The Romney campaign is defending Clint Eastwood’s Thursday night’s baffling endorsement of the one-time Massachusetts governor at the Republican National Convention, insisting that the actor “spoke from the heart with a classic improv sketch which everyone at the convention loved.” Eastwood has been widely criticized for talking to an empty chair with an “invisible Obama,” during his 10 minute address. (Watch ThinkProgress’ highlight reel here.)

“[It was] an honor that a great American icon would come and talk about the failure of the current president and the promise of the future one,” senior aide Stuart Stevens, one of two advisers to clear Eastwood’s appearance, insisted to the New York Times. On Friday morning, Romney’s wife Ann also came to the actor’s defense, telling CBS, “He’s a unique guy and he did a unique thing last night.”

The effort to justify Eastwood’s rantings did not stop there. During an appearance on MSNBC, Romney adviser Tara Wall even sought to connect the actor’s critique to the campaign’s official message, explaining that the empty chair that was supposed to seat Obama symbolized the president’s failed policies:

WALL: The chair emphasized, I think what many Americans are asking themselves four years later, where is President Obama relative to his promises made and promises not kept. So I think that that was pretty descriptive of the fact that president Obama four years ago said we would be at 6 percent unemployment if we enacted what he believed were his policies that would work.

Watch it:

The Romney campaign provided Eastwood with talking points, but did not equip him with prepared remarks. “They simply turned the podium over to an iconic superstar and expected him to stand and deliver.”

Our guest blogger is Jack Jenkins, researcher for the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress.

Vice Presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan might have appealed to religion during his speech at the Republican National Convention last night, but it’s unclear whether a Romney-Ryan presidency would help or hurt faith-based charities and churches.

Ryan, a Catholic, spoke to the convention delegates about the common “moral creed” shared himself and Romney’s Mormon faith. Ryan appeared to echo Jesus’ Biblical call to take care of “the least of these,” saying, “And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak. The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.”

But if you peel back the rhetoric, would a Romney-Ryan presidency really help churches and faith groups “protect the weak”?

Ryan has said local charities and churches should provide for needy communities instead of the federal government. But there is a flaw this plan: churches and faith-based charities, which offer roughly $50 billion worth of services a year to the poor and needy, often depend on government funds to operate. Catholic Charities, for example, is one of the largest charities in America, and gets over half of its operating budget from federal funds.

Yet the Romney/Ryan ticket appears undeterred by this reality. In fact, if Romney followed through on Ryan’s proposed budget and cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $169 billion, every single church in America would have to come up with an additional $50,000 simply to feed those in need. For many cash-strapped churches, this is an impossible task.

What’s more, the Romney/Ryan budget would likely overburden soup kitchens and food programs by cutting welfare, food stamps and agriculture subsidies by two trillion dollars over the next ten years. These cuts would leave millions of Americans – especially those most in need of assistance – without the means to feed and clothe themselves, and already-overburdened faith-based charities unable to provide for them.

So if congregations and charities can’t provide the care required and Ryan’s government refuses to help, who exactly is the “strong” tasked with stepping in for the “weak”? Ryan isn’t saying.

Ryan and other conservative commentators like Gov. Mike Huckabee talk a lot about how they believe faith is under attack in America. But if Ryan truly believes a society is best judged by “how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves,” then perhaps he should take a second look at how his own policy proposals negatively affect those doing the hard work of caring for the poor — churches and faith-based charities.

Mitt Romney is focused on convincing Americans that his private-sector business record qualifies him to be President, which is perhaps why he accidentally called the United States of America a “company” instead of a “country” on Friday.

While Romney has spoken extensively about running the government more efficiently, like a private business, he has never compared the entire American enterprise to an actual business enterprise. But today, at an event in Florida, Romney did just that, saying his administration will reach out to people who “want to make sure this company deals with its challenges”:

Paul Ryan and I understand how the economy works, we understand how Washington works, we will reach across the aisle and find good people who like us, want to make sure this company deals with its challenges. We’ll get America on track again.

Watch it:

The goal of a company is to make money, whereas the goal of a government is to provide services that are not achievable in the private sector. Romney’s belief that the government is similar to a company explains his dedication to cutting programs that he perceives are “inefficient” because they cost money, even if they effectively help American citizens.

