Ex-Democrat Artur Davis to speak at GOP national convention
There are a few moments in any national presidential-nominating convention that are designed for drama: the keynote address, the speech by the running mate and, of course, the speech by the nominee. But the GOP this year is trying to add another one in a Zell Miller-esque address by a longtime Democrat.
Democratic congressman-turned-2012 RNC speaker Artur Davis (Source: OfficialArturDavis.com)
And this longtime Democrat happens to be one of the first members of Congress to endorse Barack Obama for the presidency in 2008, the man who seconded Obama’s nomination at the Democratic convention in Denver: Alabama’s Artur Davis.
Davis’ switch to the Republican Party earlier this year was well-publicized, but I’m not sure anyone predicted he’d be a headliner at the 2012 GOP convention, announced alongside four people Mitt Romney reportedly considered as potential running mates: Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. (U.S. Senate candidate Connie Mack of Florida was also announced today.)
There have been rumors a Republican, perhaps Jon Huntsman, will address the Democrats’ convention in Charlotte. It would take more than Huntsman, in my view, to trump what the GOP gets with Davis.
Here’s what Davis said in a press release by the Republican National Committee:
The talk and inspiration moved so many of us four years ago, but unfortunately we haven’t seen the action to back it up. We were promised jobs and we got job-killing mandates and regulations. We were promised a fiscally responsible government, and we got trillion dollar deficits, debt that has never been seen, and small business burdened with new taxes, and threatened with more taxes. The time for talk is over. At the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Republicans take a step to undo the mismanagement and nominate Mitt Romney as the next president of the United States.
I believe the official term for that kind of statement from that kind of ex-supporter is “fightin’ words.” We’ll have to see whether Davis proves as effective a turncoat as Miller was. And/or whether Davis ends up challenging any liberal cable-news commentators to a duel:
– By Kyle Wingfield
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393 comments Add your comment
SlickRick - glad to no longer be suffering through Fratboy George's ineptocracy
August 16th, 2012
1:12 pm
RW-(the original) = @@?
I think so.
RW-(the original)
August 16th, 2012
1:13 pm
Sorry but I am not impressed.
That you McKayla?
Kyle Wingfield
August 16th, 2012
1:15 pm
JDW: Only you would assume the others are Obama supporters.
SlickRick - glad to no longer be suffering through Fratboy George's ineptocracy
August 16th, 2012
1:15 pm
Thanks for the confirmation, schn@@rt.
Rafe Hollister, suffering through Oblamer's ineptocracy
August 16th, 2012
1:15 pm
I Got Stripes — Stripes Around My Shoulders
I Got Chains — Chains Around My Feet
I Got Stripes — Stripes Around My Shoulders
And Them Chains — Them Chains They’re About To Drag Me Down
Joe Biden sings his swan song!
Auntie Christ
August 16th, 2012
1:19 pm
iggy August 16th, 2012 1:11 pm ObamaCare listed as an accomplishment…LOL!!
Did you laugh as hard at romneycare. Did you laugh as hard when the Heritage Foundation and the rest of the repub establishment were touting it? Or is it only funny when a demo administration passes it? you repubs have a peculiar sense of humor, or is it just hypocrisy?
SlickRick - glad to no longer be suffering through Fratboy George's ineptocracy
August 16th, 2012
1:19 pm
Kyle – you clearly consider Krugman a liberal ‘hack.’ And yet you offer up Friedman and Laffer as if they aren’t conservative yin’s to Krugman’s yang. How do you say that with a straight face?
One other thing: economics is one of the few disciplines where nobel prizes are awarded for saying exactly contradictory things. Getting a nobel prize doesn’t mean that you’re automatically right about something, nor does not getting one mean that you’re automatically wrong about something. And to think that all this time I’ve been suffering through the delusion that you actually knew a little something about economic theory.
Rafe Hollister, suffering through Oblamer's ineptocracy
August 16th, 2012
1:21 pm
Getting a Nobel prize also doesn’t mean that you ever accomplished anything either.
SlickRick - glad to no longer be suffering through Fratboy George's ineptocracy
August 16th, 2012
1:21 pm
Auntie Christie – Regressives are the very personification of hypocrisy. In. Literally. Everything. That. They. Do. EVERYTHING.
SlickRick - glad to no longer be suffering through Fratboy George's ineptocracy
August 16th, 2012
1:21 pm
Rafe at 121 – not true in the least.
