The Romney/Ryan Express

[Warph]

           


My Dream Speech for Mitt Romney

By Dennis Prager
8/28/2012
http://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2012/08/28/my_dream_speech_for_mitt_romney

My fellow Americans, my fellow Republicans: The 2012 election is not an election between two men but between two entirely different visions of America. President Obama and I are simply the standard bearers of opposing, and may I add, irreconcilable visions of what America is and should be.

The Republican Party and I represent American values as they have been understood since the founding of our country. The Democratic Party and President Obama represent different values. This does not make any Democrat, let alone President Obama, less American or less patriotic than anyone of us here. But millions of Americans who love our country hold values that emanate from elsewhere.

How could it be otherwise?

Given the influence of academia, Hollywood, and the news media, of course many Americans have embraced more of the French Revolution's values than those of the American Revolution.

And, to make things worse, too many Americans of the last few generations never learned what American values are. Schools stopped teaching them. And parents often did as well.

Let me be specific:

American values are not a matter of any individual's, or newspaper's, or professor's opinion. We can surely have different opinions about how to realize those values or how to apply them in any given situation. But American values exist beyond personal opinion. They have been enshrined for nearly all of American history on our coinage and our bills, not to mention in our hearts and in our minds, and emblazoned on the walls of Congress.

They are: Liberty, In God We Trust, and E Pluribus Unum (From Many, One)

The Democratic Party seeks to replace liberty with equality. Not equality before the law -- that we all believe in. Not the equality of human worth -- all Americans believe that all men are created equal. But the Democratic Party and this president believe in material and social equality -- and for them this equality is a greater value than liberty. That is why they seek to control more and more of Americans' lives -- in other words, take away more and more of our liberty -- for the sake of some Utopian ideal of equality.

The basic liberty to keep the money you have earned is the most obvious example. For most of American history, when some our fellow Americans honorably earned more than others, they were not resented, they were emulated. But in the eyes of today's Democratic Party and in the eyes of our president, such Americans are to be resented -- and as much of their money as possible must be taken from them -- in the name of equality (sometimes referred to as "fairness").

Our opponents do not value prosperity as much as they value equality.

And instead of a society rooted in God-based values, the Democratic Party seeks a society as devoid of reference to God as possible. God can barely be mentioned in our nation's classrooms. I do not think it is a coincidence that in a little more than one generation, we have gone from students saying a blessing for their teachers to too many students abusing, sometimes even cursing, their teachers.

In the moral confusion that inevitably flows from devaluing God, many Americans have replaced the sanctity of the unborn human with the sanctity of rodents and fish.

And this president and his party have also rejected the third great American value, E Pluribus Unum, which has created the uniquely successful American experiment in rendering blood, race, ethnicity and national origins insignificant -- by replacing all of them with one unifying American identity. They seek to replace "From many, one" with so-called multi-culturalism, with a cult of "diversity" and with the hyphenation of all Americans.

That is why, my fellow Americans, the upcoming election is not merely an election. It is a referendum on whether America retains its unique value system or not.

Big and bigger government is not an American value -- because the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.

Handing our children and grandchildren unprecedented debt is not an American value -- because selfishness and irresponsibility are not American values.

Dividing Americans by race and class is not an American value -- because race and class are not American values.

And a weakened America is not an American value either. Indeed, given the unique role America's military strength has played in spreading liberty, a weakened America is not a moral value either. No peace movement on earth and no peace studies program in the world has done for peace what the American military has done for peace.

A vote for Paul Ryan and me is a vote to return America to its values, the values that are the reason this country became the greatest nation on Earth. Unlike our opponents, we are proud to say -- here and abroad -- that America is exceptional.

My fellow Americans, few elections in our history have offered Americans such a clear choice.

And the clearer Americans are about these differences, the larger will be our margin of victory.

[Warph]

"Bad-Dog Media"



The Exact Opposite of Truth



Media coverage scarcely resembles the actual GOP convention.


TAMPA, Florida -- The Republican Party has spared no expense to accommodate the hundreds of journalists who have come here to write dishonest stories aimed at preventing the GOP from winning this year's election.

