So we finally heard the great Ann Romney. And Chris Christy. So how did it go? I don't know. I was not overwhelmed by Ann Romney. I don't see it as being some great epiphany for Mitt.
If anything, thought that Chris Christy's speech was better. He has that good touch of starting out by making it clear that he gets his values and attitude from his mother. That is pretty charming I think. Christy can give a good speech. I notice that some, however, were not so impressed.
There's probably some truth that after he spoke of his mother, he got too angry in the bulk of the speech. The idea that his mother taught him it's about respect not love sort of worked I thought. It's a kind of hard speech but by representing this as his mother's lesson than his father's it makes it a little more tolerable-it makes the medicine go down a little easier coming from a tough mother than a tough father.
It was certainly a speech that was like We Republicans are right, you Democrats are wrong. Some thing he was mean there. I'm not sure. I do think that even if you liked the speech it doesn't do much for Mitt Romney.
I honestly was far from overwhelmed by Ann Romney's speech. I repeat as I've said before that it's pretty sexist of the GOP to think that women are going to vote for Romney and Ryan to outlaw their uteruses just because Ann says they should trust Mitt. I do realize that the Convention seemed to love her and that many are arguing that she "stole the show" but I wasn't so impressed.
Too often I felt that her attempt to say we're real people who have gone through the same real problems as anyone else was simply belied by her own narrative. She made a big to do about her and Mitt living in a basement when the first were married. They were living in France as missionaries and could rely on Mitt's trust fund.
I don't think many would find that to be tough times. Then, I got to say, I know they went after that female reporter on CNN for saying it, but honestly what does Ann Romney know about working women? She said "I love you women" and tried to give it a rah rah feminist feel but I saw it as mostly contrived.
At the end of the day, what do we actually know about Mitt that we didn't before? There was no real moment of clicking where you see him in a new way.
Overall my feeling was that the whole thing made Mitt look kind of small. His wife is-as Zizek would put it-his symptom. She has to tell us the good guy that he is, she has to tell us the great heart he has. He can't express himself and she has to be his voice.
No matter how good a job you think she did-I feel she was at best only fair-it still makes him look inadequate as he can't do it for himself. Looking at him while she praised him, and then Christy went on his rant, he looked just like one of Ann Romney's show horses that do the dressage.
He looked so passive, almost like an invalid. I kind of admire Christy's style, I will admit-though I disagree with him. However, I kind of think that Mittt suffers from comparison with the virile New Jersey Irishman. Christy is Ralph Cramden, but Romney is little Lord Faunterloy.
His wife made him look like an autistic mama's boy and Christy made him look inadequate in comparison. He didn't seem to me to improve his popularity or that we know him better.
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