Rockerbabe
August 16th, 2012
1:22 pm
Zell Miller’s treachery got him nowhere and he is largely forgotten by most Georgians and definitely by most Dems who supported him, including me. Mr. Davis will be persona non-grata when this is all over. How sad.
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
August 16th, 2012
1:23 pm
What would you do with a college degree in Our Kan Saw?
Oh yeah, rape trailer park trash, I forgot.
Auntie Christ
August 16th, 2012
1:24 pm
Slick Rick @ 119: Kyle – you clearly consider Krugman a liberal ‘hack.’ And yet you offer up Friedman and Laffer as if they aren’t conservative yin’s to Krugman’s yang. How do you say that with a straight face?
That’s not the funny part, what’s hilarious is phil gramm is listed. The genius who: “”Some economists state that the 1999 legislation spearheaded by Gramm and signed into law by President Clinton — the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act — was significantly to blame for the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis and 2008 global economic crisis.”
arthur laffer and phil gramm, just the kind of thinkers we need for the century (the 15th)
Kyle Wingfield
August 16th, 2012
1:24 pm
SlickRick: I’m not the one who first offered up the thoughts of two Nobel-winning economists as a trump card. As you note, that tells us nothing about whether a particular policy is the right one. Which is the point I was making.
As for Krugman: He’s long since ceased an attempt at impartial economic analysis and bought into whatever the Democratic Party needs at that time.
SlickRick - glad to no longer be suffering through Fratboy George's ineptocracy
August 16th, 2012
1:27 pm
Kyle – I’m open to any evidence to the contrary, but Krugman’s philosophy has remained consistent all along. You may not agree with it, but it is born of a genuine belief in a certain economic school and has nothing to do with whether the political party he would otherwise support for a myriad of other reasons also happens to espouse his chosen economic theory.
Just saying..
August 16th, 2012
1:33 pm
“Paul freakin’ Krugman”
????
Perhaps you could devote a column itemizing the reasons Krugman’s opinion on economic matters shouldn’t be respected.
House Slaves Usually Live Better Than Field Slaves
August 16th, 2012
1:34 pm
JOHN MCCAIN SAID THAT OBAMA NEEDS TO PICK ANOTHER VP.
heeheeheeheeheeheehee.
This from a man who picked YOU KNOW WHO.
SARAH PALIN
.SARAH PALIN
.SARAH PALIN
.SARAH PALIN
SARAH PALIN
.SARAH PALIN
.SARAH PALIN
.SARAH PALIN
OMG!!!!!!!!!!
This will FOLLOW JOHN MCCAIN TO HIS GRAVE.
Rafe Hollister, suffering through Oblamer's ineptocracy
August 16th, 2012
1:34 pm
SlickRick, I will not even get into Obama’s Nobel, but howabout Nosar Arafat getting a “Peace” prize. He was a real “peacemaker” for sure!
iggy
August 16th, 2012
1:37 pm
Arafat…LOL. Loser, terrorist and he was butt ugly.
Other winners…Carter, Goron, Obama…LMAO!!!
Rafe Hollister, suffering through Oblamer's ineptocracy
August 16th, 2012
1:37 pm
Perhaps you could devote a column itemizing the reasons Krugman’s opinion on economic matters shouldn’t be respected.
No column necessary, one word sums up his economic accuracy………
OBAMA!
Hillbilly D
August 16th, 2012
1:39 pm
I really liked your banjo scene in “Deliverance.”
That comment says a lot more about you, Auntie, than it does about me.
On Joe Biden referring to this as the 20th Century, I’ll have to give him a pass on that one. I do the same thing all the time. When you spent a whole lot more years in that century than this one, it sort of goes with the territory.
Hillbilly D
August 16th, 2012
1:40 pm
An economist’s guess is liable to be as good as anybody else’s.-Will Rogers
Kyle Wingfield
August 16th, 2012
1:40 pm
Well, SlickRick, here’s one example.
@@
August 16th, 2012
1:45 pm
RW:
Errr…the contest was to pick both VP choices and I had Palin so I think I win any tiebreaker.
I’m always willing to share my winnings with YOU, RW.
=====================================
I’m always amused by the Ayn Rand ranters.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy was a compilation of Aristotle’s and Thomas Acquinas’ absent the religious tenets.
She has a lot in common with liberals.
For instance:
What was Ayn Rand’s view on abortion?
Excerpt from “Of Living Death” in The Objectivist, October 1968:
An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).
Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?”
From a 1964 interview in Playboy magazine:
Playboy:
Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life?
Rand:
Qua religion, no—in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason. But you must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man’s life and a code of moral values, were made by religion, before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy.
