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POSTED AT 10:01 AM ON SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 BY ED MORRISSEY

 

Inspiring but Not Slick, Romney Showed Right Stuff

The 40th Republican National Convention is now history, and political strategists and pundits are poring over the poll numbers to see whether Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are getting a post-convention bounce in what have been very closely divided polls.

Romney’s convention managers made some correct and some interesting decisions. First, don’t relitigate 2008, as some conservatives would love to do.

Romney and Ryan both acknowledged the hopes for change motivating so many erstwhile Barack Obama voters. They looked back on his record in office more in sorrow than in anger.

Former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis eloquently described his own disenchantment with the president. You can see why they didn’t want to air a minute of his talk on MSNBC. It would have undercut the cable channel’s relentless narrative that Republicans are racists.

There was a special callout to young voters, who went 66 to 32 percent for Obama last time, when Ryan talked of twenty-somethings in their childhood bedrooms, “staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life. “

And there was a reach-out to the unquantifiable but undoubtedly large number of voters who feel that it would be a bad thing for Americans to be seen rejecting the first black president.

That’s the one reason I can think of for why the Romney people made the otherwise puzzling decision to put on Clint Eastwood at 10:00 Eastern, when the broadcast networks began their hour of coverage. It’s summed up in one sentence: “And when somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go.”

This was not as tightly scripted a convention as the George W. Bush or Bill Clinton conventions. Eastwood spoke without a teleprompter and so, very effectively, did Condoleezza Rice.

In back-to-back speeches, Ann Romney talked about “love” and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said that respect was more important than love. That seemed dissonant.

Actually, the two themes are reconcilable. A leader acts out of love for the people but, as Machiavelli taught, prefers to be feared than loved.

But slicker convention management would have rewritten one of the texts. The Romney folks left interpretation to a mostly hostile press and, they hope, a more sympathetic public.

I suspect the point was not to seem slick. Romney has a cool demeanor, and the convention was a device to humanize him. He and his wife described their personal lives in ways that resemble those of almost everyone. The kids roughhousing, the misfortunes that come sooner or later: They may have more money, but their lives are like those of lots of people.

The testimony of fellow church members about the Romneys’ service and caring was genuinely moving, recounted by people who are the opposite of slick. The convention floor was almost silent as they spoke, and we’ll see them again in TV ads.

The point is that the Romneys contributed something that is in short supply even among the very rich: time.

The convention also addressed concerns that have undoubtedly surfaced in focus groups. Yes, the candidate is open to women taking a lead role, as they have on his staff.

Yes, the candidate did help create businesses that employ tens of thousands and provide goods and services that people found they needed. Yes, Republicans care about education, and education choice, so that disadvantaged children have a chance to move upward.

Romney made that point in his speech, and it was underlined earlier in the evening by Jeb Bush, an extraordinarily successful governor and a politician whose behind-the-scenes support at crucial moments made possible the national career of the man who introduced Romney, Sen. Marco Rubio.

Coming off the convention floor, I heard raves about Romney’s speech from rank-and-file delegates and limited praise from those more experienced. Not spectacular, they said, but good enough.

That’s actually high praise. Democrats like their presidential candidates to be philosopher kings. They must be not only competent, but intellectually dazzling and oratorically thrilling.

Republicans have more modest ambitions. They see politicians as tools — and are satisfied if they are good enough to do the job.

Mitt Romney in selecting Paul Ryan, in staging an inspiring rather than slick convention and in delivering his acceptance speech, convinced Republicans in the hall and around the nation, and probably many undecideds, that he is a more than sufficient tool to do the job.

Documentary on Obama a Balancing Act

TAMPA, Fla. — You could say that the film “2016: Obama’s America” is the GOP equivalent of Michael Moore’s “Roger and Me.” The documentary is based on conservative firebrand Dinesh D’Souza’s 2010 book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.” As the film’s narrator, D’Souza argues that Barack Obama’s philosophy is “anti-colonialist,” a legacy passed on from his Kenyan father, who left Obama’s family when he was 2 years old.

