So with that, here is the full version of Reagan’s  impromptu speech at the 1976 Republican National Convention.

Most of you probably know the story of the 1976 convention and the animosity between the Reagan and Ford delegates. Ford barely held off Reagan to win the nomination. He needed to unite the party before the convention ended and invited Reagan to the podium to say a few words.

Neither Ford nor anyone else could have imagined that Reagan would step to the podium with no teleprompter and no notes  and electrify the crowd as no one else had.  It also left many of the delegates a bit sad and depressed, because once they heard Reagan’s speech, they all knew they had nominated the wrong man.

So while I am excited about the Romney-Ryan ticket and have enjoyed the convention speeches, looking back at the 1976 Reagan speech reminds me that leaders like Reagan come around maybe once in a lifetime. Like Paul Ryan I grew up with Ronald Reagan as president. I suppose that when one grows up with one of the greatest leaders in the history of the world as your president, expectations for future presidents will be unrealistically high.

I look forward to watching Paul Ryan for years to come. He can articulate the conservative argument like few others. Last night’s speech was a great speech, but I believe Ryan can do better. As he continues to hone his message, I suspect that sometime in the future conservatives will reminisce and  long for the days of Paul Ryan giving great convention speeches in much the same way we long for Reagan today. In Paul Ryan we might just be watching the development of one of those great leaders who come around once in a lifetime.

Unfortunately, Romney used the word “legislation” instead of the word “plan” or “report” when talking about Wyden’s cooperation with Ryan. Wyden shot back that he never introduced legislation with Ryan and that he only co-authored a report with Ryan. Soledad O’Brien and other main-stream media have picked up on this to minimize Wyden’s involvement with Ryan.

But none of this minimizes the fact that Wyden and Ryan have together proposed  reforming Medicare much along the lines of Ryan’s original plan. In fact, if you want to see what Senator Wyden actually thought of the plan he co-authored with Ryan you can find it here in a press release issues by Ron Wyden’s senate office. – Wyden-Ryan Plan Press Release.

Wyden has for some time been trying to forge compromises when it comes to health care reform and Medicare reform. Before Obamacare was passed into law, Wyden attempted to forge a compromise of moderate senators from both parties. The compromise would have included the indivudual mandate that the Democrats wanted and various free-market reforms that the Republicans wanted. Senator Wyden is one of the few Democrats who think that allowing free-market forces to work in the health care system is a good thing.

At the time Wyden took some heat from the liberal faction of his party and his ideas eventually lost out to Obamacare. So the Wyden-Ryan Plan was not Sentaor Wyden’s first attempt at forging a bipartisan coalition to reform the health care system. In these attempts to forge a compromise and to reach out across the isle, Senator Wyden shows us what is lacking in today’s politics – statesmanship.

It takes statesmanship to forge compromises with the other party to save an entitlement program such as Medicare. Both Ron Wyden and Paul Ryan have shown the type of statesmanship this country needs. And they remind us that it is statesmanship that is lacking in the President of the United States.

So for now Ron Wyden has to take cover so his political career is not destroyed by the far left in his party. But if the Romney-Ryan ticket is successful this November, look for Romney and Ryan to reach out to Wyden and a handful of moderate Democrats to protect Medicare for current seniors and save it for generations to come.

If we don’t know where Syria got the chemical weapons, perhaps a very short addendum to the DCI Special Advisor Report on Iraq’s WMD will provide us a clue.  As you may recall the original report published in September of 2004 generally concluded that there were no WMD’s in Iraq and that, if anything remained, it was extremely old and not a threat to the United States. (View the full report here.)

Democrats and anti-war advocates everywhere held up the report as evidence that the real evil we faced was the the lying George W. Bush and his administration. Calls for the president’s impeachment grew louder among the antiwar left, and the mainstream media covered every pathetic moment of it, including Cindy Sheehan setting up camp outside of the president’s ranch in Texas. The MSM’s appetite for this drivel was insatiable and the DCI Special Advisor Report gave their stories the legitimacy they were looking for.

