The theme for Day Two (effectively Day One) of the Republican National Convention was "We Built It". To me, that seemed like an odd choice, as it sounds awful close to the Obama campaigns theme. Of course, what they really mean by it is "I Built It", a response to the incorrect assumption based upon heavily edited comments from Obama that made it look like he said small business owners didn't build their company.* If you were to pick the theme based upon the small business owners that spoke yesterday, the appropriate theme would have been "We Built It with Government Assistance and Contracts".
Another theme would be "We're the Republican governors, and we'd make MUCH better Presidents than this idiot." These governors liked to tout their record, while trying to make the contrasting point that Obama is a failure. On top of that balancing act, they also had to say all of this in spite of either contradictory evidence, or the fact that their state's revival was due in part to Federal funds or the auto bailout.
The crown jewel of these governor speeches was the keynote address by New Jersey governor Chris Christie. In many ways it resembled the speech given by then Illinois senate candidate Barack Obama in 2004, albeit with a meaner and more divisive tone.** Effectively it was a speech that touted the speaker far more than the Presidential candidate it was supposed to support. The result was a speech that overshadowed Mitt Romney, who was clearly not impressed by it as he sat there watching it awkwardly. There is little doubt that Christie's speech was more about launching his 2016 GOP nomination campaign.
Looking forward to tonight's line up, it appears there will be plenty more governors speaking, as well as a cavalcade of senators. This all will lead up to the speech by the Republican candidate for Vice President Paul Ryan, where I assume he will try to play down his own budget ideas, while totally winking to the crowd that he still will push for those ideas.
Like last night, we here at August Prairie will be live tweeting about the convention, so if you haven't followed us yet on Twitter, please go do so now. We'll wait.
As for Thursday, it is unlikely that there will be any live coverage, at least not early in the evening. Real life has imposed itself, and we'll be on the road for much of the day. Hopefully we'll be back to cover the main event, which will be the speech by the candidate himself. No matter what, we'll definitely have a recap of at least that speech come Friday.
*Obama was talking about roads, bridges, and helpful teachers, the GOP likes to cut that part of his speech out. Note that they don't show the video of him saying it, as that would clearly show the editing job.
**It also wasn't anywhere near as great as a speech as the 2004 DNC speech. You can't doubt Christie's energy, though. You can doubt his sense in killing needed infrastructure upgrades, while giving away large tax breaks to the wealthy in NJ.
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