My thoughts on tonight
1. Clint -- terrifying. His inclusion is an unmitigated disaster that will seriously damage the campaign, if only because it overshadows the whole night. And if he wasn't a babbling, senile old man ranting at an empty chair, he was hilariously off-message and saying things that Romney is expressly against, like leaving Afghanistan. Also, before we all assume it wasn't sabotage, never forget: he actually said the words, "you don't have to vote for a person you don't really like."
Did I mention he's a libertarian? Ron Paul Strikes Back.
2. Rubio -- I actually thought this was the best speech of the night and possibly the convention. Great cadence, if not great thoughts. I think he eloquently expressed the general conservative sentiment, and he laid out the foundation -- like several others -- why he wants to run in 2016.
3. Romney -- I'm with PD. Honest, I swear it. It was a humanizing speech, or at least the first half was. The parts where he talked about his parents and the parts about being parents I genuinely connected with. For the first time he looked like an actual person up there, with real emotions, flaws, and dreams. That said, my defeatist/jealous/liberal self couldn't help but notice the number of videos the Romney family had growing up, which any poor family watching instantly recognized as something only rich kids had back then.
However, his joke about Obama trying to stop the oceans from rising is an unforgivable fuck-you to the world. What a callous, pompous, ridiculous asshole of a human to say that! And then the whole neocon war mongering bullshit had me rolling my eyes. This guy can't be serious.
All in all, the campaign really, really fucked up with Clint Eastwood (especially considering he had a speech written for him and he threw it aside before going on stage). Rubio looks like the first serious contender in 2016 and is probably the future of the Republican Party. And poor Mitt. He's real. Too bad he's a terrible person.