If you've been following major media coverage of the Republican National Convention, you know that the party's presidential candidate is Todd Akin, who will campaign this fall on a platform of undiluted hatred and evil, with the able assistance of his running mate, Martin Bormann Jr. The Akin-Bormann ticket was personally selected by RNC Chairman Rush Limbaugh and endorsed by Karl Rove after consultation with a secretive cabal of right-wing Mormon billionaires. The Republican delegates who are assembling this week in Tampa are mere dupes hired by the Koch brothers to provide the superficial appearance of a "political convention" debating a platform and nominating candidates.

Such is the narrative subtext of most of the GOP convention coverage, which is provided by a political press corps that is overwhelmingly composed of people who would never vote for any Republican under any imaginable circumstance. It has been estimated, based on data analyzed by the conservative non-profit Media Research Center, that Democrats outnumber Republicans among journalists by a ratio of at least 7-to-1, perhaps even more than 10-to-1. This lopsided partisanship has consequences that are, on the one hand, blindingly obvious to Republicans and yet somehow, on the other hand, utterly invisible to most of those inside the news industry.

Most journalists never notice liberal bias for the same reason that fish don't notice water -- it is all around them, it is all they've ever known, and they take it for granted. And just as the fish out of water flops around desperately at the life-threatening loss of its accustomed environment, most journalists react with a frantic horror at reporting that lacks the partisan slant which is understood as "objectivity" by members of the press corps. Only when one's mind is trapped inside that weird worldview, for example, is it possible to take Chris Matthews seriously.

In case you didn't realize it, the only claim Matthews has to being a journalist is that he is a partisan Democrat. Matthews never worked a day as a reporter, never covered a city council meeting or a homecoming parade. After evading the Vietnam-era military draft by enrolling in the Peace Corps, Matthews moved to Washington and worked on the staff of various congressional Democrats before unsuccessfully running for Congress as a Democrat, later joining the White House staff as a speechwriter for Democrat Jimmy Carter, then spending the Reagan years as a top aide to Democrat House Speaker Tip O'Neill. Somehow, this ultra-political background as a partisan operative qualified Matthews for the job of Washington bureau chief for the San Francisco Chronicle. Such is the biography of the man who has been employed for the past 15 years as a "journalist" by NBC, hosting his own show on the network's little-watched MSNBC cable franchise while appearing regularly on the broadcast network during coverage of major political events.

Matthews made a guest appearance Monday on MSNBC's Morning Joe program, which provided him an opportunity to lecture GOP Chairman Reince Priebus that Republicans were playing "the race card" by, among other things, criticizing President Obama for waiving work requirements for welfare. "When you start talking about work requirements, you know what game you're playing and everybody knows what game you're playing," Matthews scolded Priebus, in a bizarre rant that also referenced Obama's "African name" as a burden the president has "got to live with." Video of the Matthews-Priebus encounter immediately went viral online, cited by conservatives as yet another example of liberal bias in the media, equal to the infamous 2008 declaration by Matthews that while listening to Obama speak he "felt this thrill going up my leg."

Matthews is an extreme example of a general phenomenon, the gaudy tip of a much larger (and usually, more subtle) iceberg of bias. Consider, for example, the question of what constitutes a newsworthy controversy. Politicians occasionally say thoughtless or offensive things that make headlines and may require an apology for the foot-in-the-mouth moment. Seldom, however, do reporters demand that Democrat politicians denounce and repudiate another Democrat's gaffe. By contrast, when Missouri's GOP Senate candidate Todd Akin made atrociously stupid comments about rape and abortion, Akin's blunder became for several days the most important political news in the country. Even though Akin's remarks were swiftly repudiated by nearly every Republican of note, much of the news coverage created the impression that Akin was speaking officially on behalf of the GOP, and that the "extremist" Akin -- rather than moderate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who is in fact the party's presidential nominee -- was symbolic of Republicans everywhere. Inside the liberal media worldview, only Republicans must answer collectively for the errors and embarrassments of their individual members.

To a liberal journalist, the offensive words of Todd Akin tell Americans everything they need to know about what the GOP stands for, while scandal-plagued or gaffe-prone Democrats are viewed as an aberration. No reporter for the New York Times or CBS News would tolerate, for example, coverage that inferred from the late Ted Kennedy's career that Democrats endorse drunk driving and vehicular manslaughter as a matter of policy. Yet Akin's comments were immediately seized on as a significant national story that symbolized a Republican "war on women." Meanwhile -- almost entirely unnoticed by the mainstream press -- actual Republican women are among the most articulate and outspoken critics of Obama's policies.

