Intended or not, the Clint Eastwood speech was tactically brilliant

Over at the Blog de King Shamus, the Clint Eastwood speech "fallout" gets put to bed:

Everybody’s second-favorite community organizer Saul Alinksy said that ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It works so well because it rallies your troops. Even better, when a well-played joke lands squarely on target, it causes problems for the other side. Look at how the Stalinists were so discombobulated by Clint’s mockery of their Saviour. When they went into Panic Alert Obama Defense Level Five, they spent a lot of time addressing Clint’s speech rather than dealing with Mitt Romney.

It's a great point.  You know that the Doomocrats will go hard after Romney and Ryan at their convention this week, but by focusing all of their panic on Clint Eastwood's speech right now, they ignore the content of the Romney speech and thereby stall their attacks on Romney for a little while. The whole Democratic approach to this election was to demonize Romney (and Ryan).  Demonizing Clint Eastwood doesn't help them one iota.  Not one.  No one will be voting for Clint Eastwood in 2012.  No one will be voting against him or against Romney based on Eastwood either.

What this does, is allows Romney's convention bounce to gain some traction and avoids the risk of the liberal attacks derailing the bounce.  The Democrats by positioning their convention right after the Republicans clearly want to suck the strength out of the natural convention bounce for the Republicans.  The Clint Eastwood speech whether intended or not, swayed the focus of liberal attacks to his supposedly oddball speech and Mitt Romney gets a few days of a free ride.

The other tactical brilliance of Eastwood's speech is what it did for Republicans.  A favorite Obama trick is to supposedly remain above the fray while surrogates - 'not connected with the president' mind you - serve as attack dogs.  Eastwood got in some zingers about the president in the middle of a convention that was focused on the approach that it's okay to change your mind about Obama.  Yes, he's a nice guy (ha!) but he's not a good president.  It's time for a change, because the country deserves and needs better.  That message can't be inter-mingled with attacks.  Clint Eastwood says those things and while he's a Republican supporter, he's arms length from team Romney.

Now when Democrats go into their convention armed for Bain, they are going to play to their playbook and attack Romney and Ryan.  They'll look petty while Romney gets to stay above the partisan fray and focus on economic policy and jobs.

In retrospect, Eastwood's speech may have done a lot more good for the Republican cause than at first blush.  That makes my day.

Bill Whittle coming to Toronto UPDATE: Link added

I'm really hoping to be able to attend.  In the spirit of supporting Bill, since I'm a fan of his work, here's his latest video, on the subject of the home stretch of the 2012 election cycle:

UPDATE: Here's the link for Bill's appearance.

Closing out the GOP convention

After quick reviews of the first and second days of the GOP convention in Tampa, I wanted to do the same for the last night, but I thought it might deserve a little bit more detail.  Nevertheless, in the spirit of quickness, here's my quick version to tide my thoughts over for now.

Clint Eastwood - Funny, but a bit slow in its delivery. In the end, it was pretty much a conservative red meat speech which will drive liberals crazy and therefore invite a lot of derision "He's too old", "He rambled", "What was that? It was creepy."  Did it help or hurt Romney and/or the conservative cause?  Likely only a little.  C+

Marco Rubio - The speech was great.  I can't find any fault with his speech.  It was touching, inspiring, and smart. A

Mitt Romney - After a number of speeches talking up Romney's tender side, he delivered a couple of tender touches himself.  If the 'experts' are correct that Romney needed to be humanized in advance of the Democratic convention and more Bain attacks, then mission accomplished.  But Romney also touched on some important plan points.  He didn't get into details but opened up the opportunity to talk about them on stump speeches.  He made the case, successfully, that he would be a good president.  He may have inoculated himself to some extent against future character attacks.  The speech wasn't rousing, but it was the speech of a competent candidate.  That's better than the competition. B+

Found on Facebook

I saw this on Facebook although I don't recall where - I thought it was worth sharing here.

Quick Grading GOP Convention Speeches - Day 2

Speech of the night.

A close second.

For comparison, here are my quick assessments from Day 1. 

Unfortunately I missed Rand Paul, so I'll have to update that here after watching a replay.

The speeches tonight were good and certainly from a generally higher profile group than the first night (Christie being the obvious exception yesterday as the keynote speaker, and Abbe Romney also).

John McCain - the speech was okay, but he seemed tired and quite uninspiring.  D

Rob Portman - some great parts and some dull parts, but overall - pretty good. B-

Tim Pawlenty - A lot of good one liners kept the crowd engaged but not on their feet. B

Mike Huckabee - His prior speaking experience showed.  On point, well spoken, and engaging.  B+

Condoleeza Rice - Resolute, stirring and focused on national security which has only been casually mentioned heretofore.  Included the topics of trade and energy and economy and tied it all back to conservative philosophy. Inspired the crowd, and me. Rousing. A+

Susana Martinez - I wouldn't have wanted to follow Condi Rice. But her family success story was inspiring and important.  I wonder if MSNBC showed her. B

Paul Ryan - He hit all the right notes but it was not moving the way Rice's speech was. If it had started a bit more energetically the way it was when it had built up, his would have been the speech of the night. Still, a forward moving speech that was very strong over the latter half.    A

Liberal tolerance explained in one photo

Here you go.