I watched “2016″ with the California delegation at the 2012 Republican National Convention on Monday when the confab was delayed because of Hurricane Isaac. And I was surprised to see former U.S. Comptroller David Walker hitting Obama for deficit spending. Walker, you see, takes pains to come across as a fiscal hawk who criticizes both parties for bad fiscal stewardship. So he was about the last person I expected to see in a movie that some Democrats dismiss as a smear job.

I saw Walker in the Tampa Bay Times Forum on Wednesday night; he also plans to spend time at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. “I am in ’2016,’ and I’m comfortable with what I said in ’2016,’” Walker told me. “But when I originally agreed to be in that documentary, I was told it was going to be nonpartisan, nonideological and nonpersonal. Let’s just say that I don’t think it meets the criteria.” Walker told me that he asked to be left out of the marketing of the movie. He said of D’Souza’s labeling Obama as “anti-colonialist,” “I don’t know whether he is or not.” Count me in on that, too.

D’Souza starts the film discussing the ways in which he and Obama are similar. They both are mixed-race, are Ivy League graduates who were born in 1961, matriculated in 1983 and married in 1992. But D’Souza is conservative, and Obama is liberal. Why? D’Souza travels the globe as he contends that Obama’s father’s anti-colonial politics were embraced by and passed on by Obama’s mother.

Even if D’Souza could nail that argument — and he didn’t — who cares? The documentary was a big hit with GOP delegates, however, for a reason. This year, the media have over-vetted Mitt Romney’s personal life. Think of the many stories of the dog’s being put in a crate on the Romney car roof in 1983, Romney’s prep-school behavior and his actions as a leader in the Mormon church.

But in 2008, the media glossed over Obama’s ties with former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, “God <snip> America” pastor Jeremiah Wright and an African-American mentor whom Obama simply calls Frank in his memoirs, “Dreams from My Father.” It turns out Frank is Frank Marshall Davis, a well-known Communist. D’Souza calls Davis one of Obama’s ideological “Founding Fathers.”

Why wasn’t Davis more of an issue during the 2008 campaign? Slate’s David Weigel recently wrote, “Davis was an avowed Communist, and the media of 2008 didn’t care.”

“There’s been a veil placed over him,” producer Jerry Molen told me. Why did the Oscar-winning producer of “Rain Man” and “Schindler’s List” make a movie that’s critical of Obama? He told me he got angry over the lack of transparency in the administration’s handling of the Affordable Care Act. And he’s angry at what he sees as the media’s failure to adequately vet Obama in 2008 or hold Obama to the same standards reserved for GOP hopefuls.

“I’m a bit disappointed in the mainstream media,” Molen said. “They’ve fallen down on their job, or they have an agenda.”

“2016″ packages failed promises by the administration — and that’s why California delegates were so enthusiastic about the film. Delegate Jan Goldsmith, the San Diego city attorney, saw the film and was satisfied.

“I’m glad to see that this information is getting out,” he told me.

Other delegates saw the documentary as balancing the scales. Walker agrees. He told me that though he thinks the “anti-colonialist” emphasis was too personal, he appreciates that the film is not “a birther kind of thing.” D’Souza does care about facts. “2016″ flatly stipulates that Obama was born in a Hawaii hospital.

Team Obama Tries To Spin Away What “Hope And Change” Means

At least in terms of when he was stating that he would bring a new era of “post-partisan” politics

(Washington Post) On the January night in 2008 when he won the Iowa caucuses, Barack Obama delivered a victory speech that would reverberate forcefully across a divided America. Iowans, he said, had come together — Democrats, Republicans and independents — to stand as one in calling for a new politics of unity and hope. It was a message that would help carry him to the White House 10 months later.

“You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that’s consumed Washington,” the then-senator from Illinois said that winter night in Des Moines. “To end the political strategy that’s been all about division and instead make it about addition. To build a coalition for change that stretches through red states and blue states. We are choosing hope over fear. We’re choosing unity over division and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America.”

Today Obama’s words sound quaint, even naive.

Not sure about quaint or naive. It sounded silly back in 2008. Today, they sound foolish and a load of mule fritters. Which is what Conservatives said they were back in 2008, since Obama had no history of reaching across party aisles and listening, nor any experience leading. Obama is the guy who is suddenly promoted at the store for being a good ass kisser and immediately becomes a tin pot dictator among the people he used to work with.

Instead of bipartisanship, there is polarization as deep as it has been in modern times. Instead of cooperation, there is confrontation. Instead of civility, there is rudeness. The political system seems frozen and more resistant to compromise than ever. Two months before the 2012 election, the campaign has become an all-or-nothing battle over the future direction of the country.

There’s nothing really unusual about what is going on in Washington. Heck, politicians actually used to duel. With guns and swords. Politics has always been nasty, and always will be. Of course, Obama was the guy saying he would bring about an era of kumbaya in Washington

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said there has been a misunderstanding of just what Obama was talking about in 2008 when he called for a new politics.

“The president didn’t promise an era of kumbaya politics in which everyone agreed,” he said. “The primary thing he talked most about was that politicians too often ran from big problems that had haunted our country for decades. Whether folks like it or not, he did jump in and take on very big problems with full knowledge that they would have political consequences for him.”

See? You idiots just misunderstood what Obama was saying. He didn’t really mean that there would be a new tone in Washington, that he would be “post-partisan”, that he would try for cooperation, no, he meant he would…..ram legislation through the Democrat controlled Congress? Um, that’s what Republicans accused him of doing.

A good chunk of the Washington Post story is about attempting to blame Republicans, but, really, can anyone point to how Obama attempting to be a leader and reach across the aisle? Sure, a few serious squishes like Olympia Snowe might, but, this is the guy who said “I won” and then rammed through his policies. He’s been combative, abusive, and always blamestorms. Obama chose far left policies over what the American People wanted. Both the Stimulus and ObamaCare, among others, were highly unpopular before they passed, and didn’t get any more popular after being passed. It wasn’t just Republicans in Washington Obama was giving the middle finger: it was the American People.

Obama Says Republican Voters “Often Agree With Me”

Oh, really?

(Daily Caller) Obama was asked, “So how are you going to talk to Republicans differently if you are reelected?”

“Republican voters, if you ask them about my particular policy positions, often agree with me. So there’s a difference between Republicans in Washington and Republican and Republican-leaning voters around the country,” Obama said in a Parade Magazine reader question-and-answer session published on Friday.

“I think that after this election, we’ll be in a position to once again reach out to Republicans and say that the American people have rendered a judgment, and the positions we’re taking are well within what used to be considered bipartisan centrist approaches.”

Yet another hard hitting interview in a fluff magazine. Anyhow,

“My approach has been pretty consistent from the start; I’ve often proposed ways to solve our problems that used to be embraced by Republicans. There’s no better example than the health care bill, which was designed originally by the now Republican standard-bearer and is working pretty well in Massachusetts,” he responded.

Most Republicans do not agree with the law itself and still have a problem with it, but understand that this is the kind of thing a Republican does in a liberals state like Massachusetts, and that this is Federalism, ie, state’s rights.

“The Recovery Act that helped us avoid a depression, a third of it was tax cuts. My hope is that the Republican Party, post election, steps back and says, ‘Now that we’re not so worried about beating the president, maybe we should spend a little time focusing on solving the problems.’”

Yes, we support tax cuts. But, the importance is not the policy but how it is implemented. Did those “tax cuts” work? Did they stimulate? At this point, that policy can be given a resounding “NO!” It was simply a change in the tax code which reduced the paycheck withholding and reduced the amount of money going into the social security trust fund. All for about $8 a week.

Surely, there are some policies we agree with him on: I like that he seems to enjoy launching strikes against jihadis (which would have gotten President Bush excoriated by the Left and liberal media). I like that he stayed with President Bush’s timeline to get out of Iraq (though Obama took full credit for it, and probably used Bush’s timeline because Obama is lazy). Otherwise, what else is there? I can’t think of one other policy I agree with. I’m sure there are a few. We probably see eye to eye on some environmental issues. But, the thing is, it’s not always about policy, it’s often about implementation. Short term “tax cuts” do not work. Short term fixes usually do not even provide short term relief.

He also called Obamacare one of his proudest achievements. Hence, he lost the House of Representatives in a historic blowout.

Banning Abortion Is Now, Apparently, Racism

It was only a matter of time before some uber-leftist linked abortion (which is apparently the primary focus of the DNC) with raaaaacism. In this case, it’s Brian Fung at the Atlantic

The Quiet Racism of Abortion Bans

Like prohibitions on other goods and services, an abortion ban of the kind national conservatives propose would take a disproportionate toll on those least equipped to adapt, and would advance little but ideology.

As national Republicans in Tampa consider adding have added a ban on abortions as an official plank in their party platform — a proposal whose draft language is so severe, it doesn’t make exceptions for cases of rape or incest — liberal commentators have grown accustomed to speaking of the right’s strict stance on reproductive issues as a war on women. But it might be more accurate to say that it’s really an attack on women of a specific stripe: those from disadvantaged minorities and the poor.

Except, the position does make exceptions for rape and incest. But, hey, Brian (who’ll never have to get an abortion himself) has a narrative! Here’s his conclusion

But whatever you make of those topline numbers, one thing seems certain: an abortion ban would disproportionately affect women from non-white and low-income backgrounds.

Right. You caught us, Brian. That’s exactly what the GOP is attempting to do, to make sure there are more Black, Latino, and other minority children not being aborted so that the country will have more Black, Latino, and other minorities because we hate Blacks, Latinos, and other minorities. I find myself rubbing my forehead after writing that, considering what Liberals feel are their deep policy positions.

If anything, pushing for more abortion on demand is racist. Consider that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger was an avowed racist pushing eugenics to reduce the population of Blacks, other minorities, and “defectives.” She spoke in front of the KKK.

Abortion is also a sexist position of the Democrat Party, as they see to think that this is the main concern of women.

By: David Harsanyi 
8/30/2012 11:06 AM

RESIZE:AAA

Or as DG Myers tweeted, “at least, a contestable proposition they are too lazy to contest.”

Democrats are energetically attempting to create the perception that Republicans — specifically, Paul Ryan — are running around Tampa making stuff up about Barack Obama (as if that’s necessary). And when I say Democrats, as regrettably cliché as it may sound, I also mean the mainstream media.

The following assertions, for instance, are true:

• Obama did cut over $700 billion from Medicare to fund Obamacare.
• The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism.
• The Janesville, General Motors plant was closed down under Obama (though Ryan made a more nuanced assertion that we’ll cover below)
• Obama did blow off the bipartisan debt commission.
• Obama’s waivers do allow for the relaxing of work requirements in welfare reform.

Do some Republican speakers use politically hyperbolic rhetoric on occasion to attack the president on these points? No doubt. Are some of the accusers hypocrites. Sure. Is any of this out of line with traditional political campaign rhetoric? Hardly.

You expect advocates of the president to flail away after Ryan’s highly effective speech. The New Republic asks: “The Most Dishonest Convention Speech … Ever?” “At least five times,” Jonathan Cohn writes, “Ryan misrepresented the facts.” He then goes on to list five irrefutable facts that he finds ideologically distressing. Joan Walsh of MSNBC and Salon also writes of “Paul Ryan’s brazen lies,” as is her fact-challenged way, failing to offer one. Michael Tomasky claims Ryan’s speech was a “Web of Lies” but isn’t kind enough to find one for his column.

But take this Associated Press piece that is, no doubt, being run across the country: “FACT CHECK: Ryan Takes Factual Shortcuts in Speech.”

You know what’s funny about this piece? Not a single item highlighted is a factual shortcut or an untruth. They are simply items that put the president in a bad light. Now, some conclusions Ryan comes to might be contestable or they may make Ryan look like a hypocrite, but none of them are inaccurate.

The “post-truth” age, which James Fallows of the Atlantic refers to, is thriving among Democrats who’ve forsaken debate and have gone into the business by asserting that inconvenient truths are “lies” and using that assertion as a baseline for any debate that follows. Just read Fallows’ piece for evidence.

Take the “You didn’t build that” theme that the convention speakers have been focusing on. Quoting Obama verbatim is, apparently, a lie. I would argue that the context of Obama’s speech — one that refreshes Elizabeth Warren’s ode to a state-controlled economy — confirms what Republicans think he meant. Now, I concede that this is a disputable assertion, but it is not a lie.  Yet, read someone like Glenn Kessler, “factchecker” at The Washington Post, twisting himself into knots trying to convince you that the president didn’t say what he said.

“The key question is whether “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.”

Why is that the “key question”? And even if it were, how can a self-professed broker of the truth give Two Pinocchios to the GOP when he himself acknowledges that it’s a “a bit of judgment call”?  Kessler is the same factchecker who gave Republican groups knocking Obama for not visiting Israel Two Pinocchios, as well. You realize, I’m sure, that it is an indisputable fact that the president has not visited Israel, but Kessler was unimpressed by the ads.

Another alleged lie of Ryan’s is his contention that Obama had presided over the closing of a Janesville GM plant. Here’s what Ryan said:

Especially in Janesville where we were about to lose a major factory. A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that G.M. plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said, “I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another 100 years.

That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.

Politifact — the most dishonest of the so-called factcheckers — says this claim is false.  Why? “Actually, the plant closed before he even took office,” says the site.

Actually, it did not, as my colleague John Hayward explains in detail. Moreover, when you read the speech you see that Ryan was saying, not so much that Obama was at fault for the closing of the plant, but that his campaign was one of broken promises and false hope.

Ryan is making an argument about the president’s vision and failed promises. With Obama’s record, that’s a tough debate to have for Democrats. So rather than engaging in it, they are often pretending that the parameters of the debate are unfair or that issues on the table are untrue. I doubt that that can work this time around.

I generally agree with Scott that Romney’s speech could have been a lot stronger, and still had the same personal structure and done what he wanted to do with it.  Who are his chief speechwriters, I wonder?  Is it the same crew (McConnell and Scully) that did Paul Ryan’s speech?  Of course, much of Ryan’s speech is harmonious with, and drawn from, Ryan’s many previous speeches, which adapted easily for the rhetorical requirements of the national convention stage.  So it was easier to do for both the writers and for Ryan.   Romney’s speech could have, but didn’t, solve a long-standing Romney problem: what does he believe?  He’s still never given the equivalent of Reagan’s “Speech” (usually rendered ‘The Speech”—always capitalized) that lets us know what this guy is all about.

There was, however, one important turn of phrase that crystalizes the essential difference between Left and Right—between Obama and himself—that should give confidence that, if elected, Romney will be a decent president.  And it could provide the razor that cuts Obama down to size in the fall campaign.  It was this:

President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.  MY promise . . . is to help you and your family.

This line obviously scored by the Left’s reaction to it.  The clot on Chris Matthews’ leg grew bigger still as he complained that Romney was making light of climate change, and other greenies have expressed similar outrage.  But the contrast set up in this line is not about climate change per se—it’s about the grandiosity of liberalism today, whose overweening pretentiousness has seldom found better expression than Obama (though Walter Mondale professing himself a candidate of “the sad” in 1984 comes close, as George Will reminded usthe other day).