Ayn Rand was “A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma”
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
August 16th, 2012
1:46 pm
You know, I actually miss the Old Urinal, with it’s daily harrowing accounts of bloodthirsty, child killer US soldiers firebombing innocent muslim wedding parties and now we have Wingnut openly dissing one of the left’s most cherished assets, Paul Krugman, pictures of whom no doubt adorn the walls of bookman’s cubicle.
Maybe the hysteria of the Cynthia Tucker days are truly behind us.
Del
August 16th, 2012
1:50 pm
Oh Oh, Davis will be another Black to be targeted by an enraged left wing who have zero tolerance for Black conservatives and probably in his case even worse because he’s a defector.
@@
August 16th, 2012
1:50 pm
Say wh-a-a-a-a?
RW-(the original) = @@?
I think so.
Try not to think too hard, Slick. Your brain appears to be under stress.
Beyond the Middle of the Road
August 16th, 2012
1:55 pm
I honestly don’t think that Davis’ appearance is going to matter much even though it is a nice coup for the convention. He’s just not that much of a household name. I think it’s far more significant that Christie is the keynote speaker; never doubt the impact of that. Obama, after all, was the 2004 Democratic one. I also believe there’s it’s far more significant that Bush the Second isn’t attending and Palin is being given a very wide berth. And neither are EVER mentioned on the campaign trail. Talk about skeletons in the closet.
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
August 16th, 2012
1:56 pm
Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, I might add.
@@
August 16th, 2012
1:58 pm
Hillbilly:
I’ve got no bone to pick with Joe. His blatant pandering gets on my nerves.
I was watching Giuliani’s critique of Joe. “He’s just not that bright…never has been”…
something along those lines.
Shine
August 16th, 2012
2:00 pm
wheeeeee…..kook to speak at republican drunkfest . they could give Zell Miller his rabie shot and find him a spot too.
Belly Laughs
August 16th, 2012
2:01 pm
“Maybe the hysteria of the Cynthia Tucker days are truly behind us.”
Yet your hysteria still remain
Go figure
Robert
August 16th, 2012
2:01 pm
@Rafe Hollister – This Black want-to-be politician who switched parties to gain favor amongst White voters is a “Uncle Tom’s” and he will do anything to further their personal endeavor. The GOP will try any “trick” in the book to fool the American People. I feel sorry for his family who will bear the brunt of this bad decision. This guy should be ashamed of himself.
Ex-Democrat Artur Davis to speak at GOP national convention – Atlanta Journal Constitution (blog) | GoogleITV.com
August 16th, 2012
2:02 pm
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JDW
August 16th, 2012
2:02 pm
@Kyle…”Only you would assume the others are Obama supporters.”
I made no assumptions about the others. I merely pointed out that 400 economists is by no means an overwhelming number as you had intimated.
yuzeyurbrane
August 16th, 2012
2:03 pm
Kyle, I read your link to Romney Campaign press release re economists. I agree with Slick Rick on most of his points about this. And I also read some press reports when economists’ statement was first released. As I recall, their endorsement of Romney’s very general proposals was not unequivocal. Now, Ryan’s proposals are in black and white in the budget bill that passed the House, but the 400 you mention did not seem to be commenting on that and Romney has been both for and against many of its provisions. Clarification please. Anyway, I would be willing to read and consider full text of their statement if you care to post a link. Yes, since I am not economist, I do give a lot of weight to credentials but I also consider their analyses on the merits. I have read Krugman, Stigler and Stockman’s analyses (not all but many) and I have on occasion read economic theories of Feldman. Laffer and Graham. Laffer and Graham in particular are just right-wing hacks. Most of the others are names I don’t recognize. I understand your disagreement with Krugman but did not previously appreciate the depth of your dislike. Perhaps, it is because he is a “turncoat” from the time he spent as a staffer for the Council of Economic Advisers under Reagan? Kyle, he has been consistent from the git-go since at least 2008, often in disagreement with Obama and almost always right in his predictions. His position now is that he simply sees Obama’s proposals as far superior to Romney and Ryan’s. Further, we tried Laffer’s supply side nonsense under W and see where it got us in 2008? We also were supply side in the 19th century. I suppose you could argue that was a glorious time but I doubt many Americans would want to return. Not many people really want to work their butts off waiting for a fair piece of the pie to trickle down.
You libs
August 16th, 2012
2:07 pm
del @ 1:50
“Oh Oh, Davis will be another Black to be targeted by an enraged left wing who have zero tolerance for Black conservatives and probably in his case even worse because he’s a defector.”
