Romney’s Speech: The Softer Side of a Hard-Right Campaign
With the Republican convention in Tampa, Mitt Romney has launched the most ideological presidential campaign in recent history. At issue is not merely the current state of the economy and Romney’s ability to become the CEO-in-chief and perform a turnaround. Romney is waging a battle for the opportunity to conduct a conservative social experiment that would remake fundamentals of American society. But he neglected to mention that Thursday night during his climactic—though hardly soaring—acceptance speech.
The previous evening, his veep pick Paul Ryan, when he wasn’t tossing out profoundly false talking points, married two ideas together: The first is that Romney is a successful businessman who can revive the flagging economy and return the nation to greatness. The second is that voters are now living in an American gulag, where basic freedoms have been destroyed and sanctimonious central planners dictate citizens’ lives, smother initiative, and doom everyone to a life of entitlements and control. The first of these notions is upbeat and hopeful, addressing the immediate concerns of voters confronting economic challenges: Romney, the guy who looks like a president from central casting, is galloping in on a white horse to rescue you. The other is gloomy and of more concern to the arch-libertarians of the tea party and conservative movement: We are living in a place akin to the former East Germany and must break free of the chains.Yet when Romney spoke to the convention on Thursday night, he only worked the first idea, sticking with a more standard (and less revealing) script. It was a grade-B endeavor, an uninteresting speech offering few ideas but containing the familiar Hallmarkian biography (good son, good husband, good dad, man of faith, good businessman) and all the expected rhetoric: lower taxes for all, repeal Obamacare, increase military spending, deride concern about global warming (“President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”) There was the usual hawkish talk about Iran, as Romney channeled his neocon advisers. Yet oddly, and perhaps scandalously, he did not once mention the war in Afghanistan or the tens of thousands of US troops serving there.