Liberalism today is all about solving cosmic issues like global warming and “social justice”—which is why liberals like large, heavily politicized, programmatic “solutions” for everything.  As has been often said, liberals love The People, but don’t like real people, as shown by the fact, detailed in yet another recent study, that liberals give pitifully little to charity compared with conservatives.  A liberal’s idea of charity is taking your money and funding a government program it.  Actually helping an individual in need–well yuck, that thegovernment’s job don’t you know.

No wonder the Democratic Party has largely lost the working class vote; when real people hear Obama talk, King Canute-like, about halting the rise of the oceans and healing the planet, they get it that he doesn’t actually care much about them and their practical problems much at all.  All the talk about creating new “green jobs” won’t cut it; ordinary citizens know better, even without the example of Solyndra.  This doesn’t make the working class an automatic vote for Republicans, who have largely lost their voice on economic growth the last few years and strangely haven’t done a very good job of getting it back.  But Romney has laid down a strong marker for thumping Obama if he can build on this point.

The Ryan Vision: Let’s Get This Done

The Democrats and their mainstream media cheering section can huff and puff at Paul Ryan’s convention speech, but they can’t blow his house down. It was built on a solid foundation.

So powerful was the speech that the liberal establishment is reduced to wailing about alleged lies the speech contained — dishonest and easily refuted allegations. Ryan delivered a substantive indictment of the Obama administration’s failed record and a content-rich, realistic plan for putting this nation back on track to economic growth and fiscal recovery, a plan that includes “protecting and strengthening” Medicare, not “raiding” it.

Don’t listen to the naysayers. Ryan began with a humble acceptance of his “calling” and “duty” to help restore America. His message was positive. “I know we can do this,” he said, not dwelling on the malaise in which Obama’s disastrous policies have placed us but offering a specific blueprint to deliver us from this quicksand.

He carried forward this same theme throughout the speech: He said that when he accepted the nomination, he told Mitt Romney, “Let’s get this done”; and in closing the speech, he converted the slogan into a formal offer to the American people, promising that if elected, he and Romney would put America back on a path to fiscal redemption.

Ryan offered a succinct but irrefutable critique of Obama’s economic record: 23 million unemployed or underemployed, 1 in 6 Americans living in poverty and one-half of college graduates unable to find work they’ve studied for or any work at all.

More importantly, he emphasized that Obama has no new ideas to deliver us from this quagmire. Under a second Obama term, nothing would change — Obamanomics being but a ship trying to sail on yesterday’s wind.

Obama’s grandiose stimulus plan, involving “the largest one-time expenditure of the federal government,” not only didn’t work to create jobs but also took us into deeper debt. The money wasn’t “just spent and wasted; it was borrowed, spent and wasted.” Instead of giving us the jobs we needed, he forced Obamacare on us against our will, and he gave us Solyndra and its ilk — replete with corporate welfare, political patronage, cronyism and “make-believe markets.” Indeed.

Obama’s stimulus debacle was a microcosm — albeit a gargantuan one — of the ideas that Obama has advanced and that Romney and Ryan would reject in favor of America’s founding ideals. Ryan was eloquent in articulating the contrast. Under Obama, he said, the government has tried to divide up wealth. Under Romney and Ryan, Americans — not government — would (SET ITAL) create (END ITAL) wealth. Ryan expanded on the contrast, saying that Obama sees America as a place where everyone is stuck in some class or station in life, victims of circumstances beyond their control, with government there to help them cope with their fate.

The new administration, he assured us, would give us the exact opposite — a land where government is limited (to 20 percent of gross domestic product) and liberty is championed. He weaved in the story of his own family experiences and his mother — his “role model” — to personalize the point. He urged us not to buy Obama’s message and record of despair and to reject the stifling notion that we can’t do any better — ideas wholly inconsistent with Ryan’s personal experiences and the lessons his parents taught him.

