Wednesday was a wonderful political day for Republicans. Let’s recap. The day started off with the flap over platform language. That in turn led to the spectacle of Democratic delegates booing the vote to put back Jerusalem and God back into the platform. It was even in the eyes of the most Obama-sympathetic media a horrid disruption, signaling both incompetence and hostility to things that many if not most Americans hold dear. The news got worse as Politico reported that the president had signed off on the platform sans God and Jerusalem. The Romney camp could hardly believe the avalanche of atrocious press. (Democratic National Committee chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s insistence that there had been no controversy brought CNN’s Anderson Cooper to declare she was operating in an “alternate universe.”)
It was a remarkable, actual newsmaking episode, something we rarely get at conventions. Moreover, it was the worst blunder in a scripted TV event in recent memory.
Until the appearance of Bill Clinton, the parade of speakers were cartoonishly angry figures, mouthing the “Bain is evil” and pro-abortion platitudes. It managed to be both dull and over-the-top, and moreover lacking any appreciation for how bad is the economy, the number one concern of voters, really is. Had a Republican convention ignored the economic and human misery like this the media surely would have decried the “insensitivity” and “cluelessness.” More
