A tale of two speeches: Condi Rice and Paul Ryan
These are two must-watch speeches from the Republican National Convention. They should be available on the RNC YouTube channel, but I couldn’t find them. Had to go to someone named Martin Winfield for tapes from television. [Update: they are now available on the GOP YouTube channel.]
Condoleezza Rice
First, a strong speech from Condoleezza Rice.
We have seen that the desire for liberty and freedom is indeed universal, as men and women in the Middle East rise up to seize it. Yet the promise of the Arab Spring is engulfed in uncertainty. Internal strife, and hostile neighbors are challenging the young, fragile democracy of Iraq. Dictators in Iran and Syria butcher their people and threaten regional security. Russia and China prevent a response. And everyone asks, where does America stand?
This is the Condoleezza Rice I remember, the one I wanted to run for president in 2008. She is a strong advocate for freedom at home and abroad.
It does not matter where you came from, it matters where you are going.
Yes, that little girl can become president of the United States if she wants to.
Paul Ryan
Paul Ryan’s speech is justifiably being lauded.
Maybe the greatest waste of all was time. Here we were, faced with a massive job crisis, so deep that if everyone out of work stood single file, that unemployment line would stretch the entire American continent. You would think that any president, whatever his party, would make job creation, and nothing else, his first order of economic business. But this president didn’t do that. Instead, we got a long, divisive all-or-nothing attempt to put the federal government in charge of health care.
Obamacare comes to more than 2,000 pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines, that have no place in a free country.
The president has declared that the debate over government-controlled health care is over. That will come as news to the millions of Americans who will elect Mitt Romney so we can repeal Obamacare.
Note that I’ve embedded part 1; you need to follow through to part 2 to get to the economic meat.
In this generation a defining responsibility of government is to steer our nation clear of a debt crisis while there’s still time. Back in 2008, candidate Obama called a ten trillion dollar national debt unpatriotic. Serious talk from what looked like a serious reformer. Yet by his own decisions, President Obama has added more debt than any other president before him. And more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined. One president. One term. Five trillion new debt.
He created a new bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing. Republicans stepped up with good-faith reforms and solutions equal to the problems. How did the president respond? By doing nothing. Nothing except to dodge and demagogue the issue.
…
All we have heard from this president and his team are attacks on anyone who dares to point out the obvious.
And small business owners didn’t build that:
These didn’t come out of nowhere. A lot of heart goes into each one. And if small business people say they made it on their own, all they are saying is that nobody else worked seven days a week in their place. Nobody showed up at their place to open the door at five in the morning. Nobody did their thinking and worrying and sweating for them. After all that work, and in a bad economy, it sure doesn’t help to hear from their president that government gets the credit. What they deserve to hear is the truth: yes, you did build that.
Leadership and courage can make the impossible look inevitable in retrospect. “That is why this is an election of consequence.”
“Without a change in leadership, why will the next four years be any different than the last four years?”
“We’re a full generation apart, Governor Romney and I, and in some ways we’re different. There are the songs in his iPod, which I’ve heard on the campaign bus, and I’ve heard it on many hotel elevators. He actually urged me to play some of these songs on campaign rallies, I said, look, I hope it’s not a deal-breaker, Mitt, but my playlist, it starts with AC/DC and it ends with Zeppelin.”
In response to Election 2012: The Long Hot Summer: For election blogging outside of California.
- Condoleezza Rice RNC Full Speech 2012: Condoleezza Rice at martysoffice
- “Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice addresses the 2012 Republican National Convention.” “Where does America stand?”
- Fact-checking the factcheckers on Ryan’s speech: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air
- “Clearly, the job of ‘fact checker’ in the mainstream media must not involve research skills. Nor does it take much in comprehension, because these supposed fact checks started with a misrepresentation of what Ryan actually said. Here are his actual words, emphasis mine…” (Memeorandum thread) (Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit)
- More Rice for President
- Now Dick Morris is calling for a Rice candidacy.
- Obama Camp Melts Down Over Ryan’s Speech: Guy Benson
- “To the surprise of no one, the ad’s ‘rebuttals’ are misleading and wrong themselves.” (Memeorandum thread) (Hat tip to Ed Morrissey at Hot Air)
- Paul Ryan RNC Speech 2012: Paul Ryan at martysoffice
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“Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan delivers the keynote address to the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL.”
