Eastwood’s ’empty chair’ speech just gets more and more weird

Clint Eastwood’s bizarre “empty chair speech” at last year’s Republican
National Convention just becomes more and more strange as the details come out.

The incident also demonstrates amply how the Republican fringe is so out of
step with reality that they’ve lost touch with what it takes to win national elections.

According to the new book on the 2012 election, Double Down: Game Change
2012 by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, one of Romney’s top advisors,
Stuart Stevens, was so distraught with Eastwood’s unplanned shenanigans that he
vomited backstage when the performance was over.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of this story is that Eastwood had no speech
planned in advance of his surprise appearance at the convention. His motivation
for the chair routine, in which he pretended to talk disparagingly to an
invisible President Obama, was a Neil Diamond song.

The tune was “I Am, I Said,” which includes these lyrics: “I am, I
said, to no one there. And no one heard at all, not even the chair.”

Eastwood had already balked at delivering a standard convention speech and he heard
the song playing in his hotel room before taking the stage.

These two campaign tidbits were previously reported by Dan Balz of The
Washington Post and Becky Quick of CNBC, respectively, but the latest
installment form Halperin and Heilemann has Washington abuzz.

Beyond the comic aspects, what’s interesting is that Eastwood’s anti-Obama
ramblings played well inside the convention hall, and with hardcore Republicans
watching on TV, and it was celebrated for days afterward on right-wing
talk-radio. The Obama-haters were in heaven.

But the grown-ups in the GOP knew that the Romney campaign had just gone to
hell. Viewers and commentators were baffled by Eastwood’s shtick. The former
big-screen tough guy became the butt of jokes by late-night TV comics.