However, in March of 2005 a short addendum to the report was added stating that there was evidence to suggest that WMD had been transferred from Iraq to Syria. The report stated that lack of security did not allow a more detailed investigation. (See addendum here.)

Then in 2006, Georges Sada, a high ranking Iraqi Air Force Genereal detailed in his book, “Sadam’s Secrets”, the transfer of WMD’s from Iraq to Syria with help from the Russians under the disguise of flood relief. (More details in this IBD article.)

Now as the Assad regime is about to fall, it let’s the world know that it will unleash chemical weapons against any foreign attack. We also see Russia providing arms to Syria while at the same time blocking action by the U.N. Security Council to stop the bloodshed in Syria.

Given all these facts, normal people would begin to connect the dots and start asking more questions and doing further investigation. But the main stream media appears to lack any sort of curiosity that a normal person might have. They do not ask the question “Where did Syria get it’s WMD’s?”

The MSM is acting very much like Warden Norton in “The Shawshank Redemption”. Near the end of the movie Andy Dufresne tells the warden that a fellow inmate has information that could prove Andy’s innocence. When the warden says that it is unlikely that they could corroborate the other inmate’s story, Andy asks “How can you be so obtuse?” Warden Norton, clearly angered, asks Andy what he called him. Andy replies “Obtuse! Is it deliberate?”

Andy quickly finds himself locked in solitary for a month while the warden resorts to murdering the inmate with the evidence that could set Andy free. Warden Norton does all this to keep Andy in prison so that Andy can continue to help the warden launder money made from putting the prisoners to work.

Which brings us back to the mainstream media. They are heavily invested in the story that George Bush lied to get us into the Iraq war, that there were no WMD’s, that there really was no threat to America from Saddam Hussein. The mainstream media has been selling us this story for years. They used it to help elect Barrack Obama. Nothing must be allowed to change this story.

And so questions do not get asked.

Evidence is not investigated.

History remains as the mainstream media has written it.

And discovering the truth matters not at all.

Which leaves us all asking the mainstream media, “How can you be so obtuse?” Of course, we know the answer to this question. And yes, their obtuseness, it is deliberate.

The Obama campaign is determined to do whatever it takes to get the unemployment rate below 8%. The President believes that if he can get unemployment below that magic number, then he can convince the American people that they should re-elect him for another four years.

Obama just has one problem, none of his ideas have created jobs, and he has no other ideas other than to do more of the same. So he cannot reduce the unemployment rate by creating jobs. That only leaves one other option – convince more Americans to stop looking for work.

Obama can reduce the unemployment rate if he can get more and more Americans to give up and leave the work force. The unemployment rate only counts Americans actually looking for work. Every week we see the numbers showing more and more Americans giving up hope leaving the workforce.

Obama and his administration only seem to encourage this exodus from the work force. Obama’s rhetoric has been uninspiring at best and demoralizing at worst. Instead of lifting the spirits of the American people, he has been appealing to jealousy and fear.

If you are poor or out of work, it must be because some rich guy isn’t paying his fair share of taxes. If you had big dreams, it is time to lower your expectations and get used to the new normal. This is the message from a president who offered hope and change.

This is the message of hopelessness the president offers. And it’s working.  In spite of a jobless recovery, we see the unemployment rate slowly tick down as more and more people give up hope and stop looking for work. And if more Americans give up hope, it will soon tick below 8%.

We should expect the president’s accomplices in the main-stream media to herald the day when the unemployment rate drops below 8%. With great fanfare President Obama will announce to the nation that he kept his promise and that we are moving forward.

All this should make Mitt Romney’s road to the White House a bit easier. He simply has to remind the American people of their true greatness and what they are capable of. Instead of giving up on their hopes and dreams, Romney will remind the American people they only need to give up on one thing – Barack Obama.