Are you sure that there’s no tolerance for any one of the five?
Auntie Christ
August 16th, 2012
2:07 pm
@@ 158: I was watching Giuliani’s critique of Joe. “He’s just not that bright…never has been”…something along those lines.
That can’t be an exact quote, because giuilani would have said something like “911 he’s just not 911 that bright 911, 911, never has been 911 911.”
Everette
August 16th, 2012
2:10 pm
Most leaders lead by example and Mitt Romney’s definitely shows he’s not a leader . He can always run for office in the Camen Islands where he hide his money .
Auntie Christ
August 16th, 2012
2:10 pm
del @ 1:50
“Oh Oh, Davis will be another Black to be targeted by an enraged left wing….
He’s just thankful it’s the left wing that’s enraged. Being from Alabama, he’s seen what the enraged white/right wing comprising the repub party does to African Americans.
iggy
August 16th, 2012
2:11 pm
Biden isnt as stupid as he seems, although he is a stupid man. Biden speaks his mind and believes what he states. He has been caught many a times making up stories, lying about his past but is mostly angered because his dad lost it all and became a used car salesman.
You see Bidens dad, much like man liberals, was just a victim of circumstance and not stupid decision making.
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
August 16th, 2012
2:15 pm
“It is great to be here in North Canton, or as Joe Biden might say, it’s great to be here in Nevada,” Paul Ryan said as he opened an address at Walsh University in North Cantor, Ohio.
Hairplugs, the gift that keeps on giving.
@@
August 16th, 2012
2:15 pm
Where did Slick slip off to? Was he/she looking to change into something more comfortable?
schnirt
yuzeyurbrane
August 16th, 2012
2:16 pm
Kyle, I read your link to the one example you proffered Slick Rick and I suggest you read Krugman’s recent articles more carefully. What he said in 2003 when there had not yet been the 2007-8 financial meltdown is not all inconsistent with what he recommends now. They are totally different financial circumstances that call for different policies. Keynesian policies are meant to jump-start an economy that his hit rough times or become deflationary as in the Depression and in this Recession. They have worked historically but they are not meant to be permanent. Krugman also recognizes that we need a long-term program to bring our deficits under control beginning after we have had our jump-start. Even Romney has occasionally alluded to the fact that it would be unwise to effect massive budget cuts while we are in a Recession.
House Slaves Usually Live Better Than Field Slaves
August 16th, 2012
2:20 pm
@@@
August 16th, 2012
1:45 pm
RW:
Errr…the contest was to pick both VP choices and I had Palin so I think I win any tiebreaker.
I’m always willing to share my winnings with YOU, RW.
=====================================
I’m always amused by the Ayn Rand ranters.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy was a compilation of Aristotle’s and Thomas Acquinas’ absent the religious tenets.
She has a lot in common with liberals.
__________________________________________________________
DUH, PAUL RYAN IS NO LIBERAL.
Vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan is an avowed fan of Ayn Rand.
“I grew up reading Ayn Rand, and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are,” PAUL RYAN told a convention of Rand followers in 2005.
PAUL RYAN ALSO SAID, Rand was “the reason I got involved in public service.” A passionate convert to her black-and-white, apocalyptic worldview, Ryan also became an evangelist.
GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT.
@@
August 16th, 2012
2:20 pm
Kyle removed Auntie’s unprovoked assault on Hillbilly.
Kewl!
@@
August 16th, 2012
2:24 pm
House slave(d):
GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT
Some things aren’t as simple as you.
House Slaves Usually Live Better Than Field Slaves
August 16th, 2012
2:28 pm
@I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin…
August 16th, 2012
2:15 pm
“It is great to be here in North Canton, or as Joe Biden might say, it’s great to be here in Nevada,” Paul Ryan said as he opened an address at Walsh University in North Cantor, Ohio.
Hairplugs, the gift that keeps on giving.
_____________________________________________
The P90X regimen still WON’T HELP PAUL RYAN’S Howdy Doody mug.
He might have a great body, but a bad mug.
retiredds
August 16th, 2012
2:30 pm
Ho-Hum
House Slaves Usually Live Better Than Field Slaves
August 16th, 2012
2:31 pm
@@@
August 16th, 2012
2:24 pm
House slave(d):
GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT
Some things aren’t as simple as you.
__________________________________________
WHAT is so COMPLICATED about Paul Ryan being an avowed fan of Ayn Rand?
Huh?
Huh?
Huh?
IT AIN’T ROCKET SCIENCE GENIUS.