It was supposed to be the biggest political night of his entire career, it was supposed to be tightly scripted and all of the accolades were supposed to be showered upon the man who has been the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party for the last three years. This was supposed to be Mitt Romney’s night and Mitt Romney’s Republican National Convention. Instead, many of the speeches sounded as if the speakers were planning to run in 2016 for the same Republican Party. Keynote speaker Chris Christie, the Governor of New Jersey, was 16 minutes into his self-oriented address before he even mentioned Romney’s name.
Christie was not alone, there were several speakers who were a little long-winded with their own biographies, but on the biggest stage of Romney’s life, it was famed movie icon Clint Eastwood who grabbed all of the attention and has been THE story of the convention on all of the major news outlets and talk shows. Social media sites were having a field day about Eastwood’s bizarre performance, which seemed to last so long you almost felt sorry for the Romney campaign. Eastwood disrespected the President and made a “cut-throat” gesture at the end while suggesting we “get rid of him”.
Even though Romney delivered what Republicans considered to be one of his best speeches ever, it seemed the media was just waiting for Romney to finish so they could process what they had seen from Eastwood. Certainly, this could not have been a bigger blunder. Whether it translates into a negative effect on the remaining swing voters remains to be seen, but Democrats will surely point to the Romney camp and call them out on this decision with respect to leadership.
