Today marks the sec­ond offi­cial day of the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion, but the first where any­thing of sig­nif­i­cance hap­pens. Mitt Rom­ney poll­ster Neil New­house said, “if it doesn’t hap­pen in prime time, it doesn’t hap­pen.” That being the case, it’s a good thing yesterday’s activ­i­ties were can­celed; the net­works said they weren’t going to carry the prime time speeches any­way, which would have left First Lady hope­ful Ann Rom­ney effec­tively on the cut­ting room floor. Now she gets a prime time slot tonight.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ron Paul (R-​​Port Jack­son, TX) will not be speak­ing at this con­ven­tion, despite hav­ing a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of del­e­gates (who may not be seated). He refused to endorse pre­sump­tive nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney, though, and wouldn’t allow his speech to be vet­ted by Romney’s crew, so he was denied a speak­ing slot. Instead, a speech has essen­tially been grafted onto him, in the form of a video “trib­ute” to Ron Paul, to be shown tomorrow.

Yesterday’s theme was to be “We can do bet­ter,” osten­si­bly to sug­gest that we can have a bet­ter Pres­i­dent than Barack Obama. They’re prob­a­bly right (though it’s much harder to believe that the Repub­li­can slate qual­i­fies), but there are a few other wor­thy inter­pre­ta­tions that come out of that theme. For exam­ple, the Repub­li­can Party should have been able to do bet­ter than Mitt Rom­ney as their choice to run against Obama. This elec­tion was theirs to lose, and the Crazy Eight can­di­dates run­ning against Rom­ney in the pri­maries only served to high­light how badly they were blow­ing their golden oppor­tu­nity. We can also do bet­ter than to con­tinue to send no-​​compromise rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the Capi­tol. If we want results — any results — we need to be able to ham­mer out compromises.

Yesterday’s theme will now be woven into the remain­ing three days of the con­ven­tion. Today’s theme is “We built it,” an obvi­ous ref­er­ence to the “You didn’t build that” meme. There’s a pretty long list of speak­ers today, and I believe this is the actual order (though there may be last-​​minute shuffles):

7:00 PM EDT

  • House Speaker John Boehner
  • Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee Chair­man Reince Priebus
  • Saratoga Springs, Utah, Mayor Mia Love, who Monotreme told us in April is run­ning to rep­re­sent the fourth con­gres­sional dis­trict in Congress
  • Janine Turner, actress and Tea Party activist
  • For­mer Penn­syl­va­nia Sen­a­tor Rick San­to­rum, who was the runner-​​up in the Ele­phant Stampede.
  • Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers (R-​​Spokane, WA)

8:00 PM EDT

  • Sen­a­tor Kelly Ayotte (R-​​NH), who will be accom­pa­nied by Jack Gilchrist, owner of Gilchrist Metal Fabricating
  • Ohio Gov­er­nor John Kasich
  • Okla­homa Gov­er­nor Mary Fallin
  • Vir­ginia Gov­er­nor Bob McDonnell
  • Wis­con­sin Gov­er­nor Scott Walker

9:00 PM EDT

  • Nevada Gov­er­nor Brian Sandoval
  • Delaware Lieu­tenant Guber­na­to­r­ial can­di­date Sher Valenzuela
  • Sen­ate can­di­date Ted Cruz of Texas
  • For­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Artur Davis (D-​​Birmingham)
  • South Car­olina Gov­er­nor Nikki Haley

10:00 PM EDT

  • Puerto Rico First Lady Lucé Vela Fortuño
  • Ann Rom­ney
  • New Jer­sey Gov­er­nor Chris Christie, who will be the keynote speaker

March­ing ever rightward

There are a lot of Gov­er­nors speak­ing today, so I’d expect there to be an under­ly­ing cur­rent of “states’ rights”. Sher Valen­zuela, a small busi­ness owner, and Jack Gilchrist will almost cer­tainly be dri­ving home the “I built that” meme. Kelly Ayotte, Mary Fallin, Nikki Haley, Lucé Vela, and Mia Love should all be expected to defend charges of a Repub­li­can “war on women”. Ted Cruz, Sher Valen­zuela, and Lucé Vela For­tuño will prob­a­bly aim for His­panic vot­ers. And we can be sure to hear anti-​​union sen­ti­ments from John Kasich and Scott Walker, both of whom have been in the mid­dle of union bat­tles since Obama’s election.

As you can see above, offi­cial fes­tiv­i­ties won’t start until 7:00 PM EDT. Nobody has com­mit­ted to run­ning the whole gavel-​​to-​​gavel show on any net­work, so the activ­i­ties from 2:00 to 7:00, includ­ing the roll call votes for Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent at around 6:00, will be seen by very few peo­ple. The major news net­works will show the evening events, but ABC, NBC, and CBS broad­cast net­works will show only one hour, from 10:00 PM to 11:00 PM EDT, on each day. The plan, then, is for 19 speak­ers in four hours, or an aver­age of 12 min­utes, 38 sec­onds each. One can’t say much in that lit­tle time.

We’ll be around to watch and dis­cuss the fes­tiv­i­ties as they hap­pen tonight. As always, we’d love to have you join us, and join in on the dis­cus­sion. Mean­time, while we wait, what do you think we’re going to hear tonight?

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