In an effort to mask their fis­cal irre­spon­si­bil­ity (or per­haps to high­light it), the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion has, not one, but two “debt clocks” on dis­play. One of them shows the cur­rent national debt, tick­ing ever upward. The other shows the amount of debt incurred since the time the Con­ven­tion was first gavelled to order on Mon­day afternoon.

Of course, nei­ther of these “clocks” are accu­rate (nor are they “clocks”, since they don’t tell time). They don’t show the actual expen­di­ture of dol­lars (i.e., when some agency of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment cuts a check, when the Pen­ta­gon awards a con­tract, when oil com­pa­nies get a kick­back, none of this causes these “clocks” to tick up). They only show a sort of aver­age per-​​second amount cal­cu­lated by tak­ing the year’s pro­jected deficit and divid­ing it by some­thing like 31,536,000 (the num­ber of sec­onds in a 365-​​day year; but this is a leap year, so per­haps they used 31,622,400).

High­light­ing the deficit and the debt is, one might think, a dan­ger­ous thing for Repub­li­cans to do, since the debt is almost entirely due to the actions of Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tions. Around 80 per­cent of the national debt prior to 2009 was cre­ated by the com­bined efforts of the Rea­gan, Bush I, and Bush II admin­is­tra­tions. Around 95 per­cent of the cur­rent deficits are due to addi­tional spend­ing from two wars, other large mil­i­tary increases, and Medicare Part D — plus reduced rev­enues from mas­sive tax cuts of 2001–2003 and the col­lapsed eco­nomic activ­ity of the Great Reces­sion — plus emer­gency spend­ing (such as TARP and increased safety net demand) made nec­es­sary by that Reces­sion — all of which stem directly from the Bush years when Repub­li­cans con­trolled all three branches of government.

Fur­ther­more, the cur­rent Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­dent has reduced spend­ing, cut taxes, and reduced the deficit since com­ing into office. The pre­vi­ous Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­dent (Bill Clin­ton) is the only pres­i­dent to have bal­anced the fed­eral bud­get (and even pro­duced enor­mous sur­pluses) in at least half a cen­tury. The con­trast between com­pe­tent Demo­c­ra­tic lead­er­ship and feck­less Repub­li­can profli­gacy is painfully clear.

So for Repub­li­cans to so promi­nently dis­play their fis­cal errors at their 2012 National Con­ven­tion seems to be a dar­ing move. Per­haps that explains one of the main themes of this con­ven­tion — “We Can Do Bet­ter.” It’s hard to imag­ine a polit­i­cal party that can do worse than they’ve already done.

Last night was the “We Built This” night — try­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a state­ment by Pres­i­dent Obama. They kept pre­tend­ing that the Pres­i­dent said busi­ness peo­ple don’t build their busi­ness, obvi­ously think­ing that if you repeat an untruth enough times, it becomes true. They even edited the President’s state­ment to make it seem as if he said some­thing he didn’t. For some rea­son, Repub­li­cans don’t seem to think they can make an hon­est argu­ment. I pine for the day we have two eth­i­cal par­ties in America.

The theme for today is “We Can Change It”, clearly play­ing off the “Hope and Change” theme that stood at the cen­ter of Pres­i­dent Obama’s 2008 cam­paign. Chal­lengers run­ning against incum­bents always run on a “Change” theme. It’s pretty much required, since they’re try­ing to sell a change from the sta­tus quo. The prob­lem this time is that the Repub­li­can pre­scrip­tion for “change” is pri­mar­ily a return to what went on dur­ing the pre­vi­ous Bush admin­is­tra­tion, but moreso — more tax cuts (pri­mar­ily, or per­haps even exclu­sively, for the peo­ple at the top), more mil­i­tary spend­ing, more cuts to pro­grams that are used by the mid­dle class, more neglect of infra­struc­ture, more star­va­tion for state gov­ern­ments. It’s more “We Can Change…Back”.

Activ­i­ties are sched­uled to kick off with an attempt to soothe the Ron Paul sup­port­ers with a film about Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Paul, rather than a slot for him to speak. His son Ayn Rand will have a few min­utes after Sen­ate Minor­ity Leader Mitch McConnell. John McCain, the 2008 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, gets a chance to talk later in the evening, along with a few VP runners-​​up — but not the 2008 VP nom­i­nee, nor the sur­viv­ing Repub­li­can for­mer Pres­i­dent or Vice Pres­i­dent. (Democ­rats are not embar­rassed about their for­mer office hold­ers; Pres­i­dent Clin­ton will deliver a speech in prime time at the Demo­c­ra­tic con­ven­tion. There is per­haps a les­son here.)

It will be inter­est­ing to see what The Repub­li­can Party does with the “Video on the two Bush Pres­i­dents”. (Drink­ing game: how many men­tions of Ronald Reagan?)

We here at Log­a­rchism will be com­ment­ing on the fes­tiv­i­ties this evening. Please give your thoughts for what’s been going on and what’s to come, and join in the dis­cus­sion while it happens.

Mean­while, enjoy the thought and irony below.

Sched­ule

7:00 PM EDT

  • Ron Paul Video
  • Sen­ate Minor­ity Leader Mitch McConnell (R-​​KY)
  • Sen­a­tor Rand Paul (R-​​KY)
  • Par­a­lympic cham­pion ski­ier Christo­pher Devlin-​​Young
  • Jea­nine McDon­nell, daugh­ter of for­mer Vir­ginia Gov­er­nor Bob McDonnell

8:00 p.m.

  • Sen­a­tor John McCain (R-​​AZ)
  • Florida Attor­ney Gen­eral Pam Bondi Geor­gia Attor­ney Gen­eral Sam Olens
  • Louisiana Gov­er­nor Bobby Jin­dal (he prob­a­bly won’t attend due to Hur­ri­cane Isaac)
  • Sen­a­tor John Thune (R-​​SD)
  • Sen­a­tor Rob Port­man (R-​​OH)

9:00 p.m.

  • Puerto Rico Gov­er­nor Luis Fortuño
  • Min­nesota Gov­er­nor Tim Pawlenty
  • Video on the two Bush Presidents
  • For­mer Arkansas Gov­er­nor Mike Huckabee

10:00 p.m.

  • Con­doleezza Rice
  • New Mex­ico Gov­er­nor Susana Martinez
  • Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Paul Ryan (R-​​Janesville, WI)
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