Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Team Romney Must Sharpen Its Message
The November elections are a Republican landslide begging to materialize, but will the GOP make it happen? I believe so. I'm not buying these negative polls, but to increase our chances, let's sharpen the message, not dilute it. A recent Fox News story reports that Romney and Ryan are both beginning to emphasize a bipartisan message rather than sharpen the contrasts between Obama's manifest failures and their plan for America. They must not follow this suicidal path. Now is not the time for them to go all John McCain on us and downplay what Obama has done or to apologize for their own winning message. In the campaign's homestretch, they must bring more passion and urgency. It's not enough to calmly assure the American people that they'll do better. They must convince them they believe with every fiber of their beings that the nation, as we know it, would not survive four more years of Obama's assault -- that unless Obama is defeated, their children will not enjoy the same America they have enjoyed.
The Most Important Event at Either Convention
The most important event at either national convention was the "vote" taken by the Democratic delegates on a last-minute resolution to reinsert the words "God" and "Jerusalem" into the Democratic Party platform. Regarding God, since Karl Marx, the aim of the left, everywhere on Earth, has been a godless society. And the Democratic Party has evolved over the last half century from a liberal party into a leftist one -- so much so that it is now indistinguishable from any of the leftist parties in Western Europe.
Truth, God and Jerusalem at the DNC
In a speech resembling a TV re-run (the liberal website The Daily Beast called it "dull"), President Obama accepted his party's nomination for a second term. In doing so, he made the most ludicrous claim of this campaign, indeed, of his presidency: "You didn't elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth." With this president, truth telling remains an unfulfilled promise. Telling Democrats what they want to hear was what the Charlotte convention was all about. Perhaps the only truth-teller at the convention was Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York. In his benediction, Dolan stood against the anti-life tide of the Democratic Party when he prayed: "Thus do we praise you for the gift of life. Grant us the courage to defend it, life, without which no other rights are secure. We ask your benediction on those waiting to be born, that they may be welcomed and protected."
Bounce!
Let's don't sound like some dopey pundit on cable TV reading the talking points you got in an email and pretend that Barack Obama did not get a bounce out of his convention. He did. But not as much as the Barack Obama campaign might have wanted. On August 27 -- the day the GOP convention was supposed to have started, the RealClearPolitics.com average of national polls had Obama leading Mitt Romney 46.8 percent to 45.7 percent. That is a difference of 1.1 percentage points.
Magic of 2008 Eludes Obama After Flat Convention
The consensus on Barack Obama's acceptance speech Thursday night, and in effect on the Democratic National Convention as a whole, is that it was a bust. One reason may be optics. Obama was scheduled to deliver the speech in a stadium seating 64,000 people. But on Wednesday, after Charlotte, N.C., had been pummeled by periodic rainstorms all week, organizers moved the event to the convention hall. The last two stadium acceptance speeches, in 2008 and 1960, were delivered in Denver and Los Angeles, where it seldom rains in the summer. That's not true of Charlotte -- or of Tampa, Fla., where Republicans took a risk by scheduling their convention at the start of hurricane season. So Obama spoke at the same podium as Bill Clinton had the night before. The comparison was not flattering to the 44th president.
Politics and the G-Word
When I learned last Tuesday that Democrats, breaking with past practice, had dropped the word "God" from their party platform, I dispatched a message via Twitter: "God is mentioned in the 2004 Democratic platform 7 times. In the 2008 platform, once. In the 2012 platform, 0 times." I included a link to the National Journal story where I'd seen the details. Within moments, that tweet had taken off. To my surprise, it was retweeted hundreds of times -- an early indication of the backlash about to engulf Democrats in Charlotte over their platform's language on God and Jerusalem.
Conventional Wisdom
I find the proposed speakers lined up by the Democrats to address their convention bizarre, to say the least. I mean, do they really think any sane person regards Jimmy Carter as the grand old man of their party. He's the guy who pulled the rug out from under the Shah of Iran, which swung open the door for the Ayatollah Khomeini and unleashed Islamic terrorism on the entire world. He is also the fellow who was invited to dive into the deep pockets of his Arab friends in exchange for using his bully pulpit as an ex-president to condemn Israel in books and speeches for the past three decades.
One Hundred Twenty Nations Vote Against President Obama
President Obama continues to get high marks in all public opinion polls on foreign policy. Much of that, doubtless, is due to his crisp dispatch of Osama bin Laden last year.
Pigskin Progressivism
WASHINGTON -- With two extravagant entertainments under way, it is instructive to note the connection between the presidential election and the college football season: Barack Obama represents progressivism, a doctrine whose many blemishes on American life include universities as football factories, which progressivism helped to create. Higher education embraced athletics in the first half of the 19th century, when most colleges were denominational and most instruction was considered mental and moral preparation for a small minority -- clergy and other professionals. Physical education had nothing to do with spectator sports entertaining people from outside the campus community. Rather, it was individual fitness -- especially gymnastics -- for the moral and pedagogic purposes of muscular Christianity -- *mens sana in corpora sano*, a sound mind in a sound body.