Ryan said, in essence, “How dare you tell me and other Americans we have to accept whatever circumstances we find ourselves in and not try to improve our lots in life?” He said, “I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself and define happiness for myself.” In other words, in the America in which Ryan grew up and that he and Romney will try to restore, no government and no politician will predefine limits on economic growth and individual liberties — above all, the pursuit of happiness.

Ryan said that the American dream is grounded in freedom, not a planned economy in which equal outcomes are sought in lieu of equal opportunity. He underscored not simply that central planning doesn’t work but that it’s morally inferior, contrary to the claims and “sanctimony” of its leftist proponents.

Ryan promised that they would lead on the tough issues and be men of action — rather than of endless empty rhetoric — and would spend the next four years not blaming others but taking responsibility. They would immediately end the current administration’s practice of replacing our founding principles and begin to reapply those principles.

Obama tells us that Republicans want a smaller America, but as Ryan conclusively demonstrated in his speech, it is Obama who envisions a limited, anemic America with a finite pie, incapable of a robust economic future.

In Romney and Ryan’s America — as in Ronald Reagan’s, Jack Kemp’s and Condoleezza Rice’s — “it doesn’t matter where you came from; it matters where you’re going.”

The Five Best Quotes In Pics From The Republican National Convention On Wednesday (5 Pics)

The first hour and a half of the GOP convention was punishingly bad. It featured politician after politician giving dull, stilted, cliched speeches that would have been more appropriate for a small town Toastmasters meeting than a national convention. It was boring to watch, the crowd was dead, and it did little to help the GOP. It is hard to understand why the GOP would run so many terrible speakers in a row when they had solid speakers like Rand Paul on before prime time started. Happily, the GOP did bring its A-Game for the last hour and a half when the big names who were likely to draw the most eyeballs delivered great performances.

5) Rob Portman: He sounded competent, had good energy, and put on a respectable, but not outstanding performance.

4) Tim Pawlenty: He told jokes, machine-gun-style to open up his speech. On the one hand, many of them weren’t that funny. On the other hand, TPaw got in a few good lines, made a few points worth making, and was at least entertaining.

3) Condoleeza Rice: Condi had the crowd in the palm of her hand and she delivered a very strong speech. It didn’t have a lot of red meat or one-liners in it, but she came across as a grown-up offering the sort of mature, responsible leadership you want in charge. It was an absolutely outstanding speech.

2) Mike Huckabee: Huck has great delivery, a good sense of comedic timing, and he managed to artfully talk about social issues without coming across as preachy. He was probably the best pure speaker on the podium.

1) Paul Ryan: The crowd went NUTS for Ryan and he was everything they hoped he would be. He came across as warm, likable, extremely knowledgable, concerned about the country, and he had so much gravitas that you wondered how the stage could hold him up without splitting asunder. He also did a great job of building up Mitt and hammering the Obama Administration. After watching that speech, I came to the conclusion that I had underrated Ryan’s talent as a speaker.

Now, here are the five best quotes of the night.

New York Times Fact Checkers: Bed Rest Is Work!

Poor Mickey Kaus. He’s the liberal intellectual (not an oxymoron — he’s the last known living “liberal intellectual”) lefties on TV are usually stealing from, but now that this welfare reform maven has concluded that Romney’s welfare ad is basically correct, liberals refuse to acknowledge his existence.

The non-Fox media have formed a solid front in denouncing Romney’s welfare ad for daring to point out that Obama has gutted the work requirements of the 1996 welfare reform bill.

The New York Times claims that Romney’s ad “falsely” charges Obama with eliminating work requirements. CNN rates the ad “false.” Underemployed hack Howard Fineman says Romney’s ad “is just flat out wrong on the facts” and “that every fair analyst, every fact checker” has said it’s “just factually wrong.”

When a campaign ad induces this much hysteria, you know Romney has struck gold. On closer examination, it turns out that by “every fair analyst,” Fineman means a bunch of liberals quoting one another.

