by Mitt Romney spoke before the NRA Annual Meeting Leadership Forum yesterday. It wasn’t a great speech; it wasn’t a bad speech. It seemed like it was a variation on his basic stump speech with maybe a few additions for the NRA audience. I would say the overall reception was polite if not enthusiastic.
The theme of Romney’s speech was freedom which seems to be what we’ve heard before in his speeches. He spoke about freedom in terms of religion, economics, and limited government. With regard to the NRA, he noted that they were a single issue group. He that they should get “high praise (for being a single interest group) when the issue is freedom.” He used this line as the intro into the rest of his speech on freedom.
In what I consider the variations tailored towards the NRA, he acknowledged the role that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in pursuing Operation Fast and Furious. He then acknowledged the NRA for saying that Attorney General Eric Holder should be fired. Both statements brought good applause. He then said “I will protect the Second Amendment rights of the American people” which brought a lot of applause.
In general, I’d say Romney did OK but could have had a speech more tailored to his audience with more memorable nuggets. Overall, it was what it was. The speech won’t come back to haunt him with the Obama campaign using snippets of it in its ads. However, the speech can’t be accused of being a rousing stump speech to rally the masses either.
Thirdpower at Days of our Trailers blog did capture some of the misleading tweets from the Brady Campaign and CSGV during the Leadership Forum. You can read them here.
You can see the speech for yourself below:
