So that happened. Clint Eastwood argued with an empty chair on national television for 14 minutes. Also, Mitt Romney accepted the Republican presidential nomination, but his Pinocchio speech (in which he tried to become a real boy by lying) isn't what people are talking about. When an old man arguing with furniture is what people remember, your convention didn't go so well.
A generation later, all that people will remember about the Tampa convention was the time Clint Eastwood mainstreamed performance art. But maybe he was being subconsciously brilliant. Republicans can't run against the man in the chair. So they run against the man who isn't there. Call it their Dr. Seuss strategy.
They can't run against the Obama who believes, in his words, "in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ," especially after they nominated a Mormon. So they run against the Muslim schooled in an Indonesian madrassa who doesn't exist.
Republicans can't take on the family man with the smokin' hot wife and the cute daughters. So a Tea Party activist claims Obama is gay.
Republicans can't defend blocking Obama's jobs bill from getting an up-or-down vote in the House, so Romney says Obama "hasn't put forth a plan to get us working again," a statement that tortures the truth so badly that it should be banned under the Geneva Convention.
Speaking of international law, Republicans can't even admit that Obama is an American. Despite Obama releasing his birth certificate and the Honolulu newspaper publishing his birth announcement when Obama was, you know, born in Honolulu, many Republicans stubbornly cling to the canard that he's a Kenyan. Actually, his mother was a Kansan and his father was African, so Obama is a Halfrican American.
And clearly Republicans can't run against the leader who has vanquished Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi, and pirates. They can't acknowledge that he saved our banking, real estate, and automobile manufacturing sectors from the imminent insolvency. And they certainly can't credit him with the 4.5 million private-sector jobs created on his watch.
So they say he's not up to the job of creating jobs because -- stay with me here, it gets weird -- he's never had a job. As Speaker John Boehner told Fox News, "The president has never created a job. He's never even had a real job, for God's sakes. And I can tell you from my dealings with him, he has no idea how the real world that we actually live in actually works."
At the Republican convention, it was the same Mitt, different day. New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte said, "President Obama has never even run a lemonade stand." Maybe we should be grateful she deigned to call him president.
Before Eastwood gave us the world's strangest Bob Newhart imitation, Ayotte et al. did their best to portray a president who created the recession and the stimulus, exploded the deficit with Obamacare, and cut seniors' health care by reducing the growth in Medicare spending. Republicans at the podium described a president who opposed the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan, did not give any of the stimulus to the middle-class taxpayers, and told small-business owners that they didn't build their own small businesses.
Most hilariously at all, Paul Ryan wasted some of his precious prime time by blaming Obama for a GM plant closing in his hometown of Janesville, Wis., even though the plant closed during the George W. Bush presidency. Ironically, even that reference by inference was as close as either Ryan or Romney came to mentioning the last Republican presidency.
None of this is what we used to call, in the good old days, "true." The Barack Obama about whom Republicans in Tampa were complaining does not exist. If you care about such archaic notions as facts, you can research all this yourself at FactCheck.org. Remember, you're supposed to be in charge. An uninformed voter is no better than the pointy-haired boss in Dilbert.
Pound for pound, Mitt Romney doesn't match up well with Obama, so they've unconsciously created an alternate presidency they abhor. Clint Eastwood manifested this dysfunction when he debated that empty chair on the stage in Tampa. But the man in that chair isn't really there.
Follow Jason Stanford on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JasStanford
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 |
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| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
Maybe he thought he had Trump in the chair.
One and done for the empty chair and the empty suit!
Whenever I hear Republicans characterize our President, I think, "Who are they talking about?" They're certainly not referencing the Barack Obama who lives on the planet Earth and has been governing for the last 3 1/2 years. That President Obama would be challenging to defeat. So, instead, the GOP has created its own "President Obama," and attributed to him all the poll-tested negative qualities that would render him an easy opponent.
The GOP's "Barack Obama" is not the only vision they see that doesn't exist. They also see voter fraud where it doesn't exist. They see middle class tax cuts that never occurred.
What they don't see that does exist is the legacy George W. Bush gave to President Obama on Inauguration Day. What they don't see that does exist is the plot hatched by Republican leaders— including Paul Ryan—to willfully block every piece of legislation our new President and his Party would attempt to put forth.
Any American who values democracy should be furious at this party's blatant lies and attempts to coerce, deceive and suppress. I'd feel the same way if the Dems or any other party tried this.
At 82, he deserves to take a few more minutes.
All you far left liberals please stop throwing this man under the bus. Character assassination is worn out.
Outside of the empty chair routine, was he wrong to call out the fact that President Obama has broken most of his campaign promises?
So, when Clint Eastwood at 82 steps up to the podium and expresses his personal observation, in somewhat of an awkward way, and comments that when politicians fail at their job, you need to let them go.
I for one cannot vote for President Obama again. He has been a huge disappointment. He is a gifted orator; however, that is where it ends. He either lacks the skill or desire to cure the illness that plagues the majority of American. We cannot continue on this path. It is third grade math, 16 trillion and going up and annual spending spikes with no budget. We are working from weakness and the current level of spending is unsustainable. President Obama does not have a plan, otherwise he would have implemented the plan and we would have had measurable results by now.
Eastwood is right, America needs to wake up and realize that this is not a personality contest, we are in serious trouble.
And as for character assassination, Republicans have been at it since 2008.
And BTW: Any president with actionable intelligence would have ordered a drone strike or sent in a seal team.
It took enormous courage to risk making that decision knowing the information was not totally reliable. Watch the documentary and you'll have a better understanding of what was at stake by going in.
Give the man credit he deserves. I'm tired of the disrespect.
But as I said, any President with actionable intelligence would have 1) sent in a drone strike or 2) sent in a seal team. Either way, OBL would not be alive, but the reason we are even having this discussion is because of the tireless work of our intelligence agents and military personnel.