Obama's Same Old, Same Old
Perhaps the reason for President Obama's flat and energy-less speech Thursday night -- TV cameras panning the convention floor actually showed delegates falling asleep -- was that he already knew Friday's jobs numbers were going to be a disaster. The August unemployment report completely punctured his argument that if you just give him four more years, his policies will solve the economy. Of course, reading through the speech, I didn't see the word "jobs" mentioned once. In fact, though I could be wrong, I didn't see the word "growth" mentioned once.
FROWARD
That's not a typographical error. I'm not mistaking the Democratic Platform's definition of all things progressive. I'm not misapplying their slogan: *Forward*. *Froward* is admittedly an archaic word, but it's a very good one. It describes what is actually happening in that Democratic Platform with respect -- or should I say with *disrespect?* -- to marriage.
From The Comedy Store
Mitt Romney accepted the GOP nomination before a roaring and cheering crowd of delegates in Tampa as the balloons came down. These things aren't as much fun as they used to be. Every time a balloon popped, housing prices dropped another one percent.
Post-Convention Musings
Although, as a rule, I try to avoid spending too much time listening to political speeches, I must confess that I was pleasantly surprised by a number of those delivered in Tampa. It wasn't simply that they were saying many of the things that I had been writing for the past four years. It was the honest emotion that they evoked. A great many of the personal stories they shared were so touching they even made this old cynic get teary-eyed, as they spoke movingly about their immigrant parents and grandparents who, like my own, risked everything in the belief that all the glorious things they had heard about America were true.
Unforced Errors
This is going to be an ugly column. Pure partisan smirking and finger pointing. If you are looking for high-minded, lofty thoughts, hit the *delete* key now. The Democratic National Convention has been a series of unforced errors that I have not seen since ... since ... ever. Way back when, the Obama campaign decided they wanted to re-create the Greek Temple Acceptance Speech of four years ago by having the President make his acceptance speech in the NFL Carolina Panthers' Bank of America Stadium -- capacity 73,778. Someone forgot that Charlotte -- not unlike Tampa -- is in the U.S. Southeast and the weather in the U.S. Southeast is very dicey during late summer, especially in the afternoon.
The Undemocratic Party Platform
A vote to put God and Jerusalem back in the party platform takes an Orwellian turn.
Bill Clinton Can Still Handle a Whopper
It's good to see Bill Clinton looking so healthy. He has given up meat after his heart operation, but his performance last night proves he can still handle a whopper. It was vintage Bill Clinton -- wonky, funny, overlong and drawn out, self-centered and fundamentally untrue. His biggest applause lines came when he "contrasted" job creation under Democratic and Republican administrations. He went all the way back to 1961. He told us the Democrats have held the White House 24 years since that date; Republicans were in the Oval Office 28 years. Then, he proceeded to his point-by-point comparison. All plausible -- even applausible -- if you forgot who ran Congress in those years.
Broken Promises
WASHINGTON -- According to the pundits and politicians, this election is all about the economy. We're all supposed to know that -- because we're not stupid. That's why the Republicans had a "national debt clock" over their convention floor in Tampa, Fla., and the Democrats didn't have one in Charlotte, N.C. To no one's surprise, the Dems didn't remind anyone in the Charlotte Convention Center that our national debt topped $16 trillion on the opening day of their conclave -- a 50 percent increase during the Obama presidency. The so-called mainstream media played along and focused instead on the change of venue for Barack Obama's outdoor acceptance speech from the 74,000-seat Bank of America Stadium -- echoing O-Team claims that the move was weather-related. Republicans said the change was precipitated by fears of empty seats.
Hollywood Hates Nuns
Some hateful stereotypes never die in Hollywood. The cover of the Sept. 7 edition of Entertainment Weekly featured the 63-year-old actress Jessica Lange, smirking in a nun's black habit, holding a big, punishing cane in her hands. Lange is returning for a second season on the FX series "American Horror Story," but this time with an entirely new plot and characters. Nuns are now a thing of horror. "Jessica Lange returns, this time as a terrifying nun," promised the magazine's cover. They eagerly hyped a new storyline that's "a macabre mash-up of nuns, Nazis, aliens, a serial killer named Bloody Face and the lead singer of Maroon 5." Set in Massachusetts in 1964, this nun dominates the inmates of a mental asylum named Briarcliff.
Circus of the Vagina-gogues
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Hide your children. This is what the progressive left's idea of women's empowerment looks like: For the past two weeks, radical feminists from the group Code Pink have paraded across the fruited plain in giant female reproductive organ costumes. The goal is "respect" for women's bodies and women's abortion rights. It's part of the coordinated campaign to fight the right's purported "war on women." The Vagina Puppets' Democratic Party sympathizers, from professional birth control freeloader Sandra Fluke to first lady Michelle Obama, dog-whistled the same messages of "choice" and "freedom" from the convention stage.