Mitt Romney, who did not mention immigration issues during Thursday night’s nationally televised address, was heckled on Friday by DREAM Act activists during his “Farewell Victory Rally” in Lakeland Florida. “DREAM Act for fully equality,” they chanted, as Romney introduced his campaign’s officials and the crowd responded with, “USA! USA! USA!.” Watch it:

During the GOP presidential primary, Romney said he would have vetoed the measure. In one Florida debate, he also accused Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) of engendering a “magnet” in Texas by allowing the children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition.

On Friday, Fox & Friends asked Ann Romney if it was difficult for the couple to turn down a $30 million job offer after Mitt lost the 2008 presidential nomination. Ann, who has been trying to help her husband connect with middle class voters, replied that such job opportunities are commonplace for the former governor and CEO:

BRIAN KILMEADE (HOST): The report is after Mitt Romney lost to John McCain for the nomination, he got an offer from a fund, $30 million a year, go back into the financial world, have all types of success. How hard was the decision not to do that?

ROMNEY: Well, we’re used to kind of passing offers up like that. For us, our life is not about making money. We’ve been very blessed financially. Our life is now about giving back. I always trust that Mitt can always make another dollar. Poor guy, he took no pay when he did the Olympics for three years and no pay when he was governor for four years.

Watch it:

Though she’s acknowledged they have been “blessed financially,” Romney has been working hard this week to prove the couple’s empathy with middle class families. In her convention speech, Romney included herself among the nation’s struggling moms, declaring “We don’t want easy,” but lamented “that price at the pump you just can’t believe, the grocery bills that just get bigger; all those things that used to be free, like school sports, are now one more bill to pay.” In both her convention speech and on Fox and Friends Friday morning, she emphasized the couple’s poorer days in college, when they lived in a basement and “ate a lot of pasta and tuna fish.”

But the Romneys have had trouble selling this story to the public, often making casual remarks that bely their lack of common ground with middle class voters. In past interviews, Ann has explained they got through these hard student days by selling off a little of Mitt’s stock, a birthday president from his father, former Governor George Romney, after he took over American Motors.

Here are a few other ways Ann has addressed the couple’s wealth:

• “I don’t even consider myself wealthy, which is an interesting thing.” [Fox News, 3/5/12]
• “Remember, we’d been paying $62 a month rent, but here, rents were $ 400, and for a dump. This is when we took the now-famous loan that Mitt talks about from his father and bought a $42,000 home in Belmont, and you know? The mortgage payment was less than rent.” [Boston Globe, 10/20/94]
• “I love the fact that there are women out there who don’t have a choice and they must go to work and they still have to raise the kids.” [Prescott Bush Awards Dinner, 4/24/12]
• “We’ve given all you people need to know and understand about our financial situation and how we live our life.” [ABC News, 7/19/12]

During a trip to Epcot at Disneyworld, Pennsylvania delegate Mark Harris and his wife were shocked and offended to find a Mexican employee working at the amusement park’s American pavilion, which showcases the different cultures in the United States. According to the couple’s blog, Harris complained to staff that he was “highly offended” that a “person from Mexico” was working in the American pavilion when other nations’ pavilions were staffed by people from each respective country:

The local GOP in Snyder County, Pennsylvania has rushed to disavow Harris’ overtly racist comments. County Commissioner Malcolm Derk told The Daily Item, “Americans are people of any race, color or heritage. Cheers to the individual working at Epcot for showing what a true American looks like.”

According to their website, “Mark and Irene are both pro‐life, believe marriage is between one man and one woman, are for open records and transparency, believe in very conservative principles and the Republican platform.”

The RNC has been marred by racist incidents this week; on Tuesday, two delegates had to be escorted out after throwing peanuts at a black camerawoman and called her an “animal.” Harris told the AP at the beginning of the convention that he liked how Romney was “hitting all the conservative bells” and “has the potential to be a great president if he keeps going in that direction.”

As it turns out, Clint Eastwood was the mystery speaker tonight at the Republican National Convention. In a strange interlude that was part speech and part comedy bit, the always gruff Eastwood argued with a theoretical Obama purportedly seated in an empty chair, made some off-color jokes, almost forgot to praise Mitt Romney, and finally lead the audience in a repetition of his signature line from the “Dirty Harry” films.

As Jamelle Bouie put it on Twitter, “This is a perfect representation of the campaign: an old white man arguing with an imaginary Barack Obama.” ThinkProgress has the highlight reel. Watch it:

You can read the full transcript HERE.

