“A well-placed Republican source tells Townhall that Oscar-winning director and actor Clint Eastwood will travel to Tampa, Florida to attend Mitt Romney’s nominating convention this week… Our source — who spoke on the condition of anonymity — could not confirm if Eastwood is, in fact, the intriguing ‘to-be-announced’ speaker, but stated unequivocally that the Dirty Harry star will arrive in Florida late on Wednesday or early on Thursday, and will return to southern California on Friday.”

With the Republican convention seemingly crafted around President Obama’s infamous “you didn’t build that,” the Washington Post fact-checkers reevaluated their take on the line which they say was merely a grammatical error by the president.

“We originally gave Romney’s use of the phrase Three Pinocchios… However, in light of the GOP’s repeated misuse of this Obama quote in speech after speech, we feel compelled to increase the Pinocchio rating to Four. (Warning to Democrats: You will get the same scrutiny of out-of-context Romney quotes next week. It’s really a silly thing on which to base a campaign.)”

The AP obtained an early copy of No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden, a firsthand account of the Navy SEAL raid that killed the terrorist leader and notes it “contradicts previous accounts by administration officials, raising questions as to whether the terror mastermind presented a clear threat when SEALs first fired upon him.”

The author “also writes disparagingly that none of the SEALs were fans of U.S. President Barack Obama and knew that his administration would take credit for ordering the May 2011 raid. One of the SEALs said after the mission that they had just gotten Obama re-elected by carrying out the raid.”

Many Democrats believe Mitt Romney’s “decision to inject welfare into the campaign — with a factually inaccurate ad claiming Obama had reversed Clinton-era work requirements — was an unmistakable, if coded, effort to imply that the first black president stands for handouts for lazy people,” Politico reports.

“Combined with a recent lead-balloon joke by Romney about controversy over Obama’s birthplace, Democrats have concluded that Romney is making deliberate appeals to prejudiced whites.”

“Many Republicans — with years of resentment over how they believe Democrats and the media seek to throw them on the defensive on racial issues — howled that Vice President Joe Biden was exploiting racial fears when he told a majority-black audience in Virginia that the GOP’s Wall Street allies want to ‘put you all back in chains.'”

“I want to talk to you tonight about that one great thing that unites us, that one thing that brings us our greatest joy when times are good, and the deepest solace in our dark hours. Tonight I want to talk to you about love.”

— Ann Romney, at the GOP convention last night.

“I believe we have become paralyzed by our desire to be loved.”

— New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, giving the keynote address last night.

[Read more…]

Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) sent fellow Rep. Ben Quayle (R-AZ) packing in the closely watched battle that pitted the freshmen Republicans against each other, the Arizona Republic reports.

“As ballots rolled in, Quayle campaign volunteer Paul Gorman attributed the loss to fallout from a recent story about Congress members partying in Israel, including one who stripped naked to swim. Quayle was on the trip but said he only took a brief, reverent dip in the Sea of Galilee.”

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) handily won the Republican primary in the race to replace retiring Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), setting up a general-election race with former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona (D) that is expected to be much more competitive, the Arizona Republic reports.

“Some polls earlier in the summer indicated Carmona in a tight race with Flake and with a slight advantage in campaign funds headed into the general election.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is pulling back its ads in New Mexico and Missouri and investing heavily in North Dakota, where the GOP is facing an unexpectedly difficult fight to pick up an open Senate seat, Politico reports.

The campaign arm of the Senate GOP is “canceling its ads in New Mexico, where Democrat Martin Heinrich appears to be pulling ahead of Republican Heather Wilson, and Missouri, where Rep. Todd Akin’s comments about abortion and rape have damaged his campaign and caused national Republicans to flee the state.”

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds Mitt Romney accepts the Republican nomination for president with the lowest personal popularity of any major-party nominee in polls dating to Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

Key findings: 40% of registered voters see Romney favorably overall, while 51% rate him unfavorably — 11 points underwater in this basic measure.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) talks to Deer & Deer Hunting Magazine about his favorite outdoor activity.
 
Said Ryan: “Bowhunting is my passion. Studying the strategy, preparing food plots, the strategy of where a dominant buck is living or will be moving and then being in position to get a shot, that’s really exciting. Half of it is getting ready for the shot.”

“The sicker the patient, the less important is bedside manner. If you’ve just been diagnosed with a brain tumor, you honestly don’t care if your neurosurgeon is a jerk. You don’t care if he has a great personality. You want to know if you’re going to cut my head open, can you get the job done?”

— Mike Huckabee, quoted by the Daily Beast, using a novel way to sell the staid Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney’s campaign complained today that President Obama was breaking “a three-decade precedent by personally campaigning during the opposing party’s convention.”

Alex Burns: “Democrats now counter that Mitt Romney isn’t exactly pure in this respect: In 2008, he traveled to Denver during the Democratic convention and taped a major interview with Katie Couric to counter-program Obama’s events… It’s not a parallel situation, since Romney wasn’t on his party’s ticket that year, let alone an incumbent president… But in terms of GOP complaints about Democratic bracketing, Romney’s ’08 role is sort of a complicating factor.”

[Read more…]

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told the Newark Star Ledger he won’t be touting his state’s economic recovery during his Republican convention keynote address.

Said Christie: “Let’s make one thing really clear. There are three words that are not in my speech Tuesday night: ‘The Jersey Comeback.’ So for all those Democrats real worried or got real excited that maybe I’d have to take it out or maybe I put it in, those three words aren’t in the speech.”

First Read: “There’s a reason for that. When Christie took office in Jan. 2010 unemployment was 9.7 percent. It dropped to 9.0 percent earlier this year, but has since ballooned to 9.8 percent – the highest it’s been in 35 years.”

A new CNN/Opinion Research poll finds 70% of Republicans nationally are satisfied with Mitt Romney as their party’s presidential nominee with 30% wishing for someone else.

Said pollster Keating Holland: “Historically, that figure is not bad. In mid-August, 2008, more than four in ten Republicans said they would prefer someone other than John McCain as the Republican nominee. Thirty-seven percent of Democrats said in August, 2008, that they would prefer Hillary Clinton as their party’s nominee.”

John Avlon: “New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s keynote address is the substantive center-piece of this first night of the Republican Convention. But contrary to expectations that he will play the traditional role of attack dog, the former U.S. Attorney will instead lay out a positive Republican vision of change for the nation – rooted in policy, biography and his surprisingly bipartisan accomplishments in the Garden State.”