Why I think Mitt got punked hard
First of all, Clint Eastwood must have sat down with the Republicans (who have been planning this convention since before Romney was even picked to be the nominee) and convinced them that:
1) He could give a good, rousing political speech;
2) He would be a good surprise to drum up excitement;
3) He was worth showing in prime time right before the most watched speech of the convention;
4) He didn't need to show them his speech beforehand;
5) He could speak without using the teleprompter;
6) His whole schtick would be speaking to an imaginary Obama in an empty chair;
7) He could go out there with his hair looking like a total mess (you know there's a small army of people in the back to make sure that the clothes, hair, and makeup are looking right); and
8) As a known Ron Paul supporter, he wouldn't use the speech to promote Ron Paul in any way, shape, or form.
Clint Eastwood is still acting in movies, and some of his greatest performances have been in the last few years. They only announced that there would even be a special guest two days ago, so Clint was clearly lucid this week. If the Republicans had believed that he was some senile, doddering old man who was likely to show up in full "Grandpa Simpson" mode, they never would have given him a spot, and certainly not a spot that half the country was likely to be watching on live television.
Secondly, there's the content of the speech.
There were the digs at Oprah, Biden, and Obama, but for what appeared on the surface to be a rambling mess, there were quite a few uncomfortable points made.
Romney is known for firing people, but there's also the underlying assumption in this statement that it's the role of government (and not private business) to create jobs. Clint said that the administration "hasn't done enough," implying that Obama should have been more aggressive with his policies. He capped it off with "I think possibly now it may be time for somebody else to come along," which is a stunningly tepid call for a change in leadership.
The Republicans built Gitmo; it was their idea. Romney has never (to my knowledge) said anything about closing Gitmo. The implication in this phrase is that almost all Republicans want to close Gitmo and it's an idea that a few Democrats have gone along with. Then Clint twisted the knife by saying that we'd spent a bucket of money on it--an overt dig at military spending.
What Clint said here is that being against the Iraq War is perfectly reasonable, and only a crazy person like Obama would support the war in Afghanistan. He made it sound like Romney was being the adult in the room in calling for a complete and immediate pullout. Again, this is about as far from mainstream Republican thinking as you can get.
Here Clint was saying that all lawyers are flip-floppers. Clint knows perfectly well that Romney has a law degree. Bush ran for office as a businessman, and nobody has forgotten that.
Romney mocked the President by saying that he was worried about climate change, and on the surface this sounds like the same dig, but it's not. Clint was saying that the President is worried about nonsense like, um, student loans. The official Republican platform calls for the end to federal student loans. This is a huge issue nationally, but not one that the republicans are exactly parading around.
We own the country? Politicians are our employees? They pander for votes every few years? I LIKE TO FIRE PEOPLE?
Saying outright that you don't have to vote for someone you don't like in front of a convention center full of people who are going to have to hold their noses in November is just the icing on the cake.
Finally, Clint must have known that going out there and talking like that would completely and utterly deflate the polished, competent, unified narrative that the Republicans were working so hard to create this week. What did Romney even say during his speech, other than mocking climate change? I saw the whole thing and that's all I remember. But Clint's speech... it's all over Twitter, it's spawned several different memes, and the spectacle of it was dominating DU last night and is still dominating DU today. It's going to go down in history along with Stockdale's "Who am I? Why am I here?" and Michael Dukakis in the tank as one of the greatest political blunders ever, and the beauty of it is that Clint Eastwood's not even the candidate.
As a pro-Mitt Romney speech, it was a complete and utter disaster. The only Romney policy that Clint seemed to represent accurately was the doctrine of American Exceptionalism.
As a stealth Ron Paul speech, though, it was brilliant.
Had Dirty Harry gotten up and made a Ron Paul speech, he would have been pilloried by the Republicans. But since Clint Eastwood, 82-year-old with "senile dementia," got up and made that speech, nobody can really attack anything he said without looking like they're attacking old people in general. I doubt the Romney campaign is even going to try to repudiate any of it, but we all heard what he said.
Clint couldn't have done a better job if he'd rolled onto the stage inside a giant wooden horse.
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http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-camp-refers-clint-eastwood-questions-salvador-dal%C3%AD-031705947--election.html
We may not be the only ones who noticed.
His daughter, Alison Eastwood, looks an awful lot like Sondra Locke but her mother is listed on the internet as someone else. Eastwood & Sondra Locke had a bitter break-up, if I remember correctly. When I first saw Alison in a Dirty Harry movie as a child, I immediately thought she was probably Sondra's daughter -- & Alison looks more & more like Sondra Locke as she ages.
how he mercifully ended his freak-show act with support for civility between Democrats & Republicans ("We're all great." . I wondered if Romney (or, perhaps, the entire convention) had gotten punked by Eastwood. The whole thing was just so bizarre.
you are onto something...if he wasn't deliberately ambiguous then he was totally nuts (which I doubt).
"Saying outright that you don't have to vote for someone you don't like in front of a convention center full of people who are going to have to hold their noses in November is just the icing on the cake." 
Some Rethug campaign managers are feeling badly hungover right now....
Yeah-- "The Invisible Man"-- they want to return to those days...
I didn't realize Clint was such a big Paul supporter, but when you know that, it all comes into perspective...
After reading and thinking about your post, I decided to take a stroll through one of the Ron Paul sites. I won't link to it since as you can imagine, the site was more than a little unpleasant.
However, many of the Paulites there seemed to be speculating about this possibility too.
Not sure if I'm totally 'there' on this theory, but you make a very compelling case. If indeed you are correct, it was a brilliant move on the part of Eastwood.
With a few exceptions, I never cared much for the types of movies that he acted in and/or directed, but that doesn't mean that I don't recognize talent when I see it. And as far as I can tell, he still seems to be as sharp as ever in that regard. This fact alone lends credence to the possibility that he did indeed 'punk' Romney/Ryan and the GOP big wigs in general.
Either way, it's good for us. Certainly didn't hurt anyway. 