Monday afternoon, I bumped into an example of this phenomenon. Walking through the lobby of the Sheraton hotel, I spotted a familiar-looking woman sitting quietly near the elevators. I'd met her briefly at a convention-related event Sunday, but had forgotten her name and, overcoming my embarrassment at having to ask, was surprised to find myself talking to the former lieutenant-governor of New York.

Betsy McCaughey has a Ph.D. from Columbia University and has gained recognition as an expert on health-care policy, authoring a recent Encounter Books "Broadside" called The Obama Health Law: What It Says and How to Overturn It. McCaughey spoke Monday at an event hosted by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, where she described her analysis of research that she says demonstrates that Obamacare "is likely to cause an estimated 40,000 unnecessary deaths each year" among hospitalized Medicare patients. Policy experts might dispute McCaughey's analysis and I lack the expertise to evaluate her research, but as soon as she described it to me in the hotel lobby, I recognized it as newsworthy. Democrats have repeatedly accused Republicans of scheming to kill old people through Medicare cuts, a tactic that included a TV ad showing Paul Ryan literally pushing an elderly woman off a cliff. Yet here was a scholarly GOP politician citing research data in support of a conclusion that is the mirror-reverse of that perception -- to summarize McCaughey's research quite bluntly, Obama's plan will kill Grandma.

True or false, right or wrong, it is certainly a startling claim and one might suppose that McCaughey's research would be considered as newsworthy as anything a Missouri Senate candidate might say. Yet it seems that almost none of the major political journalists covering the Gingrich event Monday deemed McCaughey's analysis worth reporting. A blogger for Esquire's website gave McCaughey some skeptical and derisive coverage, and her remarks at Gingrich's event were briefly quoted by a reporter for the local Tampa paper. Other than that, however, McCaughey was a non-story, ignored by the press who seemed unimpressed by this remarkable woman saying that 40,000 senior citizens will die as a result of the president's policies. After I interviewed her for my blog, McCaughey sat unnoticed by other reporters in the restaurant of the Sheraton, a hotel swarming with media types whose alleged purpose for traveling to Tampa was to find news.

Betsy McCaughey, however, didn't fit the narrative subtext that liberal journalists are here to report. She is neither evil nor stupid, and Republican policy experts with Ivy League doctorate degrees are not newsworthy -- especially when such experts are women in a party whose policies (according to the liberal narrative subtext) are fundamentally hostile to women.

Hundreds of reporters have come to Tampa with plans to cover something other than the actual Republican convention. Instead, they are here seeking "proof" of their own preconceived partisan prejudices and it is amazing (as I sit here in the lavishly appointed Media Filing Center downtown) to see how the Republican Party has spared no expense in welcoming its most ferocious and dangerous enemies. If you believe what you see in most convention coverage, you will think of Republicans as the Evil Party of Greedy Haters, a frightening conclave of grim and ferocious extremists. Everything the GOP does here in Tampa will be portrayed as insincere, corrupt, scandalous or (best of all) "controversial." When Democrats convene next week in Charlotte, however, everything Obama and his supporters do will be portrayed as warm, wonderful, and honest. The reporters delivering these contrasting depictions of the two parties do not consider themselves as engaged in partisan advocacy. Rather, in the minds of the liberal media, they are simply reporting the objective truth.

Republicans watching from afar are no doubt sadly familiar with this kind of bias. And they'll be happy to learn that the Media Filing Center here at the convention in Tampa is open 24 hours a day, providing liberal journalists the facilities to lie around the clock.

[Warph]

Lifelong democrats that supported Barack Obama are now supporting Mitt Romney.

WATCH their stories and see why:

http://gopconvention2012.com[/font][/size][/b]

[Warph]

     


http://spectator.org/archives/2012/08/29/my-long-lost-paul-ryan-intervi

My Long-Lost Paul Ryan Interview
By Daniel Allott on 8.29.12 @ 6:09AM

The future VP nominee talked about his faith and the difference between be-ers and do-ers.


