This was one weird bit from the speech that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, I think. First off, Eastwood said maybe we should stop electing attorneys. Both Obama and Romney have law degrees. I’m not sure either one was ever a practiging attorney, but that might be a nitpick. Second and more importantly, he said that instead of lawyers maybe voters should elect a businessman. This exact same argument was made in favor of George W. Bush, and we know that was a disaster fiscally and in every other sense.
In all cases you cite, the degrees were from Harvard. Says something, not sure what.
He meant a *successful *businessman, one assumes.
I think he actually went back and emphasized “brilliant businessman” or something like that. But despite some bankruptcies, people who were touting Bush’s candidacy said he’d been very successful in business, too, and Cheney had been successful for Halliburton as its CEO (and arguably remained so as VP!). So it really is the same argument.
Is Clint really a shadow Democrat operative? That’s how he was acting.
Apparently Clint sees himself more as an old school Eisenhower Republican, but he’s pretty much Libertarian on social issues, so some of the spew coming out of the convention would have to at least make him hold his nose.
Would it be too far off to speculate maybe some of Romney’s crew gave Clint talking points and he told them to fuck off, tossed the script and blew up ranting to the invisible President? It just feels like he was pissed, and not necessarily at Obama.
I don’t know, but how frosty is it in the Romney camp today? Mitt’s going houseclean that’s for sure.
Isn’t that a GOOD thing? I’ve been saying for years that Bush wasn’t popular with Republicans precisely because they saw him as just another big-spending, big-government guy. Which he was. And I’m guessing you’re no fan of any of the above, so why is it bad that the Republicans are dumping them?
Oh, that’s just ridiculous. It’s a Democratic talking point that Reagan wouldn’t be welcome in today’s Republican party, or that he wouldn’t want to be in it. That’s just not true. Go back and re-watch his ‘a time for choosing’ speech that put him in the spotlight in 1964. Go listen to some of his radio addresses that he wrote himself.
Reagan was a libertarian-oriented Republican by temperament. He could (and did) quote extensively from Hayek, Bastiat, and Friedman. He referenced the founding fathers regularly. If he were around today, he’d probably be the leader of the Tea Party.
And while this is off-topic, while looking up that quote I found this one, from 1989:
Not a bad insight from 23 years ago.
Plenty of conservatives have observed that Reagan would not fit in the current Republican party. It’s more than just a liberal talking point.
In other news, Dictionary.com servers went down last night in a Denial of Service attack when they were overloaded with requests for the definition of ‘bifurcate’.
Mitt was admitted to the Michigan bar, so by definition he was a practicing attorney for at least a short time even though he didn’t actually practice law.
So, there he was, putting the finishing touches on his definitive paper on Kant, Hegel, and the Existential Essence of the Dialectic when he was struck by this thought, which he jotted down to fit into his next speech.
Canadians. Is it the water?
Thank you. As usual, Romney found a way to be both.
They’re not being helped by people like Lindsey Graham, whose latest gaffe was along the lines of “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term” (current thread). I’m sure that won’t further alienate women or people of color.
That wasn’t a gaffe at all. He said they need a more diverse base of support, and he’s right- they do. Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio to the side, the Republican Party is a party of older white men and the country is getting more and more diverse.
Ah, just badly worded and then parsed to show it in the worst light possible then. I had to reread it in context a couple of times to see what he was trying to say. I retract my previous comment.
Why? It’s not like he endorsed barbecuing live puppies. (Okay, I hate dogs; let’s say live kittens.) I see no reason why Clint Eastwood or any artist needs to agree with my politics.
From your good friends at ThinkProgress, regarding Romnulan reaction to the speech:
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/08/31/786101/romney-campaign-embraces-eastwoods-speech-classic-descriptive-spoke-from-the-heart/
**Romney Campaign Embraces Eastwood’s Speech: ‘Classic,’ ‘Descriptive,’ ‘Spoke From The Heart’
**
“Classic improv”. Yes. Quite. Just so.
That’s pretty good. It’s not like they can come out and say “Mitt went white as a ghost as soon as Clint started rambling and halfway through the speech he begged Heavenly Father to either kill the microphone or make Clint wander off the stage before it got any worse.” Anne Romney was quoted as saying “he’s a unique guy and he did a unique thing,” which I think we’d all have to agree is a triumph of euphemism. I’m not sure if she added “Bless his heart.”
So let me get this straight: They put an octogenarian, who’s not particularly known for his improvisational skills, on prime time television, during the final hour of their nationally-televised convention, leading up to the introduction of the man they’ve just nominated to be president (a nominee who’s been consistently behind in most national polls since Day 1), had this old man do an unscripted sketch-- again, on national television during what’s probably the most-watched night of their convention-- where he yelled random, off-message things at a chair for 10 minutes…and they’re happy with the results?!?
I’ll never understand Republicans. And I think I’m getting more and more convinced the Romney people have no damn clue what they’re doing and will just be happy when this whole debacle is finally over in November.
They’re not happy. They’re just not acknowledging that it was a trainwreck because it’s politics and they have to put the best face on it. It’s not like it’s death for the campaign, but it was very bad timing since this was supposed to be Romney’s big speech to the public. If they really were OK with letting Eastwood give a spontaneous address to a huge convention of people and a TV audience when he’s not used to doing either, that was really dumb.