{"id":12896,"date":"2012-09-05T07:08:01","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T12:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=12896"},"modified":"2012-09-05T07:08:01","modified_gmt":"2012-09-05T12:08:01","slug":"rnc-wednesday-august-29-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2012\/09\/rnc-wednesday-august-29-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"RNC Wednesday August 29, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"
Exclusive to the LEHIGH ACRES GAZETTE<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n
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From Dick Allen, Political\u00a0Analyst,\u00a0<\/strong>Chicago, IL<\/strong><\/div>\n
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\"\"<\/a>I’ve tried very hard to stay away from the local newspapers and television reporting of the convention for fear it would taint my view. But I found lots of the other members of the media were glued to local and especially the national networks and the newspapers.\u00a0I felt like talking to them and then in talking to delegates,\u00a0it was like\u00a0they attended\u00a0different conventions. The buzz from the delegates still focused around\u00a0Ann Romney and Chris Christie and how awesome they were. I guess\u00a0being from Chicago, I should’ve known how cynical the media can be. There was that group locked into Fox News, and then the other group locked into CNN and MSNBC. Oh well!<\/p>\n

However, I\u00a0did do a lot of sniffing around regarding the unhappiness over the credentials report. It seems that not only\u00a0were there\u00a0delegates that were not seated because of rule changes, but much of the unrest was\u00a0caused by the fact that several state and party rules precluded the fact that Ron Paul’s name could\u00a0NOT<\/strong>\u00a0be placed in nomination for president, and thus the convention would not recognize any delegate\u00a0votes for Ron Paul. Now, I clearly understood why many delegates picked up the chant of repeating the\u00a0vote count each time Ron Paul received votes.\u00a0This also explained the only protesters that I saw during the past several days. They were outside the convention center and outside of our hotel with signs promoting the presidency of Ron Paul. His supporters are certainly loyal. It remains to be seen if they spoil Romney’s efforts to become President.<\/p>\n

Back to the nights\u00a0events.\u00a0The theme of the evening was\u00a0“We Can Change\u00a0It”.<\/strong>\u00a0It started out with the Amputee Veterans of America posting the colors. Surely a subtle approach to call attention to the fact that “those other guys” want to substantially reduce the military. A host of\u00a0speakers\u00a0and videos presented an\u00a0economy and veterans\u00a0based theme all targeting – “We Can Change It.”<\/p>\n

Both the Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens double teamed together as they blasted\u00a0Obama’s health-care law, much to the\u00a0delight\u00a0of the delegates. ” The President can’t bring himself to acknowledge publicly that the only reason his UN<\/strong>affordable Care Act still stands, is because it is a tax “, Bondi said. Anticipation was\u00a0building in the delegates as\u00a0the former governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty spoke.\u00a0“It’s not unusual to fail\u00a0at your\u00a0first job”, he said as the crowd erupted.<\/p>\n

For the first time ever I saw a standing\u00a0ovation for a video. It featured\u00a0both past Bush Presidents\u00a0and their wives. It was\u00a0very moving and certainly set the stage for the next two speakers, former Governor Mike Huckabee, and the former Secretary of State, Condoleezza\u00a0Rice. Huckabee, made the media feel welcome as he said “He now wallows in the mud of the media.” While Rice was interrupted nine times\u00a0with staining ovations and numerous other rounds of applause and\u00a0boisterous\u00a0cheers broke out when she said\u00a0“American cannot lead from behind”. She was powerful, but Vice President Ryan was next and\u00a0ready to close the show.<\/p>\n

But before he took the stage the Governor of New Mexico, Susanna Martinez, the first female Hispanic Governor in America rocked the house. She told the story about being a young Democrat getting into politics and how she and her husband were approached by the Republican Party. “Don’t worry honey”, she said, “We will simply have a nice dinner, listened politely to what they have to say then get in the\u00a0car and have a\u00a0peacefully ride home”. She then told the delegates about some of the things that were talked about at dinner. Then the punch line came! On the ride home, she looked at her husband, and exclaimed, “I\u2019ll be\u00a0damned. We’re Republicans!”\u00a0The delegates were\u00a0in a frenzy now.<\/p>\n

Enter Paul Ryan, U.S. Representative from Wisconsin and Republican nominee for Vice President of United States. “We will lead”, and that my friends will be the headline in most newspapers across our country.\u00a0“I embrace the calling of my generation”, he said in opening. “After four years of getting the runaround, America needs\u00a0a turnaround\u201d, Ryan said.\u00a0His speech was part attack on the President, and part spirited testimonial to Romney. To the cheers of the delegates, he pledged “Republicans would save Medicare from looming bankruptcy”. A colleague of mine was counting the number of\u00a0times he was interrupted (60) during his speech. I found it interesting, humorous, and captivating. “We will not\u00a0duck the\u00a0tough issues; we will lead,” he said. And he\u00a0ended powerfully by saying “let’s get\u00a0this done”!<\/p>\n

And coming from Chicago, much like the Governor from New Mexico, I turned to my colleague and exclaimed, “I’ll be dammed. I’m a Republican too!”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exclusive to the LEHIGH ACRES GAZETTE From Dick Allen, Political\u00a0Analyst,\u00a0Chicago, IL I’ve tried very hard to stay away from the local newspapers and television reporting of the convention for fear… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":12910,"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\/12896"}],"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=12896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}