"I think politicians who divorce themselves from their faith are being hypocrites. I can't see how one can do that. ...We're taught that in business, that in raising our children, in how we conduct ourselves with our family, in everything we do, our religious principles need to be in the forefront of our minds. That should apply to people who hold public office, to politicians."
--Rep. Paul Ryan, December 2004

A few weeks after the 2004 election, my brother and I interviewed Rep. Paul Ryan for a TV series on Catholic political figures and their faith. The role of faith in politics was at the forefront of the political debate. Senator John Kerry's narrow loss in the presidential election was widely viewed as partly the result of the former altar boy's inability to credibly reconcile his Catholic faith with his support for abortion and same-sex marriage.

Our interview with Ryan, who had just won his fourth term in Congress, never aired. I highlight parts of it that offer insight into the faith of the only Catholic nominated for national office since the culture wars erupted who does not disown the core moral theological doctrine of his church.

Ryan's abortion position has been much in the news. Ryan once described himself as "as pro-life as a person gets." Democrats are labeling Ryan's position -- anti-abortion except when the mother's life is at risk -- as extreme and making it a cornerstone of their case against Republicans. But Ryan's view reflects that of his church. "I've always been pro-life. I believe life begins at conception and ends at natural death," Ryan explained.

I think the Pope's (John Paul II) consistent leadership on this issue has been very important. His unwavering support for life is very important because the Pope is our rock in this. If he had not advocated a consistent position on life throughout his pontificate, I think the entire life movement would have been damaged.

For me as a politician, as a person who votes on those issues, I just can't see how one can separate themselves from your religious principles and the laws we vote on, especially with respect to life. We see politicians do that every day up here.

The last Catholic presidential nominee said that he personally believed life begins at conception and ends at natural death, but he wouldn't want to impose those beliefs through public laws. I just can't conceive of how a person could make that statement. That basically means you believe that abortion is a taking of a life that ought to be protected but you're not going to do anything to protect it. I just can't understand how someone could justify that kind of position inside their mind let alone their conscience.

That's why I think it's very important that our church has been very consistent on these issues. And it's very important that when we run for office, we tell people who we are, what we believe and what we're going to do in office. Then we'll never have a position or a situation where we are torn when we act on these convictions while we are in office, while we are serving.

We asked Ryan whether his Catholic faith might sometimes put him at odds with non-Catholic constituents. "I really don't worry about alienating non-Catholics because when I talk about how I, as a Catholic politician, conduct myself in office, consistent with Catholic principles, I talk about our founders, I talk about our Constitution, I talk about the Declaration of Independence, the fact that our country was founded on the belief that we are free to express our religion in the public square," he said.

The separation of church and state is not a phrase that is contained in any of our founding documents. The concept that is behind that phrase is one where the government won't back one singular denomination over another, but that we are free to practice our faith in the public square, and I site constitutional framers, and the principles of our country in defending what I do in office. So non-Catholics and Catholics alike respect the principles and the writings of our founding fathers. And those are what I invoke when I talk about how and why I do what I do in office.

We did not discuss fiscal issues with Ryan that day. But at other times he has talked about how his faith informs his economic views. "The work I do as a Catholic holding office conforms to the social doctrine as best I can make of it," Ryan told an audience at Catholic Georgetown University in April. "The Holy Father, Pope Benedict, has charged that governments, communities, and individuals running up high debt levels are 'living at the expense of future generations' and 'living in untruth.'"

Ryan's approach to fighting poverty, he explained at Georgetown, is rooted in solidarity and subsidiarity, "virtues that, when taken together, revitalize civil society instead of displacing it.... We put our trust in people, not in government. Our budget incorporates subsidiarity by returning power to individuals, to families and to communities."

Much has been made of Ayn Rand's influence on Ryan. The atheist philosopher, Ryan said in 2005, is "the reason I got involved in public service." But Rand's objectivism is not what sustains Ryan. "I reject her philosophy," he said recently. "It's an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts, and it is antithetical to my worldview."

Some pundits have suggested that Ryan is distancing himself from Rand and emphasizing his faith in order to appear more compassionate to a national audience. But from our interview, which took place only a few months before Ryan's Rand remark, it seems clear that it's Ryan's faith that has always guided his policymaking.

