Video: Reichert's Convention Address (Including His Clinton Joke)

TVW has added the ability to embed their videos and indicate a start point and end point for playback. They still have some improvements that I think they should make (no easy replay button for the chosen segment for instance), but it is a start.

So it provides me with opportunity to point people to Dave Reichert's 12 minute address at the Washington State Republican Party Convention last month:

The infamous joke is at the 25 minute mark (about 1 minute into the selected segment).

Reichert then asks, "What does 'change' mean? 'Change' is [the Democrat's] theme: we're going to change the greatest nation in the world?" Then he questions the Republicans' version, "Change that you deserve. What does that mean?"

Instead he chose to focus on "H.O.P.E." Taking a page out of Obama's mantra that we're not a nation of Democrats or Republicans, but that we are all Americans, Reichert also asked the contentious crowd full of Ron Paul supporters to agree that we are all "proud Americans". He followed that up with three increasingly loud calls that "Today we support John McCain as our nominee!", while the Ron Paul supporters chanted "Ron Paul! Ron Paul!" Sure doesn't sound like party unity listening to that shoutfest.

He then spelled out his definition of "H.O.P.E.": Honor, Opportunity, Prosperity and Equality, referencing the "American Dream".

Clearly Reichert will be seeking to appropriate the messages of "Change" and "Hope" as his own over the coming months. That might be a tough sell to voters who have seen Republicans trash the honor of their charge, limit the opportunities of the down-trodden, seek to prop up the prosperity of the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, and walk all over our constitution and civil liberties.