Even though most Americans may not have been paying attention to the primary campaign, the media was. And it is the media who is not buying the Obama attack ads against Romney’s work at Bain. Just the other day Ashley Banfield of CNN called out Ben LaBolt of the Obama campaign for the lies and distortions in the Obama attack ad.(See video at RealClearPolitics.com)

Without the primary attack ads from Gingrich and Santorum, Romney would right now be explaining to the main-stream media why the Obama attack ads are false and misleading. But the press already knows why the ads are false and misleading. They saw this playbook in the primaries.

If the Obama campaign is going to attack Romney, they will need new material. At least that way, the ads would be on the airwaves for a few days and have done damage to Romney before getting labeled as false and misleading. And, no, using main-stream media stories dug up from Romney’s high school days does not count as new material that can be used against him. The American people would just see that as pathetic and desperate.

Right now it appears as though these ads are not working. Instead, by inference, they also call attention to Romney’s successes at Bain. The real proof, however, will be the upcoming round of polls over the next two to three weeks. If these attack ads do little to dent Romney’s poll numbers then he can thank Gingrich and Santorum for giving him a coat of Teflon for the upcoming general election.

Sometimes polls just get it wrong. We usually look at a series of polls to get the overall trend and then throw out the outliers. This poll might just be an outlier. But if it is not, then why are women going for Romney? One possible answer might be a twist in an old theory as to why women tend to vote more Democratic.

Women historically have had to rely on men to support them and their children. Before the dawn of the modern government safety net, having a child out of wedlock meant economic devastation for most women. The theory is that when women finally got the right to vote, they tended to vote for politicians promising to protect them with a government safety net. As this safety net has grown over time, women rely less and less upon men to support them.

But even  if this theory is correct, why would women suddenly support Romney over Obama – a president who clearly believes in a much bigger government safety net? While women want government to take on some of the roles of men, they certainly don’t want to be entangled with any government or man that is going to bankrupt them or their children. No woman wants a man who spends their money wildly on crazy get-rich-quick schemes and things they cannot afford, thereby plunging the entire family into bankruptcy. But women may very well see their replacement for men, the government, doing just that.

Women see President Obama promising that we can spend our way to prosperity. They have seen billions and trillions of dollars spent, yet none of the prosperity promised by the president has come to pass. Instead women see Obama piling up debt on a credit card that he has taken out in their children’s names. And they have had enough.

So if most women now view the government much like a man running his family into the poor house, then it is no wonder that they would be turning away from Obama. The economy is the number one issue for women. Yes, they may want a safety net, but not at the price of bankrupting themselves and their children.

So while Obama runs the country into the poor house, up steps Romney with a record of getting results and getting the job done. Which one will women vote for? As of right now, it’s Romney.

But we have to remember that these polls are all polls of registered voters, not likely voters. It is the likely voters that matter. If we were to look at the likely voters, then the latest Quinniapic poll would probably swing at least a couple percentage points to Romney. It would be more like Obama  47% – Romney 41%.

Then we need to look at the undecided voters. Dick Morris has discussed at length the fact that in the last eight presidential elections, except 2004, almost all the undecided votes go to the challenger. If that is the case then Romney would be winning 51% to 49% among registered voters and 53% to 47% among likely voters.

So this Quinnipiac poll really suggests that Romney may have a substantial lead in New Jersey. But there is another reason to think that Romney might be well ahead in the Garden State. The Quinnipiac poll consisted of 34% Democrats and 24% Republicans – a nine point advantage for Democrats. Since New Jersey often votes Democrat, it is safe to assume that there will be more Democrats than Republicans. But if the poll has exaggerated that number at all – even by one percentage point  – then Romney would have an even larger lead.

So, is Romney winning New Jersey? If the undecided voters hold true to form and vote for the challenger, then yes Romney is winning. Either way, New Jersey is definitely now in play.