This is how the media’s “fact checkers” operate when it comes to a Republican campaign ad. One not very well-informed person (or a heavily biased person) announces that Romney’s welfare ad is false, and the rest of the herd quote him, without anyone ever bothering to examine the facts, much less citing anyone who knows what he’s talking about.

It is striking that everyone who actually knows something about the 1996 welfare reform law says that Romney’s ad is accurate.

One of the principal authors of the 1996 welfare reform, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, and Douglas Besharov, who advised Hillary Clinton on the 1996 welfare reform law, say Romney’s ad is accurate.

Andrew Grossman, also of Heritage, produced something the MSM “fact checkers” avoid: a specific and detailed explanation of how the new waivers will allow states to evade the work requirements.

Even Ron Haskins, one of the reform bill’s authors now at the liberal Brookings Institution — cited far and wide for “blasting” Romney’s ad — doesn’t deny the Obama administration plans to waive the work requirements. He just says he supports waivers for “job training.” That’s not disputing the accuracy of Romney’s ads.

A lot of Americans don’t support waiving the work requirements, even for “job training.” Mitt Romney thinks they should know that that’s what Obama is doing.

And liberal Kaus — whom liberal hacks are usually plagiarizing from — has written a series of blog posts explaining in detail why the Times is wrong and Romney’s ad is not incorrect. True, he says the ad is “oversimplified,” but I think most people grasp that a 30-second ad will not provide the lush analytical detail of a Kausfiles blog posting.

We know liberals are reading Kausfiles; why aren’t they stealing from him this time?

As Kaus explains, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius has interpreted the welfare law to allow her to waive work requirements “subject only to her opinion” as to what will serve the purposes of the law.

By viewing the work requirements as optional, subject to her waiver, Kaus says, the law has been “altered dramatically”: “Old system: Congress writes the requirements, which are … requirements. New system: Sebelius does what she wants — but, hey, you can trust her!”

Sebelius is not a laid-back, third-way neoliberal who can be expected to interpret her waiver authority honestly. She’s the doctrinaire feminist loon who “interpreted” Obamacare to require every insurance policy in the country to provide full coverage for birth control.

Kaus points out that the HHS memo announcing that Sebelius could allow waivers from work for “job training,” “job search” or “pursuing a credential” unquestionably constitutes “a weakening of the work requirement.” He adds that it’s also “unfair to the poor suckers who just go to work without ever going on welfare — they don’t get subsidized while they’re ‘pursuing a credential.’”

In a follow-up post, Kaus pointed out that the Times’ own editorial denouncing the Romney ad inadvertently revealed that Sebelius was proposing a lot more than “job search” exemptions from the work requirement.

Both the Times and an HHS memo cheerfully propose allowing hard-to-employ “families” — which are never actual families, by the way — to be “exempted from the work requirements for six months.” Or more than six months. It’s up to Sebelius: “Exempted.”

The work requirements were one of two central features of the 1996 welfare reform law, along with time limits. They were heatedly opposed by the Democrats’ left-wing base at the time, and have been met with massive resistance in some of our more Greece-like states ever since.

A 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office found that some states were accepting such non-work substitutes from welfare recipients as “bed rest,” “personal journaling,” “motivational reading,” “exercise at home,” “smoking cessation,” “weight loss,” and “helping a friend or relative with household tasks and errands.”

(Under Sebelius, the work requirement will also be satisfied with “playing Xbox and eating Doritos.”)

Many liberals, such as those who write for The New York Times, agree that “bed rest” and “personal journaling” should count as a work substitute for welfare recipients. But that’s not what the law says. And it’s certainly not what liberals tell us when they proclaim Romney’s ad “false.”

What “every fair analyst” and “every fact checker” means when they call Romney’s ad “false” is: We, the media, don’t consider exempting welfare recipients from the requirement of having to work “gutting” the work requirements.

“Thoroughly debunked” is the new liberal code for “blindingly accurate.”

Obama’s Sneaky, Deadly, Costly Car Tax