FEW KUDOS FOR EASTWOOD AT RNC

The Republican National Convention may have had one of Hollywood’s biggest stars on its podium Thursday night prior to the appearance of its candidate for president, but even some of Mitt Romney’s most ardent supporters were questioning whether Clint Eastwood’s performance helped their candidate or hurt him. Joe Scarborough, the conservative MSNBC host, tweeted that “a great night for Mitt Comney just got sidetracked by Clint Eastwood. Wow. That was bad.” Republican political consultant Mike Murphy tweeted: “Note to file: Actors need a script.” In an ad-libbed performance that went on for nearly 12 minutes, Eastwood addressed an empty chair in which sat an invisible Barack Obama. “Mr. President, how do you handle promises that you have made when you were running for election, and how do you handle them?” Eastwood asked the chair at one point. At another: “We don’t have to be — what I’m saying, we do not have to be mental masochists and vote for somebody that we don’t really even want in office just because they seem to be nice guys — or maybe not so nice guys, if you look at some of the recent ads going out there, I don’t know.” It was, said veteran media reporter Howard Kurtz of TheDailyBeast and CNN’s Reliable Sources, “the weirdest convention moment I have ever seen.” And Lawrence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s The Last Word tweeted this last word at the end of the convention: “And so on this day, August 30, 2012, @Mitt Romney became a better actor than Clint Eastwood.”