Christie's Careful Speech & Who's Missing

On August 28, 2012 when ABC’s George Stephanopoulos questioned Marco Rubio about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie taking 17 minutes to bring up Mitt Romney in his speech, Rubio said -  “It takes those moments at the beginning to build a case, if you listened to the speech it was carefully crafted, well delivered, defends what leadership is about.”

You bet the speech had to be carefully crafted. When you’re not paying attention Republicans say things like Herman Cain did (at a Texas dog track) on October 28, 2011 - “We can out vote the stupid people” and November, 2011 - “Blacks are brainwashed”. (Cain endorsed Gingrich who was at the convention). I bet you forgot that the Bushes in October were trying to get Christie to run because the Republicans didn’t like their own candidates (Jeb Bush was the only one who attended the convention), former VP Dick Cheney chose to go fishing instead of attending the convention and on August 27, 2012 it was reported that Ron Paul turned down an opportunity to speak (Paul’s supporters created an uproar during the convention when they protested new Republican rules that could hinder future rebellious candidates from running).

Jeb Bush spoke with ABC’s Diane Sawyer about his brother’s absence. Jeb said “The President has spent a lot of time and energy around this notion that I can’t do anything about it, it’s all Bush’s fault. Now we’re in year 4 of a presidency, think back into American history – think of a President who is blaming his predecessor in the 4^th year, so why encourage the bad behavior and I think my brother is smart to stay away.” Like a good Republican Jeb has this all wrong. Obama has blamed the Republican Congress, not Bush, for not ending the cuts and George’s presence could only show support of the Party’s candidate (Democratic bad behavior isn’t possible at their convention).