I'm totally baffled by Mitt Romney's speech to the GOP convention, which just ended. The conventioneers responded like the crocodiles being fed raw meat in the Bond flick Live and Let Die. But taken even on their face, his words are an indictment of the Republican party whose nomination he spent roughly $35m to win.
He said: "We need change all right - change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington - throw out the big government liberals and elect John McCain."
But George Bush has been in the White House eight years now, and the Republican party controlled the congress from 1994 to just two years ago. The Democrats haven't done much at all since taking over in 2006.
Romney went on to mention a series of Supreme Court decisions he denounced as "liberal", and yet the last two justices appointed to the court were arch-conservatives picked by Bush.
He attacked the Democrats as a party that aims "to grow the ranks of those who pay no taxes at all", yet I'm one of the main planks in the Republican platform is lower taxes. Indeed, that's the one theme nearly every single speaker at the dais has riffed on.
Romney said America needs a nation where schools and homes are "free from promiscuity". I'll let that statement stand on its own.
He mocked Al Gore's private jet, rehashing a several-years old ad-hominem attack on the former VP and Nobel laureate's call for energy conservation. But I'm certain Romney didn't fly coach to St. Paul.
Finally, maybe this is a product of my own background, but I get very nervous when I hear a politician call for the "defeat" of a major world religion, even when the words 'radical' and 'violent' precede and modify it.