A black camerawoman for CNN is speaking out after she was assaulted at the Republican National Convention when two attendees began throwing nuts at her, saying “This is what we feed animals.”

Patricia Carroll is not interested in rehashing the incident, but she did offer some thoughts to the Maryland Institute. “This situation could happen to me at the Democratic convention or standing on the street corner. Racism is a global issue,” she said:

Carroll, 34, said that as an Alabama native, she was not surprised. “This is Florida, and I’m from the Deep South,” she said. “You come to places like this, you can count the black people on your hand. They see us doing things they don’t think I should do.”

Carroll noted of the Republican convention, “There are not that many black women there.”[...]

“I can’t change these people’s hearts and minds,” Carroll added. “No, it doesn’t feel good. But I know who I am. I’m a proud black woman. A lot of black people are upset. This should be a wake-up call to black people. . . . People were living in euphoria for a while. People think we’re gone further than we have.”

Caroll’s assessment that “you can count the black people on your hand” isn’t far off; only 2 percent of delegates at the RNC are African-American. When the Democratic Convention begins, an estimated 26 percent of the delegates will be black.

Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) speech to the Republican National Convention last night was chock-full of bald-faced lies. For example, Ryan blamed the Obama for S&P’s downgrade of our credit rating (despite the fact that S&P blamed GOP policies) and blasted Obama for failing to heed the Bowles-Simpson debt commission (which Ryan torpedoed). Yet political reporters covering the speech have, in many cases, been curiously reticent to call Ryan’s lies what they are. Here’s a list, in no particular order, of the euphemisms used in place of “lie” to describe Ryan’s falsehoods:

1. “Factual shortcuts.” — Jack Gillum and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Associated Press. Even in some pieces ostensibly devoted to fact-checking Ryan’s speech, like this Associated Press item, reporters shy away from the term “lie.”

2. “Factually challenged” – John Berman, CNN. The word lie was later used on air to describe Ryan’s speech, but by The Daily Caller’s Will Cain, who was defending Ryan against the charge.

3. “Inaccuracies” — Donovan Slack, Politico. In what’s essentially a he-said-she-said post about the Obama campaign’s reactions to Ryan’s lies, Slack refers to the speech as “otherwise well-reviewed” despite the avalanche of criticism Ryan received for the speech’s tenuous relationship with the truth.

4. “Mr. Ryan ran headlong into the fire” — Jim Rutenberg, The New York Times. The Times’ write-up of the speech fails to call out any of the lies in Ryan’s speech, focusing instead on how the speech would play politically — an issue which is in part determined by how the press chooses to cover the speech.

5. “He is viewed as a truth teller.” — Howard Kurtz, Newsweek/The Daily Beast. Kurtz chooses to repeat this supposed perception of Ryan without addressing the question of whether the content of the speech is, in fact, truthful.

6. ” Paul Ryan stretched some truths Wednesday night…according to the fact checkers” — Mark Memmott NPR. In an otherwise admirable piece critiquing Ryan’s speech, Memmott uses both a the “stretched the truth” euphemism and frames the issue as a debate between fact-checkers and Ryan. The Romney campaign dismisses factcheckers, having said “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”

7. “Questionable claims.” — Carol Costello, CNN. Costello goes on to say that Ryan’s claims about a GM plant in his hometown were rated by CNN factcheckers as “true but incomplete.”

8. “It’s keeping fact-checkers busy…[the Obama campaign] is trying to call attention to perceived inaccuracies in Ryan’s speech” — Chuck Todd, MSNBC. Indeed.

As the GOP concludes its convention in Tampa, Florida this week, ThinkProgress continues keep you updated on everything you need to know about the featured speakers.

We’ll live blog the festivities tonight starting at 7:00 PM. Here is a rundown of Thursday’s luminaries:

Callista and Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich spent most of the past two years savaging Mitt Romney in the primary campaign. Many of his attacks focused on Romney’s record at Bain Capital — labeling them “rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job.” He called out Romney for his false claim of creating 100,000 jobs and said he would listen to Romney only if he’d “give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees.” When Romney acknowledged that he was not concerned about the very poor, Gingrich slammed him, saying the Founding Fathers wanted equal opportunity for the poor. When asked about Romney’s immigration policy views, Gingrich noted that one must “live in a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and making $20 million for no work, to have some fantasy this far from reality.” Even after endorsing Romney, Gingrich continued to characterize the Republican nominee as a liar. The emnity was clearly mutual — throughout the campaign, Romney labeled Gingrich as an unregistered lobbyist for Freddie Mac, “at a time that Freddie Mac was not doing the right thing for the American people,” and said he “had to resign in disgrace” from Congress.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL)

