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Subscribe to RSSCharlie Cook: “Romney’s speech tonight is enormously important—arguably more so than the debates or anything else that is likely to happen between now and Nov. 6…. Romney’s test is more personal. Voters began this week feeling like they didn’t know him. For whatever reason, his campaign is just now getting around to attempting to establish a personal connection between Romney and the public. That connection cannot be made in a debate; the format doesn’t lend itself to it. Romney desperately needs to leave Tampa having created that relationship. Ann Romney’s speech was a start, but tonight, Romney has to do the connecting himself… Romney needs to connect enough to earn the benefit of the doubt from voters."
More: Swing voters “don’t need to consider him a guy they would like to have a beer with, but they need to feel that if he were a neighbor, they could comfortably ask him to collect the newspapers and the mail while they were away. Focus groups show that people perceive Romney as aloof and wonder whether he would even speak to them. His friends say that this is ridiculous, that he’s a terrific guy. But the doubts persist. Tonight is the night Romney needs to fix that.”
“[W]hile Thursday’s anointing indeed represents a political triumph for Mitt Romney it is also fraught with risk,” the Boston Globe’s Helman writes. “To name just one: Can the modern Republican Party, with its increasingly conservative bent, successfully court middle-of-the-road voters?”
The AP: “Mitt Romney is stepping up for the most important speech of his Republican presidential campaign, to an audience of millions, after a rousing warm-up from a running mate who vowed the days of dodging painful budget choices will end if voters toss President Barack Obama from office. Having grasped the nomination on his second try, after years spent cultivating this moment, Romney will use his speech Thursday night to introduce himself to a large portion of voters and claw for advantage in a race that could scarcely be any closer. As part of that introduction, Romney appeared prepared to discuss his Mormon faith in more direct terms than usual, a direction signaled by running mate Paul Ryan on Wednesday night in several allusions to the duo’s differing religions but ‘same moral creed.’”
“Mitt Romney will offer voters a window into his Mormon faith Thursday night before accepting the Republican presidential nomination when the man who succeeded Romney as president of the church’s Boston stake delivers a prayer of invocation,” the Boston Globe writes.
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Can Romney's speech be as full of false accusations as Ryan's was? We'll see.
I'm almost certain of it SteveR.
All of the hoopla to this point coming from the RNC are because of false accusations and flat out lies.
I guess the GNOP believes that the American public is stupid. In November they will learn they are wrong.
They lie with such ease. I wait to hear the truth from them about their own positions. It ain't happening, which translates to...I can't tell you 'cause you wouldn't vote for me, so I'll just lie about the other guy....
It should be frightening for anyone who would consider voting for the GOP!
4 more for 44!
Watch Romney walk some time and it's clear he has a stick up his butt.
Romney is nothing more than a puppet doing the bidding of billionaires with their money in foreign banks.
All Republicans know how to do is lie. Look at their budget, there is NOTHING in it which will improve the economy. If anything, it will make matters worse by taking from the poor, destroying the middle class and giving to the rich.
If you have no brain and want to destroy the United States, vote for Romney/Ryan 2012.
ZOMBIES for ROMNEY/RYAN 2012 !!!
What angers me most about Romney/Ryan is not so much that they lie and mispresent what the President has said and done, but that they lie and misrepresent both what they've done and what they plan to do. Man up and say what you really did in the past and what you would do in the future, and then let the voters decide. The problem is that they know the majority of the country wouldn't like it so they'll say whatever it is that will get them the votes.
If this is how they approach a campaign how would they deal with actually governing?
as "Ahnold" would say...let the GNOP put on their Girly Man pants....Quick to lie...and quick to cry when some one fights back....
GNOP can't stand the facts..THEY CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
C'mon Mythe show us the 1040's...What ARE you hiding?!
I agree, RTFS.
I've always said, Bush would have been better off being up front about the reasons he wanted to invade Iraq, instead of telling the UN Saddam had WMD. Bush might have kept his post 9/11 support if he'd been honest with the American people.
