Big night for Obama; a boating day for Romney

IF I MAY, some notes from  Battleground Conventions.  Thank you.

      Opening night for the Democrats unleashed a first-inning rally against the Romneyistas who had their chance in Tampa last week. The lineup of speakers left no voter group unturned: women, blacks, hispanics, gays, unionists and just plain folks who can only b e categorized as Democrats.   You expect this sort of thing at political conventions, but the D's were quite efficient in making sure they got their message across.  The cleanup hitter for the evening was, of course, Michelle Obama, who left no doubt about her enormous contribution to the Obama campaign team.

       Surprise of the night:  The blistering  speech by former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, who shed his previous image as a kindly non-confrontational politician.  If he keeps this up, he will be a strong contender in a crowded Democratic field for governor in 1214.  On this night, Strickland assumed the role of Rahm Emanuel, who was a little restrained from this reputation as a glass-shatterer.  Rahm did start right off by mentioning that he and Obama were from Chicago, the city that Republicans love to hate without  knowing why.

        Aside to Bob Bennett, the Ohio Republican chairman:  He issued a press release allowing that the Democrats must have been desperate to find a spot in the speakers' lineup for former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland.  Can we now conclude that the Dems' "desperation" paid off handsomely?

       Watching San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, one could only wonder what Rush Limbaugh would do with that name if the mayor ascended to a national level.  I keep hoping that a tyrant will emerge in Siberia with the first name of Rush.

     Meantime, Romney spent the day boating, perhaps satisfied  that he had convinced everybody to put their money into a Swiss vault.  His confederate, Paul Ryan,  turned up in Westlake, Oh., to complain that Obama had made Bush's anemic economic legacy "worse", which was a takeoff on Romney's  notion that "The economy is getting better but Obama made it worse."(I've sent that one to Rosetta Stone for a translation, but haven't heard back. Cognitive dissonance can be challenging.)














     

   



   

     

GOP's Bob Bennett may be back in town

ALL OF THE talk that former Ohio Republican chairman Bob Bennett will return to that high office as the new Ohio Republican chairman can only bring remorse to Summit County GOP chairman Alex Arshinkoff. Over the years, Arshinkoff, having once aspired to the state job himself, never had anything good to say about Bennett. And now that Gov. Kasich, who rules the GOP plantation these days, has succeeded in brutally dispatching the party's current chairman Kevin DeWine, Alex can expect no favors from the party's downstate headquarters. Or maybe at 73, Bennett will generously disregard past insults.

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The headline in today's Columbus Dispatch has this to say about the Republican whiz kid who is running for the U.S. senate against Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown:

Mandel campaign endures 'rocky start'

And then some! So far, all we've learned about Josh Mandel, the 34-year-old Ohio treasurer, is that he's challenging Romney for empty talking points but an avalanche of campaign cash. Avalanche may be too cautious. Two major conservative Sugar Daddies, the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are among the majors who have plowed more than $5 million into TV ads bashing Brown . And there is doubtless a lot more on the way.

Among Mandel's weirdest charges against Brown is that the senator, a longtime friend of labor, has been in the forefront of sending American jobs to China. When challenged on that easily refuted form of political idiocy, Mandel blithely says he has no reason to stop saying it and plans to utter it "again and again''. He also boasts that he is an ex-Marine with two terms in Iraq. Thank you. We can honor that. But I can also add that as an ex-Air Force officer myself, I would have made an awful senator. Frankly, the young man gives me a headache.

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Well, here come the birthers again. Two Republican congressmen are now expressing grave doubts that President Obama's birth certificate is authentic. So naming names, they are Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida, and Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri. Says Hartzler, one of the people minding the Tea Party store: "I have doubts that it is really his birth certificate." Can you imagine how much more of this nonsense we'll be hearing into November by Republicans who want to lead this country into ...um...greatness?

Of Chicken Dances and bully pulpits

Well, the Republicans have finally found something to cheer about so who can blame them for doing the Chicken Dance through the weekend?  I probably should explain right here that the Chicken Dance is a fun-filled maneuver that I discovered 30 years ago in Rudesheim, Germany, in which the participants flap their elbows, wing-like, against their bodies to the loud cries of an oompah band.  The song-and-dance thing  borders on a joyful patriotic commitment to ethnic expression in some quarters to this day. 

Back to the celebrating  Republicans.  Their national committee chose a new leader, Michael Steele, a very conservative African-American that in an instant expanded its exploratory reach  for party diversity by a grand total of one. For a party that boasts of no blacks in the House or Senate and a single Jew in the House of Representatives, Steele faces a daunting task.  After all, the party has been talking about expanding its base for as long as anyone can remember but  has always  ended up with a bunch of oil men, corporate executives and Wall Streeters to underwrite the political class for tax  favors granted.    

But things will be different from now on, says Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland whose first fighting words on his Olympian tablet were a threat to "knock over" anyone who would obstruct his agenda.  Among the huzzahs were the lofty promise of former Ohio Republican Chairman Bob Bennett, who has been talking about expanding the base since Lincoln's famous address.  Bennett  impressed upon me in an interview years ago that the party was turning the corner to be more inclusive.   In response to Steele, Bennett told a Plain Dealer reporter: "You have a great spokesman for the party.  You have an outstanding leader.  I think that it will certainly benefit the party as we move forward."   Kevin DeWine, the new Ohio GOP chairman, suggested Steele's job would certainly complement the party's grassroots  "hunger  for change."  (But after all these years of  dormant diversity, might we not wonder as John McCain loved to ask,  is it really "change we can believe in"?  

From what I have read, Steele is quite capable of adapting to whatever challenges that confront the national chairman when the  Oval Office incumbent, who also happens to be an African- American, is running quite high in popular opinion.  Call it situation ethics, but I've read that Steele has even campaigned  for the U.S Senate with an ad hoc title:  His literature referred to him as a Democrat (in Democratic precincts, of course) , even though he was listed as a Republican on the Maryland ballot.  Nice try, but he lost anyway.

And although he has told black audiences of his pride that Obama was elected, on other less diverse public occasions he referred to Obama as nothing more than a "media creation."  Somehow, he seems right for the job.  

So now , should we not pause to share a moment of silence in respect to Ohio's very own Ken Blackwell who all but claimed victory with the support of so many Conservative Christian groups (as he did when he ran for governor in Ohio).  They obviously were ignored in the balloting for the RNC chair. He finished dead last on the first ballot. 

But a warning to everybody else:  unless you flap your elbows to the beat of the oompah band, look out for the new bully on the block.  He won't  hesitate to knock you over.  

UPDATE: Steele told Fox News today that the Republican future lies in returning to Newt Gingrich's Contract for/on/with America of 1994. Honest.  I'm not clever enough to make something like this up.  But it does mean that Steele has found a tailor-made rostrum at Fox.