Instead of Rand, Ryan has offered Thomas Aquinas as a fundamental influence. In our interview, Ryan talked about the influence of another popular St. Thomas: St. Thomas More, English martyr and patron of politicians:

We have a study group here in Washington among conservative Catholic politicians called the St. Thomas More study group. We have guest speakers who come in to meet with us about once or twice a month.... So the example that St. Thomas More set is one that many of us here in Congress are not only trying to emulate but try to learn about... trying to respect, trying to study and trying to have the example set out for us. So it's something that many of us have in the front of our minds as an example of how we ought to conduct ourselves while serving in office.

We asked Ryan what he prays for. He said:

I pray for my family, to be a good husband to my wife to be a good father to my children. And then I pray to keep my principles intact. That in my daily life, as a member of Congress, that I follow God will, and that I follow His consistent principles. That's what I pray for, and to have the strength to do that. There are a lot of pressures in every job. There are tremendous pressures in this job as a member of Congress, especially in these times. And so I just pray for the strength to be consistent, to follow God's principles as I know them to be.

Ryan concluded our interview by distinguishing between the two kinds of people who run for office. The primary dividing line, he said, is not between Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals or Catholics and non-Catholics, but instead between what he called "be-ers" and "do-ers." Using a formulation that helps explain Ryan's subsequent political rise and offers a forecast of Ryan's future, win or lose, he said:

Some people run for office because they want to be a congressman or be a senator, or to be a governor. And then there are people who run for office because they want to do something. And they want to act on certain convictions and principles, and advance a cause.

We unfortunately have a lot of be-ers in Congress, a lot of be-ers in government. Do-ers are the people who actually advance society, make a difference. And that's the covenant that we as elected officials have with our constituents, where we tell our constituents who we are, what we believe and what we will do. That's the covenant we have with our constituents. And when in office, we have the obligation, the moral authority, to act on that covenant.

[Warph]

Off to a Strong Start

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/08/29/off-to-a-strong-start

By Robert Stacy McCain on 8.29.12 @ 6:10AM

Ann Romney and Chris Christie highlight opening night of the GOP convention.

TAMPA, Florida -- At 5:40 p.m. Tuesday, when the New Jersey delegation cast all 50 of their votes for Mitt Romney, it gave the former governor of Massachusetts 1,150 votes -- six more than the 1,144 necessary for a majority -- and he at last became officially the presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Choosing a nominee is, after all, the actual purpose of the convention, but the roll call that marked the culmination of Romney's long campaign (which has been effectively continuous since 2006) was not a primetime event. Instead, TV viewers saw a night of speeches that culminated with back-to-back speeches by the candidate's wife, Ann Romney, and the keynote speaker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

It was a powerful one-two punch to cap the opening night of the Republican National Convention, which saw its first day's schedule cancelled by fears of Hurricane Isaac, the storm that turned away from Tampa and instead headed west across the Gulf of Mexico. The delayed beginning did not lessen the power of the speech by Ann Romney, who told a story of her husband's success that contradicted the narrative the liberal media have constructed about him.

"Tonight I want to talk to you about love," Mrs. Romney told the thousands of GOP delegates gathered inside the Tampa Bay Times Forum. "I want to talk to you about the deep and abiding love I have for a man I met at a dance many years ago."

Republicans in love? Whoever heard of such a thing? The media would have us believe that Republicans are soulless automatons incapable of love. At certain points during Mrs. Romney's speech, one could hear a few reporters in the Media Filing Center sarcastically mocking her words. The liberal media have spent months pushing the Obama campaign's message that the GOP is the Anti-Woman Party, but liberal journalists are scarcely able to conceal their contempt for Republican women like Ann Romney, who used her speech as an opportunity to appeal directly to women without the media filter.

"It's the moms of this nation -- single, married, widowed -- who really hold this country together," Mrs. Romney said. "We're the mothers, we're the wives, we're the grandmothers, we're the big sisters, we're the little sisters, we're the daughters." Mothers "are the best of America. You are the hope of America. There would not be an America without you."

The candidate's wife used her own biography to push back against the media's narrative of the Republican as overprivileged: "I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner who was determined that his kids get out of the mines. My dad got his first job when he was six years old, in a little village in Wales called Nantyffyllon, cleaning bottles at the Colliers Arms. When he was 15, dad came to America. In our country, he saw hope and an opportunity to escape from poverty. He moved to a small town in the great state of Michigan.... My dad would often remind my brothers and me how fortunate we were to grow up in a place like America."

