The RNC was in full swing on Day 2. The wrap-up:
President Bush endorsed McCain via satellite (transcript of speech), while Fred Thompson acted as a McCain character witness, with a delivery that pleased party faithfuls, it seems.
Not an ounce of real policy substance. But. Global warming earned its first mention in an RNC speech, albeit scant and meaningless.
The RNC was in full swing on Day 2. The wrap-up:
President Bush endorsed McCain via satellite (transcript of speech), while Fred Thompson acted as a McCain character witness, with a delivery that pleased party faithfuls, it seems.
Not an ounce of real policy substance. But. Global warming earned its first mention in an RNC speech, albeit scant and meaningless. Via Senator Joe Lieberman in the day's closing remarks:
If John McCain was just another go-along partisan politician, he never would have led the fight to fix our broken immigration system or to do something about global warming. But he did!
As Jake Tapper of ABC News points out:
Lieberman gets the Republicans to clap for everything they hate about McCain.
In other convention reax, Gristmill’s Kate Shepard calls the "first big night of speeches eerily sedate." The National Review’s Jay Nordlinger adds:
There was a real spring in the Democratic step -- the Republican one seems...limper, more trudging.
Meanwhile, behind the bright lights of the convention hoopla, GOP officials downgraded man's impact on the climate in its new party platform. You can read the full climate section here, called "Addressing Climate Change Responsibly." Notably absent is this key sentence found in earlier drafts:
Increased atmospheric carbon has a warming effect on the earth.
What remains is an indirect suggestion that man-made carbon emissions are contributing to climate change:
The same human economic activity that has brought freedom and opportunity to billions has also increased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
This rhetoric stuck, too:
Republicans caution against the doomsday climate change scenarios peddled by the aficionados of centralized command-and-control government. We can -- and should -- address the risk of climate change based on sound science without succumbing to the no-growth radicalism that treats climate questions as dogma rather than as situations to be managed responsibly.
Still, adding a climate plank in the platform is indeed progress for the GOP. But the solutions advocated amount to business as usual, with implicit "no's" to cap-and-trade, a global treaty and an end to dirty coal. And a big "yes" to nuclear.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that "energy independence and lower gas prices" are officially the new top items for the GOP -- ahead of the economy, national security and fiscal accountability.
And that means one thing: An aggressive, unprecedented and singular GOP onslaught for more US drilling is coming fast.
On that note, aspiring VP Sarah Palin is slated to speak tonight before the GOP. The full list of speakers for Day 3 should be available on the RNC site later in the day.
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DAY 2 SPEECHES
President George Bush:
http://www.youtube.com/...
Former Senator Fred Thompson:
http://www.youtube.com/...
Senator Joseph Lieberman:
http://www.youtube.com/...