While his brother, former President George W. Bush, has largely avoided the political scene entirely since leaving office, the former Florida Gov. has emerged as something of a thorn in his party’s side in recent months. He has called the GOP’s immigration and tax policies –- which Mitt Romney has firmly embraced –- “short-sighted.” Bush recently criticized his party’s increasing intolerance of diversity of opinion, noting that “Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad [former President George H.W. Bush] — they would have a hard time if you define the Republican party — and I don’t — as having an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement, doesn’t allow for finding some common ground.” While Romney embraced Grover Norquist’s no new taxes under any circumstances ever pledge, Bush said “I don’t believe you outsource your principles and convictions to people.” Norquist called that comment an “insult” to Romney.

Grant Bennett

Bennett, who succeeded Romney as a bishop of a Mormon meetinghouse, was likely selected to speak on Romney’s faith. Nevertheless, Bennett’s presence on the speaker list undermines the convention’s “We Built This” message that successful businesspeople achieved that success without help from the government. Bennett is the president of CPS Technologies, a company that’s received millions of dollars worth of government funds.

Former Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey (R-FL)

When Romney opted not to seek re-election in 2006, he backed his handpicked Lt. Governor Healey to replace him as Governor. With Romney’s approval ratings in the low 30s, Healey garnered just 35 percent of the vote. During her campaign, she criticizing Romney for not doing enough to help small business, saying “I think the emphasis when the governor came into office was very much on `How do we go outside of Massachusetts and bring jobs in?’ My orientation is very different.” While many of her views matched the ones Romney espoused during the 2002 campaign, her support for civil unions, abortion rights, public funding for renewable energy, public lands, and comprehensive sex education do not mesh with Romney’s new “severely conservative” stances.

Staples Co-Founder Thomas Stemberg

Thomas Stemberg (left) was the co-founder of Staples along with Leo Kahn (right). During Romney’s tenure as CEO at Bain, the private equity form invested heavily in Staples, and the chain’s history is frequently held-up as evidence of Romney’s job reaction cred. Unfortunately for that cred, creative destruction is a sword that cuts both ways: From 1990 to 2012, jobs in the “Office Supplies and Stationary Stores” retail field actually declined by 13.5 percent even as Staples and the economy as a whole were adding jobs. Worse, the growth in the average weekly earnings of employees in this field failed to keep up with the growth in inflation. In other words, Staples was part of a business model that reduced jobs and drove down real wages in its field, even while reaping millions in profits for Bain’s investors. As for Stemberg himself, his other claim to fame was complaining earlier this year that President Obama’s health care reform hurts jobs by requiring businesses to provide new mothers with reasonable break time and a private area in which to breastfeed while on the clock.

Rep. Connie Mack IV (R-FL)

As he continues to change his mind, Mack has not yet decided what he thinks about Paul Ryan’s budget plan that would end Medicare as we know it. First he said he would vote for the extreme budget plan, then skipped the vote on it before calling it a “joke.” Now, he says he has not always backed the Ryan plan, and he is pushing his own “penny plan” that he claims will balance the budget sooner. And Mitt Romney’s immigration policies would use SB 1070 — Arizona’s harmful immigration law — as a national model, but Mack condemned the measure as “reminiscent of a time during World War II when the Gestapo in Germany stopped people on the street and asked for their papers without probable cause.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) floated the idea of proposing a GOP alternative to the DREAM Act, but after President Obama announced a new deportation directive to grant deferred action to DREAM Act-eligible young adults, Rubio complained that Congress will not be able to pass a legislative version of the President’s immigration directive because the “sense of urgency has been taken away” — even though the policy is only temporary. And while Mitt Romney has staked out far-right immigration stances in favor of harmful self-deportation measures, Rubio has said that “it feels kind of weird” to deport undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. And in his memoir released in June, Rubio wrote that he would immigrate illegally “if my kids went to sleep hungry every night.” His comparatively moderate immigration positions put Rubio at odds with other anti-immigrant officials who are Romney advisers and supporters.

