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"FacebookPinterestScreen shot 2012-08-30 at 12.11.22 PM.png \n\nIn professional wrestling, when a deserving and accomplished wrestler is overshadowed by others (or he lets them win), he\u2019s described as putting them over. Mitt Romney\u2019s ultimate function in the 2012 election might be to put over the younger, more adept crop of candidates for 2016, including the stars of Wednesday night, former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Vice Presidential nominee, Congressman Paul Ryan.\n\n Here is what Rice managed to accomplish: she gave what amounted to a George W. Bush compassionate conservative speech to a MUCH more conservative audience of delegates. She spoke out on immigration. On education (echoes of Bush again. She called disparities the &amp;quot;civil rights issue of our time.&amp;quot; She mentioned Mitt Romney twice, and spent most of the time her recounting her own extraordinary biography. She made the Republican Party look good. She got the loudest applause of this convention so far, even though she is (gasp) pro-choice.\n\nShe didn\u2019t connect her life to Mitt Romney\u2019s, and she did not use her foreign policy credentials to make an argument against Barack Obama\u2019s policies. But that was, perhaps, because she had two motives: she\u2019s setting herself up for a future presidential run, and she\u2019s trying to burnish the image of her party. Implicitly, she\u2019s saying: this party is big enough for me. It\u2019s my party. It\u2019s not just a bunch of white dudes. (Ron Brownstein\u2019s aphorism comes to mind: Romney needs 61 percent of the white vote, and he needs whites to make up 74% of the electorate in order to win.\n\n Then came Paul Ryan.\n\nThe job of the vice presidential candidate is two-fold: he has to make the presidential nominee look good. And he has to credibly tattoo the problems of America onto the opposition party\u2019s nominee. Ryan\u2019s speech aced the test.\n\n The congressman from Wisconsin spoke a little but about himself, but mostly spoke about how Obama\u2019s tenure has been a series of unfulfilled promises and dashed hopes. From the general to the specific: Obamacare, debt, deficits, tas, business regulations. The knock on Romney is that he cares about the rich. So Ryan\u2019s speech was all about how Obama is hurting those who are struggling. He did so in a way that gets at the trigger points that Democrats tend to use to rally their own base: The stimulus, he said, &amp;quot;was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst.&amp;quot;\n\n For a guy who\u2019s tagged as the Medicare-slasher, Ryan hung a lantern around the talking point that has leveled the debate about this issue: he inaccurately accused Obama of raiding Medicare to pay for Obamacare\u2014basically, Obama\u2019s Medicare Advantage cuts are used to boost funding for Medicaid, to expand the life of the trust fund, and don\u2019t directly effect beneficiaries\u2014has been effective. The polls I\u2019ve seen don\u2019t show a cratering in how people think Romney will handle the issue. (Voters prefer Obama\u2019s policy but they seem to be OK with how Romney will prosecute the issue. That says something about voters\u2019 faith in Obama to get stuff done.) This was echoed later, when Ryan said that the greatest moral duty of a people is to help those less fortunate. That\u2019s a direct challenge to the way Obama talks about Romney.\n\n Ryan had two other themes: Barack Obama is all talk, and has done nothing to lead. (&amp;quot;We\u2019ve had a lot of talk from this White House,&amp;quot; he said. This gets at those who like Obama but who think he is off in his own head sometimes. That\u2019s effective. It also implies that Obama is in over his head\u2014he just doesn\u2019t have the capacity to lead. If he did, the economy would be better than it is.\n\n Theme two: urgency. &amp;quot;We don\u2019t have much time.&amp;quot;\n\n And where NJ Gov. Chris Christie\u2019s meandering speech last night didn\u2019t make it easy for viewers to stay focused, Ryan\u2019s did. The last six minutes of his speech was an eloquent and moving testimonial to the &amp;quot;moral creed&amp;quot; that he and Romney share. &amp;quot;Each one of us was made for a reason, bearing the image and likeness of the lord of life,&amp;quot; he said.\n\nTwo grade-A speeches. But still, I think that Americans who wonder about Mitt Romney want to know more about the policies he\u2019s going to propose. And his campaign has been almost deliberately unspecific about a great many of them. And Ryan, for all his supposed serious about policy, contradicted himself. Medicare can\u2019t be touched, but it\u2019s the biggest driver of the debt? That\u2019s hard to get a mind around. Also, most Americans want government to play a role in creating jobs. And they like Medicare. And Ryan voted for a lot of the policies that created the debt he decries. It is hard to know whether voters will get all these contradictions from the coverage. Probably not. They\u2019ll probably get a good impression of the GOP ticket.\n\n Thursday night we will hear from a mystery speaker, probably Clint Eastwood, and then from Romney himself. The bar is set very high. But after Wednesday, there\u2019s at least a reason for Republicans to be excited."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/the-rnc-in-primetime-paul-ryan-and-condoleezza-rice-show-us-a-gop-that-can-win>