Just another Tampa Tuesday

Convention notes:

-Letterman says the GOP Convention theme is "A Better Future. Chris Christie's theme is "A Butter Future...usually, the only time Chris Christie talks 45 minutes is to a clown head at Jack In The Box." His keynote address was a classic example of the old adage about President Harding, that his speeches were an army of words marching across the landscape in search of an idea. Well, that's not entirely fair. After Mrs Romney all but sang "All You Need Is Love" Christie waddled on to bellow how running America is like being on the high school debate team when all the cool kids are hanging with that exchange student from Kenya:

The greatest lesson Mom ever taught me, though, was this one: she told me there would be times in your life when you have to choose between being loved and being respected. She said to always pick being respected, that love without respect was always fleeting — but that respect could grow into real, lasting love.

Now, of course, she was talking about women.

But I have learned over time that it applies just as much to leadership. In fact, I think that advice applies to America today more than ever.

I believe we have become paralyzed by our desire to be loved.

Our Founding Fathers had the wisdom to know that social acceptance and popularity is fleeting and that this country's principles needed to be rooted in strengths greater than the passions and emotions of the times.

-Every speaker I saw used a TelePrompTer. Does that make them all stupid, as the conservative meme on the President holds?

-All the governors who spoke had little to say about Romney or any Republican plans for anything but they all had a lot to say about how the inherited a mess from the economic policies of the last president of their party, and how well their states are doing under the economic policies of the current president of the other party, while at the same time arguing that the national economy is on the verge of collapse.

-With nothing to do on Monday, what were Palmetto State GOP delegates up to? Michael Barbaro and Ashley Parker report in The TNew York Times: "Unable to wait, several hundred delegates made their way to the convention hall, like brainy schoolchildren who show u p for class even on a snow day.

    "The South Carolina delegation's contribution to the high jinks? Members played bingo and political trivia games. (Question:Who was the first Catholic vice presidential nominee? William Miller, in 1964).

   "This is the Republican Party of 2012, ever more the party of Mitt Romney."

-Also in the Barbaro/Parker wrap-up: Newt Gingrich (who released the South Carolina delegates from their now-forgotten commitments to him last week) launched his much-previewed "Newt University"- "a series of lectures on the Big Issues of the Day in Conservatism."

     "The room was small. The crowd was sparse...The PowerPoint presentation malfunctioned...'I just wandered in,' said Charlotte Rasmussen, a delegate from Wisconsin. 'We don't have anything else scheduled. Plus it's in our hotel.'"

-Herman Cain told a Tea Party "unity rally" (an oxymoron, if not an actual moron) Sunday night that if "everyone had competed fairly and honestly," he'd be the nominee.

-Mrs Palin is on the stump in Arizona. She plucked a congressional candidate, Kirk Adams, from obscurity and  served barbecue and baked beans at Joe's Farm Grill near Gilbert, AZ. "She had seen it featured on the Food Network, said one of its owners, Tim Peelen."