Discarded confetti on Tampa convention floor
Politico:
1. Romney opened up
In a speech that was heavier than normal on biography, the candidate accepted his nomination by talking about the “disappointment” of Obama’s tenure, the desperate need for corrective action this election, and the promises the president made that weren’t met.
The speech was largely an expanded version of his stump address, but it was well-written, and well-delivered.
Romney’s best line of the night claimed that the most excitement surrounding Obama came on the day people voted for him. He hit a recurring line among Republicans for the last year, that Obama is Jimmy Carter 2.0. He did touch on the Medicare issue, albeit in passing.
Topics he did not deal with — his Massachusetts record, the state-based health care plan he pushed through, the war in Afghanistan.
2. Rubio electrified.
Marco Rubio’s speech introducing Romney was among the best-received of the convention, as he delivered an emotional punch in a different way than Ryan did the night before. He told an aspirational story about his upbringing as a Cuban-American, speaking about his experience as deeply grounded in the American experience.
He described Romney as the best person to reclaim American exceptionalism, and framed much of the beginning of his speech as an attack on Obama. Other than the distraction of the red, lava lamp-like background behind Rubio, he was a success, and his speech played well on television.
3. The sum of the parts is not yet clear.
Romney has had more than his share of recent bad luck — the mess in the Missouri Senate race, a hurricane that delayed the start of the convention.
But there was also no core message or cohesive vision that emerged from the 2012 convention, beyond the staggered themes for each night.
Most of the speeches by governors were about themselves or their states, not about Romney.
The GOP was, until last night, on loan to Romney, and he is still not “of” it, although the excitement around his speech helped him a lot. How the three convention nights add up after the fact remains to be seen.
4. 2016 remains wide open.
Sure, Ryan will be seen as having a clear edge four years from now if Romney loses, if he avoids any damage to a brand that’s been bolstered by a number of conservative writers. But Ryan’s speech, while strong, is not going to enter the pantheon of enduring, memorable convention addresses.
None of the speeches given by the 2016 prospects has been either a barn-burner or something particularly grand, although both Rubio and Ryan fans will argue otherwise.
Scott Walker stood out the most from the crop of governors, and Nikki Haley and Susana Martinez were fine (Condoleezza Rice, frequently mentioned as a future candidate for something, though not president, was seen as one of the strongest speeches). Bobby Jindal missed his speech because of Hurricane Isaac, but he’s a real factor for 2016.
If Romney loses, this convention is the first audition of the 2016 Republican candidates, but it’s unclear if anyone secured much of an obvious, lasting advantage for when the gates open after this cycle.
5. The demographic gaps will likely persist.
Ann Romney gave a speech that was well-received, and that softened her husband’s image. The crowd applauded every time she was shown on screen. Condoleezza Rice brought the house down with her personal story of growing up in the segregated South. Ted Cruz was the face of the younger generation of Hispanic conservatives.
For all of the speeches, the convention doesn’t seem to have done much to address the demographic challenges facing Romney with key groups of voters — Hispanics, women and African-Americans. He will never win black voters against Obama, but he does need to win some of their support, especially in urban areas in swing states like Ohio.
6. Fiscal conservatism is the new conservatism.
For a few days ahead of the convention, it seemed like Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin was actually on the presidential ticket. Yet the staunch social conservatism that Akin represents was barely present for three days in Tampa.
Much was made about the language in the convention platform against abortion rights, as well as against gay marriage. But those topics were almost never mentioned in this week’s evening speeches.
Even Rick Santorum, the 1990s-era culture warrior, didn’t linger for long on social issues.
“New Democrats have, for the first time, a counterpart: in Tampa in 2012, the New Republican was born,” said Republican strategist Alex Castellanos.
It is, Castellanos added, “The organic Republican, the Republican who believes in growing an economy bottom-up, naturally and organically from the American people, not top-down, political and artificially, from Washington.”
7. Christie needs to take stock.
The New Jersey governor, faced with a string of tough headlines and comments about his keynote speech as overly self-promoting, had two choices in the aftermath — he could have shrugged it off and been stoic, or he could have pushed back, loudly.
He chose the latter. Christie spent much of Wednesday defending the speech, making clear at a variety of events how much the negative headlines bothered him.
He felt he was misunderstood, and that his intentions in the speech were portrayed unfairly. But instead of barreling ahead and focusing mostly on Romney and the task at hand, he (inadvertently) turned many of the interactions into a feedback machine about his own performance.
8. The Bush legacy was fleeting, but there.
Jeb Bush’s speech defending his brother’s legacy was one of the best of the convention’s final night, even as he talked about George W’s policies that have since become controversial among some Republican voters, like education reform.
The party’s troubled relationship with the Bush years, and the rise of the tea party in response to excessive government spending, is one of the enduring narratives of the 2012 cycle. The convention did little to clarify it, but did demonstrate that the vestiges of the Bush era aren’t being cast aside.
20 Pounds Of Headlines 