Now, Republicans are using the same tactics to convince Americans the economy will "explode" with job creation if the wealthiest are given more tax breaks and banks are deregulated. What do they think will happen if they get elected and middleclass wages continue to stagnate? I imagine, then, they will decide to invade Iran.
Amy, President Bush used the same intelligence reports that President Clinton used. Congress also gave President Bush authorization to use military action in Iraq under UN Resolutions. The left likes to say that President Bush lied about Iraq. I suppose then the left believes that the Democrats in Congress, even those on the Intelligence Committees, was so STUPID they accepted what ever Bush said.
One point of WMD, do you even know what Weapons of Mass Destruction means? What did Saddam Hussein use on the Kurks when they revolted? How many Democrats voted in support of force in Iraq?
sfcret
It is well documented that the Bush administration used the public outrage over the 9/11 attacks to garner support for the invasion of Iraq, although Saddam had nothing to do with directing, or supporting, the hijackers who flew the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The threat to the US came from bin Laden, who was harbored in Afghanistan. That terrorist was not executed until a decade after the attacks. And we are still dealing with Afghanistan, which Bush abandoned to focus on Iraq.
What were Senate Democrats supposed to do during Bush's first term? Say "no" to giving the President authority to act after the modern equivalent of Pearl Harbor? Oh, that would have gone over well.
That is out and out cowardice. If they can't stand by their convictions they don't need to be holding the office in the first place. That you are trying to rationalize something that you now decry speaks volumes to your character as well.
Paul, I hate to break it to you but Mitt Romney isn't listening to you. You aren't of interest to him.
Romney is a sociopath. As such he can lie without tells. He has a history of mistreating people and animals. He will say and do whatever is necessary to get what he wants. He thinks the world is there to sereve him and revolves around him. Sure he's no serial killer or rapist but vulture capitalism is the ideal job for such a person as what is, perhaps, a gentleman's sociopath. He has no conscience.
Unlike nominees at other political conventions in both parties who stay out of sight until their big moment we see Willard every night mugging for the cameras and there for his " adoring fans" who have come to serve him in his quest for the ultimate prize.
"Romney needs to connect enough to earn the benefit of the doubt from voters."
That will mighty hard since he will not release his tax returns, How do you earn the benefit of the doubt when you "take the fifth" on your own personal business, especially from a man who is well documented at changing his story so often, that the RNC had to tell republicans he has his own platform.
The democrats will have their convention and the fact that it comes after the republican convention is a political advantage, then the debates, where Romney will be twisting in the wind trying to somehow sensibly reconcile his dual positions on everything, and the fact that he has to come up with some lame excuse of why he will not show tax his returns, it just confirms for people that this guy that they already felt was phony, is now shady to boot.
Granted, many republicans will hold their nose and vote for him out of their irrational hatred for Obama, but in the end there will not be enough of those people to get him the 270 electoral votes he needs to win.
Forrest: you nailed the problem of the GOP on the head. There is yet no reason to vote FOR Romney. "I'm not that guy" is really not a reason to vote for someone.
President Obama had led the country out of the worst recession since the 1930's. There is positive GDP growth (very, very small, but still positive.) The number of people employed is improving. Our troops are coming home from one unnecessary revenge war and one war started by terrorists.
If the Senate had eliminated the ability of the GOP to filibuster, then more would have been accomplished in the first two years. As it is, quite a bit has been done. More needs to be done, as President Obama said when he won the election in 2008, it would likely take two terms.
Romney does not have any plans, why would anyone who is not brain dead vote for him ?
ZOMBIES for Romney/Ryan 2012 !!!
Forrest: What about those of us without an "irrational hatred" of the current president?
I'm not voting for the current administration because it hasn't done enough to earn a second vote from me. (Translation, I voted for him in '08 but I won't be fooled again)
Dirp:
It's what Obama ran on 4 years ago.