Mitt Romney is never going to be 'one of us.' He should stop trying to because he's failing miserably. The best thing to happen to Mitt Romney at the RNC convention is something pundits have danced around but have never just spelled out in plain words. The combination of self serving speeches by speakers who are looking to become the GOP candidate in 2016, because secretly they don't believe Romney will win, and the bizarre antics of Clint Eastwood have strangely given Romney a fighting chance at becoming President.

Twitter has been burning up with Clint Eastwood quips. Love it or hate it most of the talk about the RNC convention has been about Eastwood and his strange performance. The oxygen in the room is being used by him. What little attention is left is divided by talk of how Gov Christie, Marco Rubio and other Republican politicians have talked more about themselves than the Presidential candidate in speeches and if the speech Romney gave helped in connecting with the public. Well, he hasn't because the talk is about Eastwood and the the others. The few things said about Romney have been mildly favorable but not glowing.

To use another instance, Before the Eastwood incident, the chatter about Paul Ryan's speech was crazy. The talk about the validity of his statements during his talk had some pundits come right out calling him a liar with the view of events he presented. Not too many candidates can be so wrong as to be called a liar in the press. Again, after Eastwood, that conversation is drown out.

Yesterday was the first chance I had to watch the convention as it was happening. If Eastwood hadn't done what he had done, the talk this morning would have been harsher on Romney. The GOP had a problem going into this convention with optics and there was no way to fix that issue without looking like they were forcing the issue. To be blunt, the GOP has a perception of being a party of old white people. What they showed last night didn't help in dispelling that image. The super vast majority of all minorities at the convention were on the stage. When cameras panned out over the audience, all anyone saw was a sea of older, white faces. When you have a house band singing songs like 'Living in America' with all the energy of a bored, wedding cover band your not going to get young people excited. When you have Romney make his grand entrance Presidential State of the Union Address style, walking down the aisle shaking hands, what genius decided not to have any minorities in the receiving line? Go to YouTube and look at the entrance of Obama during his State of the Union speeches. You can even go back and look at entrances from Bush and Clinton. The Romney entrance had no diversity, other than women. Few young people, few minorities if any.

Romney's speech was alright. The expectations were very low, so even a ground ball would have been unexpected. He tried to bring a human aura to his family, he tried to defend what he did at Bain. There's no doubt he's a loving family man, there's no doubt that he cares about God and country. Romney's problem with connecting with Americans is similar to his misunderstanding of questions about his wealth. He thinks when questions about his wealth comes up, we are envious of his wealth. The issue isn't that. We question if the wealth has separated him from understanding what regular Americans face in the struggles of this economy. We wonder if the wealth prevents him from understand some of the social issues we face.

Here are two little things that happened recently that pile onto the image of Romney being out of touch with the common folks. The Romney campaign had a convention yacht which was used to wine and dine high end contributers during the convention. Of all the yachts in all of Tampa, why would someone who has already polled zero with African American voters and slowly losing Hispanic voters entertain those high end contributors on a yacht called Cracker Bay? Another instance was when Ann Romney made a speech to a number of Hispanic delegates. She talked about a recent campaign stop in Puerto Rico. She kept referring to the island as 'the little island' in her talk and when she put her hand on her hip and said “You people know how to party” it felt like further evidence of her patronizing tone, such as when she said you people don't need to see our taxes.

The other day I had a talk with someone who admittedly hadn't been paying attention to the election. When we started talking he was like a kid who just realized Santa Claus wasn't real and his parents had lied to him about it. Months of campaign rhetoric, months of lies, misstatement, everything that had been trickling out about the GOP campaign hit him in a matter of hours. He wasn't a huge supporter of Obama, in fact he was thinking of not voting in this election cycle. He figured both sides were the same so why bother. When he discovered, on his own, what the GOP has said and done over the last year, when he saw the votes given in state legislatures across the country, when he saw the voter ID and reproductive rights restriction laws being passed, he decided to vote.

Romney hammered a point in his speech last night, something that is a staple of GOP politics, and because of Eastwood it will be lightly discussed. He asked, in so many words, are you better off now that you were four years ago? Of course the audience said no and in doing so believe that is the reason to vote for Romney. To this guy I talked to, he is doing better off now that he was four years ago. We have an economy that is gaining a very low amount of new jobs, at some months even under 50,000 new jobs, but four years ago we were losing over 700000 jobs a month. If Eastwood hasn't done his antics, pundits would be studying and refuting many of the claims in the Romney speech. As strange as it sounds, the blunder of Eastwood may have given a pass to the mistakes of Romney and his campaign staff made during the convention.

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Romney and the Human Gap - August 31, 2012
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