Ann Romney also reminded listeners how she and her husband began their married life: "We were very young. Both still in college. There were many reasons to delay marriage, and you know? We just didn't care. We got married and moved into a basement apartment. We walked to class together, shared the housekeeping, and ate a lot of pasta and tuna fish. Our desk was a door propped up on sawhorses. Our dining room table was a fold down ironing board in the kitchen.... Then our first son came along. All at once I'm 22 years old, with a baby and a husband who's going to business school and law school at the same time, and I can tell you, probably like every other girl who finds herself in a new life far from family and friends, with a new baby and a new husband, that it dawned on me that I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into."

After recounting her husband's record of success, Ann Romney drew a standing ovation when she told the Republican delegates, "This man will not fail. This man will not let us down. This man will lift up America."

When she ended her speech and was briefly joined onstage by her husband, Mrs. Romney had seemingly provided the highlight of the evening, and it seemed improbable that Chris Christie could top it -- but he did.

Christie, a politician famous for speaking bluntly, began by recounting his own humble origins and praising his own mother: "She was tough as nails and didn't suffer fools at all. The truth was she couldn't afford to. She spoke the truth -- bluntly, directly and without much varnish. And I am her son."

A cynic might understand this maternal homage as reflecting the same polling data that has inspired Democrats to accuse Republicans of waging a "war on women." Mothers are a crucial swing-vote segment and, with just 10 weeks remaining between now and Election Day, the Romney and Obama campaigns will fight hard for those votes.

Christie's speech was full of fight and patriotic sentiment. "We've never been a country to shy away from the truth," the New Jersey governor told the delegates. "History shows that we stand up when it counts and it's this quality that has defined our character and our significance in the world." Contrasting the policies of Democrats and Republicans, Christie said: "I know this simple truth and I'm not afraid to say it: our ideas are right for America and their ideas have failed America."

Criticizing the failures of the Obama administration, Christie said: "It's time to end this era of absentee leadership in the Oval Office and send real leaders to the White House. America needs Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and we need them right now." He pounded away with rhetorical sledgehammer blows, finishing with a call to "stand up for Mitt Romney" and "stand up once again for American greatness."

Most Republicans left the opening night of the convention in a fired-up mood. The question is whether the message conveyed by Ann Romney and Chris Christie would reach beyond downtown Tampa, leaping over the prejudices of a biased liberal media to gain a fair hearing from the voters who will decide the election now just 69 days away.

[Warph]

Democrats Shaking in Their Boots

http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2012/08/29/democrats_shaking_in_their_boots/page/full/

By Ben Shapiro
8/29/2012


The Republican National Convention started off as an anxiety-ridden, soggy, depressing mess on Monday morning. By Tuesday night, the Democratic Party and Barack Obama in particular had to be an anxiety-ridden, soggy, depressing mess.

The transition between Monday morning and Tuesday evening was stunning. The Republican Party went into the convention on a low note after Rep. Todd Akin, Missouri Senate candidate, suggested that women's magic uteruses protect them from becoming pregnant via "legitimate rape," enmeshing the GOP in a battle of demagoguery over abortion. Meanwhile, the convention had a legitimate shot at cancellation; it seemed that the entire city was going to shut down for Hurricane Isaac. And controversies over Sarah Palin and Ron Paul not being granted featured speaking slots at the RNC seemed to be fragmenting the RNC base.

And then there was Tuesday night.

Tuesday night the RNC showed that it has something it hasn't had since Reagan: star power and appeal to independents.

Both were on full display in the person of former Rep. Artur Davis. Davis, who is black, was one of the speakers who introduced Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2008; he was, at the time, a sitting congressman from the state of Alabama. A Harvard Law graduate and famed stemwinder, he delivered an impassioned address on behalf of the then-senator.

How times have changed.

"Some of you may know, the last time I spoke at a convention, it turned out I was in the wrong place. So, Tampa, my fellow Republicans, thank you for welcoming me where I belong."

Davis is now a Republican. And he explained exactly why. "In all seriousness," he said, "do you know why so many of us believed? We led with our hearts and our dreams that we could be more inclusive than America had ever been, and no candidate had ever spoken so beautifully.

