Over the weekend, my Salon column argued that Paul Ryan is really the flip side of Sarah Palin: he’s the faux wonk for a party who is happy enough with a Palin, but would like to think of itself as not completely outclassed on substance.
Then yesterday I talked about how the lessons of this year’s conventions might play out. My serious point is that whatever are thought to be the lessons of the conventions will matter but that those lessons may have little or nothing to do with what actually caused Romney to get no bump and Obama to get one, but I framed it around a wish that everyone will conclude it was the Republicans’ lazy mendacity that was the problem.
Speaking of which, have I mentioned my totally screwy and almost certainly wrong theory of why the GOP convention flopped? The GOP convention featured a whole string of successful businesspeople explaining how successful they were. Their main complaint about Obama wasn’t that he ruined their businesses; it was that he didn’t properly respect their success. Perhaps some people watched that and concluded that business in the US was actually doing really well?
(One exception that I remember: there was a guy from Nevada, if I recall correctly, whose government-had-nothing-to-do-with-my-success business was selling something — road signs, I think? — to government, and his complaint was that under Obama the government wasn’t buying enough of whatever it was. Ah — here’s the story).
As I said, probably wrong, but I’m having fun semi-believing it.
[Cross-posted at A plain blog about politics]
