If you weren’t watching the RNC speeches last night, you really missed out. The women knocked every single ball out of the park. The men, save Paul Ryan who brought a little fire to the floor, largely fell flat. Tim Pawlenty’s speech wasn’t a roaring excitement, but he got in one hell of a dig against Obama, noting that many people fail in their first jobs. The humor in the audience reaction was how it took them a second to realize what he said, and then they cracked up.
However, there were a few moments the audience absolutely roared in applause and cheers. One was when Condi talked about how she could grow up in Jim Crow-era Alabama with parents who told her she could be anything she wanted to be – even president – and that the same little girl would go on to become Secretary of State. Another came from New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez when she talked about how hard her parents worked to start a small business – a security business – that she also worked at as a teenager. While this video trims the response by the crowd, you do get the hint that the floor went nuts for her talk of knowing how to defend herself.
The video also cuts off her follow-up line – that the gun weighed about as much as she did. For all the talk about platforms in recent days, those don’t really matter much. The reaction to this kind of comment reflects far more about the motivation of the party members. It’s not about what a few select people who we don’t elect pick out for a party platform, it’s about actual elected officials and candidates seeking our votes representing what people really believe. And we already know that the American people really do believe in the right to self-defense, even with a firearm.
I might add, for the GOP portrayed as the uptight do-gooders, her swear line in prime time tv hours got huge applause.
On an unrelated to guns and women note, I noticed something weird last night. We tuned in during Sen. Rob Portman’s speech. He said some nice things about free trade and the benefits of open markets. Then the very next speaker – one whose name I didn’t catch and who isn’t listed on the speaker list I looked up – got up and bitched about how terrible it is that foreign companies can make similar products cheaper and sell them here. Seriously? Who approved that speech? Even worse, who the hell put it immediately after someone who spoke favorably about free trade?