point by comparison.

20Cent

Eastwood was bizzare to say the least, he even made a throat cutting sign!
Clint Speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTucyyBRMHY&feature=relmfu

Haven't watched Romney yet but its here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3u1Y0vhtYU

Duck Soup

To quote the commenter Sir Digby Chicken Caesar on Time's Swampland blog about the Eastwood star turn: "I thought it was a perfect symbol of the GOP: an old, angry, incoherent, rich white male arguing with his imaginary version of President Obama."

http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/31/in-the-line-of-fire-the-clint-eastwood-train-wreck/#ixzz2572vTZrK

Dave!

I don't mean to lower the level of discourse, but this made me lol

Conas

Romney is going to lose this election in a landside after that convention. Eastwood looked like he had been let out of a psych ward having took some anti-psychotics, and I've no idea what kind of message he was trying to get across.

Romney was talking utter nonsense as usual. "I wish Obama had succeeded, because I want America to succeed". My ass, the Republicans were determined to have him only as a one term president.

He seemed to take a swipe at Russia, which isn't a good idea unless he wants WW3, which would be great news for Republicans of course, and all his coporate buddies who will profit from it all. You have all these chicken-hawks like Romney and Cheney who want this hardcore stance on foreign policy, yet when Vietnam was being fought these cowards got deferments, and wouldn't go and fight because they were too afraid. Now they have no problem sending soidiers to their deaths for only the big corporations to profit. To be honest it's disgusting. The world will be a more dangerous place if this lunatic gets in charge.

Duck Soup

A tiny bit more information coming out about the Eastwood thing. Apparently, he was given some talking points but no script. I'm guessing he didn't stick to the talking points. None of this explains why, during their 1 hour multi-network primetime infomercial, they choose to let an 82 year-old man give a 10 minute acid flashback on stage. As one political consultant said, to do that during what should have been the most tightly-scripted part of the whole event amounts to political malpractice.

southsiderosie

Conas wrote: »

Romney is going to lose this election in a landside after that convention.

Eh, I'm not so sure about that. We're a long ways away from November.

20Cent

No George Bush, (just a pre recorded video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS3_GewWr3I content free) no Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Rumsfeld at the convention, no Karl Rove either. Seems strange you would think they were ashamed of those years or something.

Amerika

20Cent wrote: »

No George Bush, (just a pre recorded video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS3_GewWr3I content free) no Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Rumsfeld at the convention, no Karl Rove either. Seems strange you would think they were ashamed of those years or something.

Jimmy Carter will also appear in video. Oh I think Bush will be well represented at the Democratic Convention. The R's convention was about R&R (Romney and Ryan), and the D's convention is shaping up to be about BBB (Bush, Bain, and Birth control).

20Cent

Amerika wrote: »

Jimmy Carter will also appear in video. Oh I think Bush will be well represented at the Democratic Convention. The R's convention was about R&R (Romney and Ryan), and the D's convention is shaping up to be about BBB (Bush, Bain, and Birth control).

You must have seen a different convention to me most of Ryan and Romneys speeches were about Obama. Not to mention the Clint bit. Clinton will be at the DNC speaking, I think Bush was kept away in case he did an Eastwood.

Overheal

20Cent wrote: »

You must have seen a different convention to me most of Ryan and Romneys speeches were about Obama. Not to mention the Clint bit. Clinton will be at the DNC speaking, I think Bush was kept away in case he did an Eastwood.

Romney acknowledged his time with Bain in his speech, talked about foreign policy, obligations to Turkish missile defense, the notanapology-tour, and a bit about the president after talking about his ho hum upbringing stuff.

I wouldn't say his speech focused unfairly on Obama at all, I expected about 1/4 of it to involve the current POTUS given the subject matter at hand.

Brian?

Amerika wrote: »

20Cent wrote: »

No George Bush, (just a pre recorded video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS3_GewWr3I content free) no Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Rumsfeld at the convention, no Karl Rove either. Seems strange you would think they were ashamed of those years or something.

Jimmy Carter will also appear in video. Oh I think Bush will be well represented at the Democratic Convention. The R's convention was about R&R (Romney and Ryan), and the D's convention is shaping up to be about BBB (Bush, Bain, and Birth control).

Why shouldn't these 3 Bs be themes for the DNC?

Bush destroyed to US economy.

Romney outsourced jobs when CEO of Bain.

The Republicans want to go back 50 years on birth control.

Memnoch

Overheal wrote: »

Romney acknowledged his time with Bain in his speech, talked about foreign policy, obligations to Turkish missile defense, the notanapology-tour, and a bit about the president after talking about his ho hum upbringing stuff.

I wouldn't say his speech focused unfairly on Obama at all, I expected about 1/4 of it to involve the current POTUS given the subject matter at hand.

The entire convention was about pounding on Obama, so to say that it was about Romney and Ryan, who failed to discuss or mention any policy specifics (from what I can tell) about how they are going to actually improve things, is completely delusional.

Amerika

briankeating wrote: »

Why shouldn't these 3 Bs be themes for the DNC?

Bush destroyed to US economy.

Romney outsourced jobs when CEO of Bain.

The Republicans want to go back 50 years on birth control.

I guess I can only hope they present this as the theme at the DNC convention. But I think the American people might not quite see these as the key issues needed to fix to our serious economic perils, our pitiful jobs situation, and the way to cut unsustainable spending and entitlements. But I might be wrong, perhaps these issues are the ones to cure all our financial woes… and may even slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet after all.