GOP delegates want tough talk, yearn to party like 1980, when Democrat was ousted after 1 term

 Republicans heading to their party convention are eager to hear an earful about the shortcomings of President Barack Obama’s record, the woeful U.S.

economy and the competing visions of the two presidential candidates. What they aren’t looking for is any mention of compromise, which most Americans say is

necessary to get the nation back on track.

The Republicans want a party like in 1980, when the GOP ousted a Democratic president after one term.


Delegates from around the country have big dreams for the Aug. 27-30 gathering in Tampa, Fla., where Mitt Romney will accept the party’s nomination and

Republicans will kick off their final push to defeat Obama. They sketched out a sharp message they want to hear from speaker after speaker — onetime White

House hopefuls, GOP governors, congressional leaders and the party’s top recruits angling to win a job in Washington.

Conventions are four-day slugfests directed at the opposing party and its candidate. The rhetoric is brutal, vitriolic and far from conciliatory. Some lines

are memorable.

“Poor George, he can’t help it — he was born with a silver foot in his mouth,” quipped Texas state treasurer Ann Richards to laughs and applause at the

Democratic National Convention in Atlanta in 1988. Her target was the well-heeled GOP nominee, Vice President George H.W. Bush.

Twenty years later, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accepted the Republican vice presidential nomination at the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn., and compared her

mayoral experience in Wasilla, Alaska, to that of nominee Obama.

“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities,” she said.

The crowd roared.

Ed Cox, the chairman of the Republican Party in New York, wants speakers at the convention to echo the message that Romney delivered after he won the

Wisconsin primary in April. Romney cast the election as a choice between what he called Obama’s “government-centered society” and the “opportunity

society” the former businessman said he would pursue as president.

“This is the crux of our message, that we are for an opportunity society of free people and free enterprise,” Cox said in an interview with The Associated

Press. “America has always been about people having dreams, going out and working to make them. To do that they don’t want the heavy hand of government on

top of them, whether it’s in taxes or regulations.”

The Obama administration in its first year “ignored what they were elected to do, which was to pay attention to jobs and the economy,” said Cox, who has

seen his share of conventions as the son-in-law of President Richard M. Nixon.

Jim McErlane, a lawyer from Chester County, Pa., said convention speakers should keep it simple.

“The economy, the economy, the economy,” he said in an interview. “Jobs, jobs, jobs.”

Shawn Steel, a lawyer from Palos Verdes, Calif., wants the convention to remind Americans of 1980, when Ronald Reagan accepted the nomination in Detroit and

then scored a landslide victory that knocked out President Jimmy Carter and helped Republicans seize control of the Senate.