The Republican Convention Disaster in review

Just for folks who aren't on my facebook page who may be wondering my thoughts about the Republican convention that ended last night, I'll re-post some of the things I posted there during the week, but my major (buzzword alert!) takeaway was that it seemed like it was the most low key convention I've ever seen.

Most of the speakers talked 90% of the time about themselves and then near the end threw in a "Oh yeah, and vote for Mitt Romney. He's our guy!"

The best speakers were Ann Romney, who, as Cheryl said, would make a better president than Mitt and Condi Rice who gave the same speech any Democrat would make. There wasn't a single objectionable thing in her speech from what I heard in the car driving back from my soccer game Wednesday night (in which I scored two awesome goals, thank you very much!).

There was an amazing piece in Business Week this morning by someone who infiltrated a Karl Rove event in which he was speaking to his core of billionaire financiers of his Super Pac and he told them that the focus groups he coordinated showed that they don't want to hear brutal assaults on President Obama's character. They want a soft sell, where he, as a person, is respected, but where his policies have disappointed us.

(In fact, here's the link to the story: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-31/exclusive-inside-karl-roves-billionaire-fundraiser )

So maybe that's why the convention in general seemed like such a snoozer. Well that and the fat that Romney and Ryan really gave absolutely nothing in terms of substance with not a single specific plan for how they will do things any different than our President.

So all that said. here is a compendium, depending on what that means, of my posts over the past week:

Tuesday, August 28:

Just sent my first legit tweet. I'll be tweeting as often as possible leading up to and during the Democratic Convention while Cheryl and I are there next week, so if you want the updates, follow me at @jamiepmcv...or i think that's what it is anyway. #DNC2012 babee!


--   So, if I have this right, Ann Romney's speech was all about love followed by Chris Christie who said the country is "paralyzed by a need to be loved." Off to a great start, repubs. I also understand that Christie forgot to thank Ann for her speech and seemed to like mostly only talking about himself. Maybe they were afraid to tell him that he's not the nominee.   --   When someone asked me what I specifically could point to as things Christie has failed at, I wrote:  

Wednesday ·

 

Jamie P. McVickar This will be fun...

Jamie P. McVickar New Jersey ranked 47th in the nation in GDP growth in 2011. [Bureau of Economic Analysis]

Jamie P. McVickar The Garden state’s unemployment rate of 9.8 percent is fourth highest in the nation, trailing only Nevada, California, and Rhode Island. [Bureau of Labor Statistics]

Jamie P. McVickar New Jersey lost 12,000 jobs last month, the most in the country. [Bureau of Labor Statistics]

Jamie P. McVickar The state ranked 44th in personal income growth in 2011. [Bureau of Economic Analysis]

Jamie P. McVickar Christie has focused on cutting taxes for millionaires (while blocking a millionaires’ surtax), slashing social spending, and opposing plans to help New Jersey’s workers. He’s cheered the firing of public sector workers and scuttled important infrastructure projects on false pretenses.

Jamie P. McVickar Finally, he’s handed out a record number of corporate handouts, while getting little for it in terms of job growth. And for this, he’s been rewarded with a huge speaking slot at the Republican convention, from which he will likely proclaim Republican economic ideology a stunning success.

Jamie P. McVickar So other than failing in pretty much every category, gosh he's just wonderful!

Christie gave a brutally bad speech. In fact of the 5 speeches I've heard or seen so far, they all sort of reflect classic Republican ideology: It's all about ME! Let me tell you about ME! Oh, and yeah, vote for romney please.

Jamie P. McVickar Another thing: Christie's father spent tax-payer money (GI Bill) to attend a land-grant institution (Rutgers). That means his father's success story is entirely reliant on public money--richly deserved, but public nonetheless.

 

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I've listened to all of parts of 5 speeches so far, and it seems like their two themes have been about You didn't build that and They're removing work from welfare, and both are themes based on lies, like the idea that Obamacare strips funds from medicare benefits. They have nothing of substance to talk about. If fact, it seems like most of the speeches are the kinds of pablum that Dems could have said too - our country is awesome, it was based on liberty, there is a chance for everyone...zzzzz...When are they going to say something about what they are going to actually do. What are their policies besides denying rights to women, people who don't love right, who don't have the exact same interests and narrow views of how things oughta be as they do.

 

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Actually, I think the most significant thing said by a republican this week came from a pollster for Mitt Romney, who said Romney's campaign would not "be dictated by fact-checkers." Truer words were never spoken.

--   Two 4-letter words you won't hear this week by any Rs: Bain and Bush.

--   If you don't believe all the other sites, you gotta believe Faux News if even they spotlight all Paul Ryan's lies: "anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.

Paul Ryan’s speech in 3 words

www.foxnews.com

Paul Ryan's speech was three things: dazzling, deceiving and distracting.   -- THURSDAY   Wow - Clint Eastwood is not only embarrassing himself up there, he's pretty much cementing the image of the Republican party as a group of doddering old white guys complaining and shouting at the younger, smarter generation to Get Off My Lawn!

--   This is just flat out the weirdest convention ever. Every speaker seems almost embarrassed to say Mitt Romney's name. All they want to talk about is themselves. And now Mitt Romney is speaking and not talking about the one thing everyone wants hear: A single new idea of substance. Or a simple explanation of how cutting taxes will increase revenue.

--   I think it's now safe to say the single most memorable thing in this convention will turn out to be an empty chair, perhaps symbolizing the empty suit they just nominated.

So there ya go, all caught up.

Mr. Romney- tear down that myth!

From the Rolling Stone: "According to the candidate's mythology, Romney took leave of his duties at the private equity firm Bain Capital in 1990 and rode in on a white horse to lead a swift restructuring of Bain & Company, preventing the collapse of the consulting firm where his career began. When The Boston Globe reported on the rescue at the time of his Senate run against Ted Kennedy, campaign aides spun Romney as the wizard behind a "long-shot miracle," bragging that he had "saved bank depositors all over the country $30 million when he saved Bain & Company."


Tim DickinsonIn fact, government documents on the bailout obtained by Rolling Stone show that the legend crafted by Romney is basically a lie. The federal records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Romney's initial rescue attempt at Bain & Company was actually a disaster—leaving the firm so financially strapped that it had "no value as a going concern." Even worse, the federal bailout ultimately engineered by Romney screwed the FDIC—the bank insurance system backed by taxpayers—out of at least $10 million. And in an added insult, Romney rewarded top executives at Bain with hefty bonuses at the very moment that he was demanding his handout from the feds. [...]

the FDIC documents on the Bain deal—which were heavily redacted by the firm prior to release – show that as a wealthy businessman, Romney was willing to go to extremes to secure a federal bailout to serve his own interests. He had a lot at stake, both financially and politically. Had Bain & Company collapsed, insiders say, it would have dealt a grave setback to Bain Capital, where Romney went on to build a personal fortune valued at as much as $250 million. It would also have short-circuited his political career before it began, tagging Romney as a failed businessman unable to rescue his own firm.

"None of us wanted to see Bain be the laughingstock of the business world," recalls a longtime Romney lieutenant who asked not to be identified. "But Mitt's reputation was on the line.""

The Big Week approacheth

I've been asked by the Daily Local to give an update or two each day while Cheryl and I are in Charlotte, NC next week for the Democratic National Convention, and I said I'd do what I can. It won't be easy. They have us running around quite a bit, but Cheryl has it tougher I do, since she's a delegate. She has lots of caucus meetings and state delegation breakfasts and such. Oh yeah, and the occasional party. :-) She said she'd try to get me into the parties too. So I got that going for me.

In my case, I have signed up for three shifts. I'm in the arena from 3pm to midnight on Tuesday and Wednesday and then have a 3-7 shift at the convention center on the Big Night of Obama's acceptance speech on Thursday and that's a bad thing, since his speech is in the stadium, not the convention center. I'm a little worried I won't be there for his speech, and that's even assuming I'll get the precious credentials to get in for his speech.

Anyway, before I leave for Charlotte, under the assumption that more people might come to this site over the next week or so, I'm going to post some of the impressions I've had of the republican convention that I've posted previously to other places like facebook.

And I can also be followed during the week on twitter as @jamiepmcv.