{"id":12710,"date":"2012-09-01T10:31:55","date_gmt":"2012-09-01T15:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=12710"},"modified":"2012-09-02T17:02:48","modified_gmt":"2012-09-02T22:02:48","slug":"rnc-evening-session-august-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2012\/09\/rnc-evening-session-august-28\/","title":{"rendered":"RNC Evening Session August 28"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong>Exclusive to the LEHIGH ACRES GAZETTE<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

From Dick Allen, Political Analyst of\u00a0<\/strong>Chicago, IL<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>My gosh\u00a0then<\/span>\u00a0is quick!<\/p>\n

I did get\u00a0a men’s room break, a tube steak dinner, a Diet Pepsi, and half a dozen interviews with delegates and alternates. I made a beeline towards Florida delegation, hoping\u00a0to score anyone from\u00a0Lehigh Acres. The Chamber of Commerce will be disappointed to learn that there were more questioned looks on faces when I said Lehigh Acres. Then, I struck fool’s gold. I ran into a guy named Lee and when I mentioned Lehigh he smiles. He said he was from Fort Myers and knew where Lehigh was, never been there, doesn’t plan to go there, but he did brag about being the chairman of the Lee County Republican Executive Committee. The Chamber has quite a job to do! I\u00a0asked him if he knew\u00a0of any delegates from Lehigh Acres. He told me this was his very first convention, and politely answered my question, “no,\u00a0I don’t think so”.\u00a0He then was tugged in another\u00a0direction.<\/p>\n

As I continued interviewing Florida delegates\u00a0I learned that many of them were chairman of their\u00a0county Republican Executive Committees, State Committee men and women, and I just couldn’t run\u00a0into\u00a0“Joe the\u00a0Plumber”. So\u00a0my search was over.\u00a0I did learn that the Florida delegation was staying at the\u00a0Innisbrook Golf Resort, 45 minutes away from the convention center in Tarpon Springs. Sounds nice, but I can walk back to the\u00a0Sheraton.<\/p>\n

The evening\u00a0session started not quite as promptly as the\u00a0afternoon\u00a0one did.\u00a0But it was exciting especially when the\u00a0Oak Ridge Boys took the stage. I expected a lot more witty one-liners this evening. What I got was a\u00a0dose of speakers telling us their personal stories about the great\u00a0American dream centered around the theme of the day: “We built it”. From the senator from New Hampshire, Kelly Ayotte who spoke\u00a0about\u00a0her family starting\u00a0a snow plowing and landscaping business in their living room and building it themselves, to former Sen.Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania who received\u00a0a warm standing ovation and spoke about his and his families early struggles and successes. They pounded on the theme,\u00a0We Built It.<\/strong>\u00a0He spoke of the ladder of success: strong families, education, and hard work and said with conviction, “We can restore the American dream”.\u00a0He mesmerized the delegates when he\u00a0began speaking\u00a0of his daughter Bella, and received a standing ovation when he said, “That he was proud to be\u00a0a member of the party\u00a0that reaches out their hands in love, to lift up all of Gods \u00a0children, born and unborn”.<\/p>\n

I was then taken back by a former U.S. Rep. Artur Davis from Alabama. He was a former congressman,\u00a0member of the Democratic Party, and during the last election, was a strong\u00a0Obama supporter. He was an imposing black man whose message was obviously aimed at the television audience. “Things that began with plywood Greek columns and artificial smoke typically don’t\u00a0end well,”\u00a0he said. He portrayed the image of the president as hundreds of thousands of black voters\u00a0had portrayed him.\u00a0“We Saw him with a halo”, Davis continued.<\/p>\n

But the night belonged to someone that nobody saw coming, Ann Romney! I expected\u00a0the warm welcome the delegates gave her. What I didn’t expect\u00a0was the next several\u00a0minutes. She told\u00a0us she\u00a0wanted\u00a0 to speak from the heart. And that is exactly\u00a0what she did. I’m certain the TV stations will be playing excerpts of this one for quite some time. What she did\u00a0tell us was\u00a0a love story. A love story about her family of five boys and 18 grandchildren. She spoke of her early days, falling in love with and marrying Mitt. She told us about the good times and the bad times that included her bout with breast cancer and\u00a0MS. She related to every women in the building\u00a0and every\u00a0man knew she was telling it like it was. She called theirs a “real marriage”.\u00a0I saw delegates with tears in their eyes as she\u00a0opened her heart. “This is important.\u00a0 I want you to hear what I have to say. Mitt doesn’t like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point”, she said, and the building erupted. It was like she was in front\u00a0of you looking at you directly in your eye when she said, “I will make you a solemn commitment. This man will not fail.”<\/p>\n

They could have gaveled the session closed at that point and no one would’ve been disappointed. But the big gun was next on stage, Chris Christie, the Governor of New Jersey was ready to top off\u00a0the\u00a0evening. All\u00a0night delegates I spoke to were looking forward to his message. He was\u00a0the guy that was\u00a0going to\u00a0give\u00a0Obama\u00a0the black eye. The New Jersey Delegates told me that this big guy would chew the President up and\u00a0spit him out in little pieces and watch the\u00a0convention\u00a0go nuts.<\/p>\n

I don’t mean to say he was a disappointment, but\u00a0Obama and\u00a0his tele-a-prompter would’ve had great difficulty following Ann. I felt\u00a0Christie spent\u00a0 a lot of time talking about himself and what he did\u00a0and spent very little time punching\u00a0Obama in the face. However, he did draw several differences between the two parties, defining what Republicans and Democrats stood for. His largest applause came when he was talking about education and said “Democrats believe in\u00a0unions and Republicans believe in\u00a0teachers”. He scored again when he talked about leadership.\u00a0“Leadership counts. Leadership matters,” he said, “You see Mr. President – real leaders don’t follow polls. Real leaders change polls,” he continued. That’s the punch line you’ll see on television.<\/p>\n

As the gavel\u00a0fell shortly after 11 PM, delegates were still talking about Ann Romney’s message.\u00a0They were excited about tomorrow’s program. I was told\u00a0a video with the two Bush Presidents, Mike Huckabee, Condoleezza\u00a0Rice, and Vice President nominee Paul Ryan, along with a host of others are preparing to blow the roof off the building.<\/p>\n

I can hardly wait!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Exclusive to the LEHIGH ACRES GAZETTE From Dick Allen, Political Analyst of\u00a0Chicago, IL My gosh\u00a0then\u00a0is quick! I did get\u00a0a men’s room break, a tube steak dinner, a Diet Pepsi, and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":12711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12710"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}