"But," he continued, "dreams meet daybreak: The jobless know what I mean, so do the families who wonder how this administration could wreck a recovery for three years and counting."

Davis wasn't the only spellbinder on the menu on Tuesday's opening night. Ann Romney appeared to give a joyous and well-calibrated address celebrating American woman and reintroducing her husband to the public as a solid husband and father, a caring human being and a trustworthy leader. Then, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie strode to the stage, clapping his hands in energetic anticipation. To say that the crowd was fired up would be an understatement.

There is juice to the Romney campaign. And Paul Ryan hasn't even spoken yet. The Obama machine no longer has the star power; they no longer have the orators. They have a rotten record -- and it's a record on which they simply can't run.

No wonder they're scared.

[Warph]

                 

Why 'Mystery Speaker' Clint Eastwood Loves the GOP

by Miranda Green Aug 30, 2012 7:34 PM EDT


'Dirty Harry' star Clint Eastwood is making a surprise appearance at tonight's national convention. Miranda Green on how the movie star earned his Republican stripes.

Actor and director Clint Eastwood may be best known for his "tough guy" roles in westerns and in Dirty Harry, but the California native—and tonight's not-so-mysterious speaker at the Republican National Convention—is no stranger to politics. And despite the primetime spot at tonight's hyperpartisan event, Eastwood's own ideology isn't as easy to pin down: he registered as a Republican in the '50s in support of Dwight Eisenhower, supported ex-California governor and Democrat Gray Davis, and carried out a largely nonpartisan agenda as a mayor himself in the 80s.


California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, right, congratulates actor-director Clint Eastwood as one of the first 13 inductees into the California Hall of Fame, during a ceremony in Sacramento, Calif., on Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2006. (Steve Yeater / AP Photo)


As he prepares to take the spotlight, here's a brief tour of Eastwood's political evolution:


Middle-Class Roots
Eastwood was born in San Francisco to a middle-class family. His mother was a factory worker and his father a steel and migrant worker. When he was drafted to the Korean War, young Clint got placed as a lifeguard and swimming instructor at a base in California. In 1952, soon after his time with the U.S. Army, he registered to vote for the Republican Party and Dwight Eisenhower, a  moderate conservative and previously a five-star general. About a decade later, Eastwood made his first major foray into acting in the television western series Rawhide, eventually making a name for himself as a master of the genre with early starring roles in a Fistful of Dollars and Hang 'Em High.

Straight-Talkin' Mayor
In 1986, having established himself as an A-lister, Eastwood ran for mayor of his hometown Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., winning handily with 72 percent of the vote. During his one term, the movie star pushed through a nonpartisan agenda focused on fixing problems in the oceanside town and getting "things built." (Sound familiar?) One of his biggest achievements was erecting a library annex that had needed to be completed for 25 years.

"I approached it from a business point of view," Eastwood said of his time as mayor, "not a political one."

His second excursion into politics was in 2001 when he was appointed to the California State Park and Recreation Commission by Gov. Davis, a Democrat, and then again by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican.

Crossing the Aisle
After throwing in his lot with Republicans during the Eisenhower era, Eastwood stuck to the Republican Party line, becoming a vocal backer of Richard Nixon during his 1968 and 1972 campaigns and much later endorsing John McCain for the 2008 presidential race.

But Eastwood sometimes crossed the aisle in his political support. In 2002, he endorsed Gov. Davis's reelection bid, and again supported him during a 2003 recall that Davis ultimately lost. (Davis had appointed Eastwood to the parks commission before the endorsements.)

Eastwood has maintained that he is not a traditional conservative, at points labeling himself a moderate. He told Playboy in 1974 that he was a "liberal on civil rights, conservative on government spending."

He also told the magazine his philosophy on government intrusion: "I think the attitude that Big Daddy's going to take over has become a kind of a mental sickness. I don't think government programs should be designed to encourage freeloading," he said. "The government has to help people, to some degree, but it should be encouraging people to make something of themselves."

His opinions today continue to mirror those of a fiscal conservative and social liberal. He told GQ in 2011 that he doesn't "give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else," following up with, "We're making a big deal out of things we shouldn't be making a deal out of." In the article, Eastwood alluded that he thinks more in line with libertarians than any other political party.