Bain Capital Managing Director Bob White

Bob White is a former partner of Bain Capital and Romney adviser who led his 1994 Senate campaign, headed Romney’s transition team as Massachusetts governor, and chaired both of his presidential campaigns. It was White who encouraged Romney to not release his tax returns, saying that “you never release something that’s five hundred pages long or more till you understand it,” according to The New Republic.

Vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is taking flack on the morning news shows for his keynote address at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night. His speech was riddled with false claims, so much so that even Fox News wrote, “To anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.”

Here are the most glaring lies from his speech:

1. “A downgraded America.” Ryan blamed the president for the nation’s credit downgrade in August 2011 after Republicans threatened to allow the government to default on its debt for the first time in history. But the ratings agency explicitly blamed “Republicans saying that they refuse to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal.”

2. “More debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined.” Romney has made the almost identical claim, that Obama has amassed more debt “as almost all of the other presidents combined.” But their math doesn’t add up: when Obama took office, the national debt was $10.626 trillion. It has increased to slightly above $15 trillion.

3. Shuttered General Motors plant is “one more broken promise.” Ryan described a GM plant that closed down in his hometown, Janesville, Wisconsin, and blamed Obama for breaking his promise to keep the plant open when he visited during his campaign. But Obama never made that promise, and the plant shut down in December 2008, before Obama even took office.

4. Obama “did exactly nothing” on Bowles-Simpson. Ryan said, “He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.” In fact, Ryan was instrumental in sabotaging the commission, leading the other House Republicans in voting against the plan.

5. “$716 billion, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.” Ryan’s favorite lie is a deliberate distortion of Obamacare’s savings from eliminating inefficiencies. Furthermore, Ryan’s own plan for Medicare includes these savings. Romney has vowed to restore these cuts, which would render the trust fund insolvent 8 years ahead of schedule.

6. “The greatest of all responsibilities is that of the strong to protect the weak.” Ryan closed the speech with an invocation of social responsibility, saying, “The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.” However, numerous clergy members have condemned Ryan’s budget plan as “cruel,” and “an immoral disaster” because of its devastating cuts in social programs the poor and sick rely on. Meanwhile, Ryan would give ultra-rich individuals and corporations $3 trillion in tax breaks.

In his speech at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tried to cast doubt about President Barack Obama’s faith, hinting that he might be lying or misleading Americans about his religion.

Huckabee labeled President Obama a “self-professed evangelical” — an assertion that is, first and foremost, incorrect, but one that nevertheless seems imply that Obama’s profession is different than the truth. The line that was not off-the-cuff, but in his prepared remarks:

Let me clear the air about whether guys like me would only support an evangelical. Of the four people on the two tickets, the only self-professed evangelical is Barack Obama, and he supports changing the definition of marriage, believes that human life is disposable and expendable at any time in the womb or even beyond the womb, and tells people of faith that they must bow their knees to the god of government and violate their faith and conscience in order to comply with what he calls health care.

Watch it:

Claims that Obama is a Muslim are one of the baseless tactics (much like saying he is not a U.S. citizen) that far-right conservatives use to try to discredit and delegitimize Obama’s presidency.

Fresh off her convention speech Tuesday night, Ann Romney spent Wednesday wooing two of the GOP’s toughest audiences: women and Hispanic voters. At a lunch event Wednesday, Romney explained why Hispanic voters should vote for her husband. Pitching herself as “the daughter of immigrants,” Romney (who is the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner) urged Latinos to get past “some of their biases” and come to their senses:

You’d better really look at your future and figure out who’s going to be the guy that’s going to make it better for you and your children, and there is only one answer… It really is a message that would resonate well if they could just get past some of their biases that have been there from the Democratic machines that have made us look like we don’t care about this community. And that is not true. We very much care about you and your families and the opportunities that are there for you and your families.

Hispanic voters have so far remained skeptical of Mitt Romney and the Republican Party, who stood out as the most anti-immigrant candidate during the Republican primary and touted a plan to make undocumented immigrants so uncomfortable that they would “self-deport.” He has also promised to veto the DREAM Act that would give young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children a path to citizenship. Ann’s accusation of Democratic manipulation echoes comments made by Arizona governor Jan Brewer (R) earlier in the day, when she claimed Obama was “race-baiting” and pandering to Latinos.

Ann also offered a recent trip to Puerto Rico as evidence of her ties to the Latino community: “I had the most rocking time in Puerto Rico at a political rally than I’ve ever had in my entire life. You people really know how to party. It was crazy!”