Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: What they saw, what we saw

Intrade Romney price during convention

Intrade Obama price during convention

Where's the bounce?

Nielsen:

In 2008, more than 38.9 million people watched the comparable closing night of the RNC when John McCain accepted the Republican presidential nomination' about 8.6 million more people than last night's viewership. McCain's acceptance speech in 2008 also bested then Democratic hopeful Pres. Barack Obama's speech by 500,000 viewers.

Jennifer Rubin:

The Romney team, to a greater degree than most campaigns, has been criticized and lampooned. Too timid. Too unfocused. Too slow. Too inept. But this week demonstrated that the campaign officials are more skilled than they have been depicted, and their errors and stumbles have in large part been obliterated in the lingering glow of the convention.

I guess she loved Clint Eastwood and thought it was a brilliant performance. Oh, wait... she did.

Eastwood apparently so annoyed the egomaniacal president that the leader of the Free World felt compelled to hit back via Twitter ('this seat is taken') at the movie star. Talk about losing your presidential aura. Empty chair = Obama is now a powerful association. Will the chair be in ads?

Remember when I said she was an anti-matter Ezra Klein with negative IQ points? I was way too kind. Anyway, back to reality:

The Week:

Did a rambling Clint Eastwood ruin Mitt Romney's big night?

The GOP learns the hard way that an empty chair, an imaginary President Obama, and an octogenarian Hollywood star may be a recipe for disaster

National Journal:

Clint Eastwood's Convention Schtick Draws Extreme Criticism

The reviews continue to pour in on Clint Eastwood's appearance at the Republican National convention Thursday night, and "mixed" might be a charitable way to put it. One prominent Republican, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, said that he "cringed" at the performance.

Walker, appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Friday, echoed the sentiments of many when he said he would have preferred to see more testimonials from people talking about Romney. 'Frankly I would have rather seen that than Clint Eastwood,' he said.

Boston Herald:

Why was Clint Eastwood so bad for Mitt Romney? Because on a morning when we should be talking about the Republican candidate for president, all we're thinking about is Eastwood's conversation with an empty chair. The RNC allowed their candidate to be upstaged. That's not good for business.

WaPo:

Clint Eastwood riff distracts from successful Romney convention

Mitt Romney delivered a good and personal acceptance speech Thursday night. His campaign produced a sterling video about the candidate. People who know Romney offered testimony about his values, his compassion and his business acumen. But all anyone seemed to be talking about when the convention ended was Clint Eastwood and an empty chair.

Well done, GOP. And please note, let's see the polls before we talk about how successful this all was. The same people told us what a hell of a debater McCain was.

To be fair, the video and the real families endorsing Romney were great. Ann and Mitt's speeches were pretty good but not outstanding (Ann did much better than Mitt, but she is not the one running). Christie sucked ("but enough about me. What did you think about me?"). Paul Ryan's speech has led to a media pounding, which Team Romney claims they relish (they must relish losing). Condoleezza Rice was very good. But the 3 day event was disjointed, didn't flow and didn't help Romney as much as it needed to, and they blew it by having Eastwood on the stage instead of the video.

Intrade and IEM have not budged. Gallup's stuck at Obama +1 (7 day sample) but Obama's job approval (3 day) inched up during the convention. The Romney bump ought to be visible by Sunday (the only signs of one are pretty small, including Rasmussen and Ipsos 'remember Ipsos is an online poll, which still had Obama in the lead with registered voters but showed a 6 point bump for Romney and a +2 lead with likely voters.) [now +1, with Obama +3 with RV]

Dave Barry puts together the generic Republican speech:

"Good evening. I stand before you tonight as the lieutenant governor of a critical swing state, as well as a member of a minority group and CEO of the nation's third-largest manufacturer of curtain rods.

"Yes, I am living the American Dream. But let me tell you about my childhood. My family was dirt poor. In fact, we didn't even have enough dirt to go around. We all had to share one small dirt clod. At bath time, you would smear the clod onto yourself and sit in the bathtub; then, when you were done, you would smear the clod onto the next family member. The dirt didn't get washed away, because we also had no water. For that matter, we didn't have a real bathtub. We had to sit in an imaginary bathtub. And not a fancy imaginary bathtub, either: It was a nasty old used imaginary bathtub.

"But we did not complain. We did not ask the government for a handout. And do you know why? Because we also could not afford vocal chords."

Jim Tankersley:

It's not 1981 in America.

Three decades after the Reagan Revolution, the country's economic problems have evolved. Economic data show this clearly ' and so do polling data.

This is the great blind spot of Mitt Romney's economic plan, the great danger to the unemployed and underemployed if he wins the presidency but does not adjust, and one of the principle reasons the former Massachusetts governor is not trouncing President Obama right now.

Charles Blow:

Honesty is a lost art. Facts are for losers. The truth is dead.

Pick one.

Whatever the term of art, they all signal a dark turn, and, this week, the Republican Party took that turn with reckless abandon.

Lying is certainly nothing new in politics. One could even argue that it's fundamental to politics. Saying incredible things in a credible way is the art; using math of vapors to sell dreams of smoke is the craft.

But Paul Ryan's acceptance speech on Wednesday took things up a notch.

Scott Keeter/Pew:

Pew Research and many other polling organizations typically do not report on likely voters until September, after the nominating conventions have concluded and the campaign is fully underway. The reason many pollsters report only on registered voters in the period before then is that, while campaigns may seem to be in full swing earlier, most voters are not fully engaged in the election yet. And much of the hard work of mobilizing voters has not taken place and won't occur until closer to the election. Accordingly, any determination of who is a likely voter prior to September may contain a significant amount of error.

Identifying likely voters is one of the most difficult aspects of conducting election polls. .