Ann Romney, told the nation that her husband Mitt is “the man America needs” during her prime-time address to the GOP convention, Tuesday evening. It was a speech crafted to reach out to women, and also to soften her husband’s image.
Fox News reported:
Ann Romney tried Tuesday night to bring some love – and some truth — to a presidential race marked recently by accusations of half-truths and lies — in a speech that paid homage to women and attempted to share Mitt Romney’s personal side to America.
“I want to talk not about what divides us, but what holds us together as an American family,” said Romney, whose husband had received the GOP presidential nomination just hours earlier. “Tonight I want to talk to you about love.”
Ann Romney, in a roughly 30-minute speech that ended with Mitt Romney walking on stage and kissing his wife, said it is women who are the unsung heroes of families
I know there’s not a woman in America who isn’t looking at this 60-odd year old woman, and marveling at her youthful radiance. Whatever her secret is – I want some.
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Andrew Ferguson of The Weekly Standard: Learning to Like Mitt:
Ferguson lists the reasons he (and many of us on the right) had for not liking Mitt – “that half-smile of pitying condescension in debates or interviews when someone disagrees with him, the Ken doll mannerisms, his wanton use of the word “gosh”—the whole Romney package”. In sum, he never seemed genuine. But as many of us get to know him better, we are ashamed of how we used to feel.
Evidently not many of my fellow Republicans agreed. I assumed I was missing something and resolved to dive into the Romney literature, which I soon discovered should post a disclaimer, like a motel pool: NO DIVING. By my count the literature includes one good book, The Real Romney, by two reporters from the Boston Globe. That’s the same Globe with the leftward tilt to its axis and a legendary anti-Romney animus—which lends authority to their largely favorable portrait. The flattering details of Romney’s life were so numerous and unavoidable that the authors, dammit, had no choice but to include them.
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Almost every personal detail about Romney I found endearing. But my slowly softening opinion went instantly to goo when The Real Romney unfolded an account of his endless kindnesses—unbidden, unsung, and utterly gratuitous. “It seems that everyone who has known him has a tale of his altruism,” the authors write. I was struck by the story of a Mormon family called (unfortunately) Nixon. In the 1990s a car wreck rendered two of their boys quadriplegics. Drained financially from extraordinary expenses, Mr. Nixon got a call from Romney, whom he barely knew, asking if he could stop by on Christmas Eve. When the day came, all the Romneys arrived bearing presents, including a VCR and a new sound system the Romney boys set up. Later Romney told Nixon that he could take care of the children’s college tuition, which in the end proved unnecessary. “I knew how busy he was,” Nixon told the authors. “He was actually teaching his boys, saying, ‘This is what we do. We do this as a family.’ ”