The first day of the Republican convention was cancelled due to Tropical Storm Isaac. You know what one less day of the convention means–twenty-five percent fewer lies. It also means there is no longer enough time to fit in John Galt’s speech. Mitt Romney is really upset that he doesn’t have an opportunity to remind everyone once again that he is the white candidate. Rush Limbaugh sees this all as an evil plot hatched by the Muslim socialist Barack Obama of Kenya. On the other hand, the Christian Broadcasting Network wonders if prayer moved the storm away from Tampa to protect the Republicans. Would this make Republican prayers responsible for whatever happens in New Orleans or where ever the storm does hit?
This afternoon I received an email from the Romney campaign saying it is my last chance to enter to join Romney in Tampa for the Convention. While this is comparable to the type of fund raiser Obama is also holding, it does seem to be in poor taste to offer to bring people to Tampa at the moment.
One might think that keeping the Republican convention from convening would spare them a day of embarrassment, but it didn’t work out that way. Mitt Romney gave delegates a copy of his book No Apology. His views flip-flopped between the hard cover and paperback editions, and delegates were given the hard cover with his former view that his Massachusetts health care plan could be a model for the nation–a view removed from the paperback.
The Republicans now claim that social issues are a distraction. They are not a distraction–they are fundamental issues of individual liberty. Mitt Romney, who has refused to answer questions about abortion the last few days, would prefer the issue did not come up. Unfortunately for Romney, another Republican candidate accidentally revealed how Republicans think of rape and abortion rights. Tom Smith, the Republican Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, compared rape to out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Quick, call Todd Akin. If sex outside of marriage is comparable to rape in the GOP world, does this mean that women have a way to shut down pregnancies from sex outside of marriage as they do for legitimate rape?
Can we shut down these ignorant Republicans?
Romney’s convention speech might be his best chance to portray himself as an acceptable candidate as Ronald Reagan once did. While I am skeptical as to how many will actually read the platform, a Pew Research Center survey found that more people are interested in the platforms than candidate speeches. This could be really bad news for the Republicans. As might be expected, the hard line platform opposes abortion and gay rights while adopting crackpot economic ideas from Ron Paul and the deceptively-named Tea Party. The platform goes beyond previous platforms which opposed child porn by also targeting adult pornography. How will this play in the red states, which consumes more porn than the blue states?
I imagine that tomorrow we might hear Mitt Romney blame those in the path of the storm for their suffering. In Romney’s mind they should have borrowed money from their parents to build mansions in safer areas.