Bellbottom Blog

RNC Recap

The balloons have dropped and Clint Eastwood has been led away to a quiet room.

Let’s recap the convention.

DAY ONE:

It rained so they cancelled DAY ONE.

You might say to yourself, “Isn’t the event held inside?”

Yes, it is!

“Then why cancel?”

I think they realized there wasn’t enough material for a four day extravaganza, so they used the excuse of a hurricane coming within a couple of hundred miles to cancel the first day. Jam everything into three days.  or as some might call it, stuff 4 pounds of crap in a three pound sack.

DAY TWO

Now we get to the good stuff.  There will be speeches and music.

About that music.  The band is being led by G.E. Smith a former SNL band member.  This must be part of the job creation effort that the Romney-Ryan ticket is crowing about. Only 11,999,999 to go before they reach their goal of  12 million.

It’s a great gig for G.E. Smith though.  Republicans are notoriously unable to keep time to music so he fits like a glove.

There were 51 different speakers on DAY TWO.  51. Now we here at the Bellbottom Blog, as you well know, do a minimum of research for these type of posts, so there is no way we listened to all 51 speeches.

We guess that most of them had some small difference of opinion with how the current president does his job.

Later that night, Ann Romney came out to give a speech.

She was supposed to humanize her husband, whatever that means.

Her story of their life together was mildly interesting.  Left out of the narrative was all of the different times family money helped them out during their younger days as a married couple. Lots of money.  Not a twenty here or there. LOTS OF MONEY

I am glad they had it.  I wish they would stop saying they understand the struggles of average families. Most average families don’t have a jar full of rainy-day stocks to sell when things get tight.

Then, Chris Christie took the stage.  The Governor of New Jersey.

His speech was so rousing, MTV cancelled the Jersey Shore program the next day. (true fact) (not saying one had to do with the other, but?)

He was giving the keynote speech.  His job was to talk about Mitt Romney.  Seventeen minutes into it, he did mention the nominee. Eventually, either he ran out of speech or just got hungry.  That ended DAY TWO.

DAY THREE

Seventeen speakers were on tap for this day.

I believe the roll call of states also went on.

Tim Pawlenty turned his spot into a Night at the Improv moment proving once again that Republicans have no discernible sense of humor.

For example,” The President has created a lot of jobs……for golf caddies.”

See, the Timster is saying that the President plays a lot of golf. Instead of working. See?

Sen. John McCain bitched in his charming way about everything that has gone on since he got trounced by 8.5 million votes four years ago.

He wants to start wars every damn place.  And now!  Cranky and bitter.

Mike Huckabee landed a prime time spot.  He doesn’t care for the President either it seems.  I think that is an underlying theme here.

I thought Condi Rice, the former Bush Secretary of State, was going to get the prize for speech of the night.  She left out a couple of things. 9/11 happened on her watch.  Iraq didn’t have WMD’s like she promised. But it was a busy eight years, who can remember every little thing.

No, the speech of the night was from Paul Ryan.

Paul is a special kind of politician.  Even though he knows that any story he tells will be fact checked, that doesn’t matter to him.  He tells it anyway and if you don’t like it, too bad.

The Janesville, Wi. G.M. plant story is one that I am familiar with.

Because, in the mid-eighties, my hometown of Fort Wayne was reeling from losing an International Harvester plant.  General Electric was shipping jobs to Mexico. The area needed a big employer to come in and right the ship.

Along comes General Motors.

They needed a new truck plant.

So a spot is found for them outside of the city.  A new and improved interstate highway interchange is built for them.  Utilities are extended to the land where the plant will go.  Tax deferments are granted to make the move more palatable.

Did I mention this was done with Government money?  Yep, taxpayers money was used for every inch of this transaction.

Who lost when this happened?  Janesville. They started losing business in 1986 until G.M. closed up operations in Dec. 2008 when except for a skeleton crew the last 1200 workers were laid off.

Even someone writing for Fox News called Mr. Ryan a liar.

But that wasn’t the best part.  This is when he moved into another dimension as a phony.  He started talking about his mom. At just the right moment during an applause line, he wiped a pretend tear from each eye and then proceeded without a crack in his voice.  Everybody knows when you do the fake tear thing, a slight break  in your voice sells it.  Watch old Bill Clinton tapes, Paul.

Let’s just move on from this unpleasantness and proceed to …….

DAY FOUR

Twelve speakers on tap for this big finish.

You will notice, despite all the chatter to the contrary, Donald Trump doesn’t make an appearance at the convention.

Fortunately for the Twitterverse, Clint Eastwood showed up with an empty chair.  He started talking to the chair and Twitter went BATSHIT CRAZY!  What is he doing?  Who let him up there?  It was one of the funniest stretches of time I have experienced on Twitter since I started on it.

Parody accounts sprang up immediately.

This was supposed to be the big lead- in for Mitt Romney.  It looked like the old reporter sketch Bill Hader does on SNL.

When Mitt came out, he looked to me like he had been crying.  I have seen that look on the faces of disappointed  kids.  When the big day doesn’t go as you planned.  But Mitt plowed through his speech.

It was a recap of almost everyone else’s speeches.  Sprinkled with just enough lies to keep the base happy.

Well, the show ended with a lot of people on the stage.  G.E. Smith playing Living In America, the old James Brown song.

If there was dancing, the networks were kind enough to spare us the sight.

The polls will tell us if the convention moved the needle.

Next week, the Democrats have their turn.

Then we are just a few debates and a couple of months away from Election Day.

Make sure if you are going to vote that you have registered.  If you have moved you have got to update your information.  If you are reading this from overseas…..thanks for reading this far.

Peace.