It’s Mitt! Romney Speaks

In the interests of full disclosure, I will say up front that I am not terribly well disposed to the Romney candidacy.

His policy positions seem too recent and his conversions to them too coincidental in their timing for me to accept him as genuine.

His speeches and ads seem too focus-grouped, and that’s without making the usual clever comments about his hair.

Anyway, bear that predisposition in mind as you read what follows after the leap.

7:41 – Jim Bopp, Hoosier GOP super-attorney and Romney’s point man in Indiana, introduces Romney with the full bio with all the trimmings.

7:45 – Bopp says any of the Republicans would be better than the best Democrat (paraphrase). What? That’s not a ringing endorsement.

7:46 – Romney begins. Mangles the title of the conference. Starts by praising the “Mitch Mobile”; apparently his ground team couldn’t figure out what RV 1 was called.

7:48 – Romney jokes about the food; you didn’t expect to be in an old warehouse with fried chicken and sloppy joes. Way to insult the event and everyone here.

7:50 – Complains extensively about having to spend so much time in Iowa. I bet the folks in the Hawkeye state really appreciate him coming to the Hoosier state and using them as the butt of jokes at a campaign event that they will probably never know about.

7:52 – Talks about history, the transition from the 19th to the 20th century; inflection points. Today, he says, we stand at such a point.

7:53 – War on terrorism: Not a clash between civilizations but a clash of civilizations. Speaks of the threat of China.

7:54 – Military, diplomatic, and economic challenges exist.

7:54 – He does not dwell long on one topic; he has now moved on to rag on Democrats.

7:55 – Hillary Clinton couldn’t be elected president of France, let alone president of the United States; big applause line.

7:55 – Speaks of tax cuts on investments and dividends; tax rates should be… wait for it… zero. Here’s a question: how much money would he save from his zillionaire investments when that happens? I wonder.

7:56 – He talks fast; it’s hard to keep up with the choppy string of relatively unflowing items.

7:57 – Mocks John Edwards’ haircut. For those of you in Kentucky, that’s the pot calling the kettle black right there.

7:57 – Continues ragging on Democrats. Old standby: If you don’t like the cost of health care now, just wait until it’s free. If I had a dollar for every time that I heard that, I could buy and sell Mitt Romney, and Thurston Howell III from Gilligan’s Island too.

7:58 – Immigration. End sanctuary cities. Enforce the laws. Build the fence. Put the illegals in line with everyone else.

7:59 – Event people come by to say that a big storm is moving in. The clouds are very black.

8:00 – Defends Bush on things like the Patriot Act; there goes the ACLU vote.

8:01 – The terrorists shouldn’t see lawyers in New York, but soldiers and CIA questioners in Guantanamo Bay instead.

8:02 – Romney trots out the great focus-group word: “STRENGTH.” If you played a drinking game based on how often the average politician said “strength” or a variant thereof, you’d be on the floor by the end of it. With Romney, you’d be on the floor within a few minutes. How much money did he pay to have someone tell him he needed to repeat that word over and over and over again?

8:03 – Marriage comes first. Strong marriages.

8:03 – “I’m not going to go all night”; thank the Almighty, for he is boring and I thought he might.

8:04 – Americans believe in the qualities of strength we have always shown before. We will rise to the occasion. Leaders must actually lead (naw, really?).

8:05 – Now he talks about how amazing it is to travel in Iowa and how great it is; earlier he was ragging on them pretty bad. Flip-flop?

8:06 – Tells story about Olympic athlete at the Salt Lake City games. Good story; gets great applause. Story about the athlete’s most memorable experience of the Olympics being carrying in the flag from Ground Zero. At least this wasn’t focus-grouped. I like it a lot.

8:08 – Conclusion. The usual stuff.

There were hopes of an interview with Governor Romney, but the inclement weather prevented it. He had to leave before the rain arrived.

Probably couldn’t afford to get that expensive hair wet.

EDIT: I found out later from talking to some of the reporters in the media pool that mangling names and titles (like that of RV 1 and the conference itself as he did) is a common thing for Romney; he apparently does it a lot in Iowa and elsewhere.