The Clint Eastwood gambit worked perfectly, but not in the way people think

When I saw the Clint East­wood speech yes­ter­day, an image formed in my mind:

For those too young to remem­ber that is Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-​In and John Wayne in that bunny suit. That’s the last time I saw some­thing this Ayp­ti­cal from a Hol­ly­wood icon.

I thought Eastwood’s pre­sen­ta­tion was one of the weird­est things I’ve ever seen, some­body said on TV it was a vari­a­tion of an old Morry Ams­ter­dam bit (East­wood is cer­tainly old enough to remem­ber Ams­ter­dam) but that might just have been a bad joke.

Nev­er­the­less I sub­mit that the Clint East­wood bit worked absolutely per­fectly for the GOP in gen­eral and Mitt Rom­ney in par­tic­u­lar. Here is why:

1. The Presence:

A lot of peo­ple who nor­mally wouldn’t have tuned into the RNC yes­ter­day tuned in to see Eastwood.

2. The odd­ity of it:

If it was a reg­u­lar “Make my Day” speech they would have changed the chan­nel when it was done, this was so odd that I sus­pect peo­ple kept the TV there just to see what peo­ple might say about it or if there was any odd reac­tion.

3. The mem­o­rable lines:

Because East­wood bit was so odd, the mem­o­rable lines “Politi­cians are employ­ees of ours”, “When some­body does not do the job, you gotta let ‘em go.” stood out and will be remembered.

4. The lead-​in:

Those folks who stayed look­ing for East­wood reac­tions who nor­mally would have gone caught Marco Rubio, who hit it out of the park for Rom­ney and he gave a speech that would hold them.

5. The Comparison:

The Mitt Rom­ney speech con­trasted to the East­wood bit was a smash­ing success.

6. Draw­ing their fire:

Take a look at this image from Meme­o­ran­dum as of 8:31 AM

And here is the stuff on the Rom­ney speech same page:

What is Miss­ing? Attacks on Romney’s speech! Today was the day that the Democ­rats should be hit­ting Romney’s speech and try­ing to counter it a-​la Ryan. Instead the read­ers of the Morn­ing papers, Cable TV and the left blogs are read­ing attacks on East­wood. Clint East­wood is play­ing the same role as a hero in an old west­ern, draw­ing all the fire so the good guy could escape unharmed.

7. Pick­ing on an old man:

The left has been par­tic­u­larly strong hit­ting Clint East­wood, Here are three images from Twitchy

Not only is it not smart to hit an Amer­i­can Icon, what do you think the reac­tion of the elderly vot­ers who always show up will be to the “pick on the old guy” bit? I sus­pect it won’t play well at all.

For tall these rea­sons Clint East­wood appear­ance at the RNC made my day and I sus­pect it made the Rom­ney campaign’s day too.