Republican Convention

The GOP Convention, Night Three — Ted Cruz plays the spoiler

Featured image Tonight’s Republican convention was strong in the 10:00 hour, thanks to solid speeches by Eric Trump (but hadn’t Trump already received enough praise from his kids?), Newt Gingrich (but was the intro by his wife necessary?), and Mike Pence. The speech of Trump’s running mate didn’t match those of Sarah Palin (2008) or Paul Ryan (2012), but these were both A grade speeches, in my view. I’d give the Hoosier »

The GOP Convention, Night Two — Three big hits and a bad miss

Featured image Night Two of the GOP convention featured strong speeches throughout much of the evening, but ended off-key. Two of the best speeches came in the 9:00 hour, before the three major networks were covering the event, but while, I assume, many viewers were tuned in on cable channels. Paul Ryan, of whom I am no big fan, delivered an excellent condemnation of the Democratic Party on the domestic front followed »

A Big Night For Republicans

Featured image Day two of the Republican convention was a success. The first speaker I saw was Tiffany Trump. I read somewhere that Tiffany was the weak link in the family, I guess because she is Marla Maples’ daughter. In fact, she was great–a 22-year-old (or so) graduate of Penn, she was cool as a cucumber, and her speech was terrific. My wife, whose emotional intelligence is superior to mine, pointed out »

“Soul Searching” for thee but not for me

Featured image Jennifer Rubin, whose “Right Turn” space at the Washington Post seems reserved lately for attacks on Donald Trump, finds “problematic” last night’s “Make America Safe Again” theme at the GOP convention. The most consistent anti-Trump voices in the party, she notes, have been foreign policy conservatives. This is probably true. But Rubin doesn’t explain why the fact that Trump disagrees with foreign policy conservatives on some matters renders problematic the »

Plagiarism? Please.

Featured image Within minutes after Melania Trump’s outstanding speech at the GOP convention last night, Democrats and anti-Trump commentators were accusing her of plagiarizing portions of a paragraph, i.e. a few phrases and sentence fragments, from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech. Here is the comparison, a brief portion of Michelle Obama’s speech with the words that Melania Trump duplicated in bold, via the Weekly Standard: And Barack and I were raised with »

Behold the Power of Power Line

Featured image I’m still digging out from two long weeks in Washington DC teaching two concentrated summer school courses, so I’m slow catching up with everything going on at the Republican convention. John and I mulled over the idea of attending the convention with press credentials, but decided against it. But maybe we should have turned up. PoliticoPro (subscription only) reported this yesterday: GOP platform aims to turn EPA into commission By »

The GOP Convention, Night One [UPDATED — Melania borrowed from Michelle]

Featured image On the second day of the 2012 Republican national convention, the theme was “We Built It.” This represented both celebration of small businesses and a response to Obama’s offensive “you didn’t built that” remark chiding entrepreneurs. The program that night was effective up to a point. But to what extent do Americans still associate with the entrepreneurial spirit? Yes, a great many Americans remain sympathetic to small businessmen and businesswomen. »

The GOP Convention Opportunity

Featured image Everyone seems to think that the GOP convention this summer is likely to be a disaster, with the party splitting and at least half the delegates going home unhappy that their man didn’t prevail. Let me suggest that this is a yuuuge opportunity for Republicans to make lemonade out of lemons. As Trump might say, the greatest lemonade ever! Keep in mind two facts. First, the TV networks have been »

Should the GOP Nominate By Plurality?

Featured image To me, the nomination math is simple. As soon as one of the candidates receives the votes of a majority of the delegates (i.e., 1,237), either on the first ballot or on a subsequent ballot, he or she is the nominee. Until someone gets a majority of the ballots, the delegates keep voting. Historically, it has not been unheard of for 30 or 40 ballots to take place in political »

Republican Riots, and Other Oxymorons

Featured image I have to admit to being amused at the prospect, touted both by Donald Trump and his Wormtongue, Roger Stone, that there will be riots in Cleveland if the nomination is “stolen” from Trump. First of all, try to picture a “Republican riot.” Do Republicans even know how to riot? My image of a Republican riot is filling out strongly-worded comment cards for the membership club suggestion box. Republicans are »

Parties, the Convention, and Trump

Featured image Donald Trump’s populist uprising has, for some, cast the parties and their somewhat Byzantine nomination procedures in the role of anti-democratic anachronism. Ross Douthat sticks up for the parties: As Donald Trump attempts to clamber to the Republican nomination over a still-divided opposition, there will be a lot of talk about how all these rules and quirks and complexities are just a way for insiders to steal the nomination away »

Celebrating diversity at conventions, then and now

Featured image In 1972, I felt about President Nixon roughly the way I feel about President Obama now. Thus, I was very disappointed by the 1972 Democratic Convention, which seemed to me long on celebrating the Party’s new-found diversity among delegates and short on strong criticism of the Nixon administration. Back at law school a few weeks later, I was eating dinner with a group that included some brand new law students »

A tale of two conventions

Featured image Barack Obama says, correctly, that this election offers the American public a stark choice with respect to policy and national direction. So far, the two political conventions also present clear differences in approach. The Republican Convention was, in some ways, an understated affair. The Party devoted huge amounts of time attempting to show how nice Republicans are, especially when it comes to woman and Hispanics. This time could have been »

Dirty Harry revisited

Featured image Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films have an underlying theme. I would say it is the need to go outside the rules set by the hidebound bureaucrats and politicians of the administrative state to get the job done. Harry Callahan is, after all, a detective in the San Francisco police department. It’s the San Francisco of the early ’70s, to be sure, at least in the first Dirty Harry film, when »

The MSM spins Clint Eastwood

Featured image As Scott has said, reasonable people can disagree about Clint Eastwood’s presentation to the Republican National Convention. I have stated pretty forcefully my mostly negative view of it. But, as Scott has shown, the theme being peddled by the pro-Obama MSM — that Eastwood indulged in incoherent rambling — is false. As such, it should be regarded as a mixture of denial and blatant partisan spinning, mostly the latter. Washington »

Bouncing BeBe [Updated with video]

Featured image The Washington Post looks into the politics of the musicians who performed at the RNC last week: The lineup of musicians scheduled for the big show or affiliated events include some of showbiz’s few vocal Republicans: Country star Trace Adkins and rock star Kid Rock, set to headline concerts at Tampa’s Liberty Plaza, have both endorsed Mitt Romney. Conventioneers inside the hall will hear from the likes of the Oak »

Sudden Impact

Featured image The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza gives his coveted Worst Week in Washington award to Clint Eastwood. According to Cillizza, at the RNC “Eastwood did everything but stick to any sort of script that would have given the audience a shot at understanding whatever point he was trying to make.” Poltico has posted the text and video of Eastwood’s remarks here. The delegates in the hall didn’t seem to have any »