- Ryan’s Grand Slam: Ace at Ace of Spades HQ
- “It’s pure dynamite. I called it ‘devastating;’ minutes later Brit Hume used the same word (as well as a ‘lethal shot’ at the Obama reelection campaign).”
More Condoleezza Rice
- More Rice for President
- Now Dick Morris is calling for a Rice candidacy.
More Election 2012
- Romney-Ryan 2012: It’s the only way to be sure
- A highly partisan environment has one major advantage: it means we have a choice.
- Stephanopoulos: No bias in media
- George Stephanopoulos must have forgotten what he wrote in his autobiography if he doesn’t believe there’s a liberal bias in the media.
- Proposition B opponents: city salaries grow from magic beans
- Where do they think city worker salaries come from?
- Fair and open competition—closed and bitter politicians
- The arguments against Proposition A are based on a law that passed less than a month ago, in response to Proposition A. That response is a prime example of why we need to break the chain that locks government unions to politicians.
- Poll gives Obama his worst marks yet
- Six months before election day, Americans have a bleaker view of the country’s direction than at any time in more than three decades, and they attribute it to President Obama’s handling of gasoline prices and the rest of the economy.
- 15 more pages with the topic Election 2012, and other related pages
More ObamaCare
- Community health acts to improve Obamacare
- Democrats now want to talk about how to improve Obamacare. Here’s how to do it.
- Democrat Chris Murphy: Obamacare is “the end of health care”
- From the mouths of hypocrites, comes wisdom. It’s almost biblical.
- Health insurance reform? What health insurance reform?
- The Truth About Republicans: they don’t want to repeal Obamacare.
- Economies of scale and government-run health care
- Economies of scale only produce lower prices when people are allowed a choice of service providers—including the choice to forego the service. Government-run programs do not benefit from economies of scale—in fact, scaling up will cause increased prices when the industry is run by the government.
- A tale of two negotiators
- If you want to see how Republicans in Congress fail to pass successful reforms, compare the House Obamacare “repeal” with the White House’s budget.
- 16 more pages with the topic ObamaCare, and other related pages
More Paul Ryan
- Why “we don’t have a plan” is selfishly incompetent
- The Obama White House tells congress, “we don’t have a plan, but we don’t like your plan” when confronted with the destruction of the United States economy by 2027. Why can’t we continue to live large and then fix the problem in 2027?
- U.S. PIRG supports Ryan budget plan
- U.S. Public Interest Research Groups calls on Democratic Senate, White House to pass end to subsidies, level playing field for “small businesses and companies that aren’t as connected” as companies like Monsanto, Cargill, Solyndra, and GM.
- No corporation pays taxes
- Corporations don’t pay taxes. Their employees do, and their customers do. Every dollar that a company has to pay in taxes, that company must pass on to either their employees or their customers, if the company wants to stay in business.
- If I were running for president…
- I’d make heavy use of short videos, and I’d record everything I did with the media.
Remember: Trump reassures crowd after assassination attempt fails. (read more…)
Blogroll
- According To Hoyt
- Ace of Spades HQ
- The Anchoress
- John Hayward
- Legal Insurrection
- National Motorists blog
- The Other McCain
- samizdata.net
- Sultan Knish
Rice would make the election easy. Conservative without so much of the Republican baggage. Few attain her stature without sacrificing their ideals. She's made some compromises, but her core is still there.
Short of making her the leader of the free world, I'd like to have a beer with her sometime. I bet she has some stories. My IQ (if you believe in that shit) would go up ten points just by proximity.
Other Jerry at 4 a.m. September 3rd, 2012
15wAa
Part of the problem, I think, is that the people who would really make great political leaders justifiably don’t want to get into politics.
Jerry Stratton in San Diego at 1:13 p.m. September 3rd, 2012
+g/Ql
I've been telling people for years that Condoleezza Rice would be an excellent President. She'd probably be the best President we've had in 100 years and I wish she'd run.
But I think she's too smart to put herself through the meat grinder of an election. I think this is generally why we keep electing the people we keep electing.
Andrew in CO at 10:59 a.m. September 4th, 2012
R4iCc