He's No Hawk
Although Eastwood has become well known for his war films, such as Letters from Iwo Jima, he has vocally denounced every war the U.S. has been involved with since the war in Korea. In fact, many of his films have largely been seen as critiques of war, illustrating the horrors and moral repercussions of combat—a stance that likely earned him some friends among liberals.)

In his interview with Playboy, Eastwood confirmed his antiwar political outlook: "The U.S. should not be overly militaristic or play the role of global policeman," he said.

In fact, he said, his feelings on war directly influenced his decision to vote for McCain. Eastwood told the British newspaper The Daily Mail in 2011 that he thought McCain would "understand the war in Iraq better than somebody who hadn't [been through war]," but that he didn't "agree with him on a lot of stuff."

Why Not Obama
Eastwood has never been shying about voicing his lack of faith in President Obama because of what he sees as the president's fear to make bold moves that will fix the economy. Despite having wished Obama well after he won the election, Eastwood says he is disappointed with what he has achieved.

"I loved the fact that Obama is multiracial. I thought that was terrific, as my wife is the same racial makeup. But I felt he was a greenhorn, and it turned out he didn't have experience in decision-making," he told The Daily Mail.

His opinions haven't changed much since 2010, when told Katie Couric at CBS that he doesn't think Obama is "governing."

"I don't think he's surrounded himself with the people he could have surrounded himself with."

As for his thoughts on presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, Eastwood was spotted earlier this month at a lavish fundraiser for the candidate—and tonight's appearance at the RNC is sure to put to rest any speculation of which candidate he is voting for.

[Warph]

Allen West Talks Condoleezza Rice, Space and Mitt Romney in Tampa

By Katie Pavlich
8/30/2012


Rep. Allen West grew up in the inner city of Atlanta and now represents one of the wealthiest districts in the country. Townhall Magazine featured West on the cover of the June 2012 issue.

"I'm living the American dream," GOP Florida Rep. Allen West tells Townhall as he sits in his congressional office in Washington, D.C.

Now a freshman congressman, West grew up in the inner city of Atlanta in a healthy, old-school style, twoparent home. Both of his parents are from southern Georgia. West's father served in Gen. George Patton's III Corps in the European theatre during World War II and worked in a Veterans Affairs hospital when West was growing up. His mother worked for 6th Marine Corps District headquarters.

"My hair has always been quite short and cropped closely," West jokes. ...

"In 1961—when I was born in the inner city of Atlanta, Ga.,—the district that I represent right now [in Florida], someone like me or my parents could not have gone to those beaches," West says. "But that's the greatness of the exceptionalism and that's what the American dream means: that no matter where you come from, no matter where you were born, just based upon your own drive and determination, you can achieve whatever greatness you want in this country. That is what my parents taught me. America is about equality of opportunity."

Fresh off of the speech given last night by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, where she talked about growing up in the Jim Crow South, West explained to Townhall how he relates to her personal story and their shared passion for a strong America. West also talked about the space program and the 2012 election.

Click below to watch the interview with Allen West:

     

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[Warph]

82 year old Clint "I'm just a rambling Man" Eastwood rambled and wandered
around in a leisurely, aimless manner throwing jabs at a empty chair.  

     
     

He rambled on jabbing Vice President Joe Biden, calling him the "intellect of the Democratic party." "He's just a grin with a body behind it," Eastwood said.

He attacked Obama for riding in Air Force One. "You could still use a plane," he said, "Not that big gas guzzler you are going around to colleges and talking about student loans and stuff like that."

Rambling Eastwood, who praised Romney as a "stellar businessman," later said that he thought it was never a good idea for attorneys to be president, despite the fact that Romney has a J.D. from Harvard Law School. hmmmm...

"When somebody doesn't do the job, you gotta let them go," he said, gesturing to draw a finger across his throat.

Good advice, Clint.

Someone in the crowd shouted out "make my day!" to which he responded, "I don't say that word anymore."

He shortly obliged.

"Go ahead," he said, and the crowd boomed "MAKE MY DAY"

Ramble on Dirty Harry... Ramble on.

....Warph[/color][/font][/b][/size]


     

[Warph]

Hitler Just Found Out Paul Ryan is the VP Pick: